I’ve personally wanted to help others in the fitness industry for a while. I remember taking classes at Gold’s Gym years ago and thinking how awesome it would be to be a fitness instructor. Fast forward to the fall of 2018 when I decided to get my personal training certificate through NASM. My background is in education, not exercise science. I wasn’t sure how I would use the information in my daily life, but I decided to go for it.  I literally spent hours and hours studying for the test for over six months. The day I took the exam I answered all 120 questions in 30 minutes.  I knew all the information front and back. I’m a perfectionist and there was zero chance I was going to fail that test. So you would think after that I would have been ready to jump right into training people right? I hesitated because I didn’t feel like I “looked the part.”  My whole life I have not done things unless I felt like I’m one hundred ready, and I felt like I had it all figured out. 

In 2021 I started the Live Hard year and really focused on my own fitness/health journey. Looking back now I realized I had to go through that to be able to relate to others going through the same journey.  In my opinion working in the fitness industry isn’t about looking a certain way. It’s about truly being able to relate to others in a way that inspires them to want to be better. Sometimes others can relate to us better when we have gone through the same experiences and are willing to share.  No one has everything figured out completely when it comes to nutrition and exercise. I feel like I'm not the only one that struggles with insecurities and being able to help others in the fitness industry. I would even bet that the fitness industry as a whole is missing some great contributors just because of their own insecurities. 

I am slowly starting to learn that no one ever feels one hundred percent ready to jump into something. Some of us may never feel that “we look the part.” Meanwhile we are missing out on opportunities to share our own journey with others.