My Story

I left school and college a bit lost, not really knowing what I wanted to do, with what felt like a lot of pressure from teachers and family about getting a ‘proper job’.  The only thing I really loved was sport and exercise but other than being a professional athlete, I had no idea what job that would involve. I studied for a Leisure and Tourism qualification at college as that was the closest thing I could find to what I loved doing.  I ended up running the reception of a hotel in South West England for a while and then, after feeling uninspired by my environment, on the spur of the moment I moved to Cyprus at age 20. All of a sudden I was surrounded by people with a zest for life, into the outdoors, training, adventure and up for a lot of fun!

I felt like I’d found my people.  School and college had not been particularly fun for me, I never really found any true like-minded friends.  I had always been into sport and PE was my favourite but at that time there were few girls into fitness and I even found myself being bullied for loving PE.

In Cyprus I lived on the military base and I started properly training in the gym there where I met my first trainer/coach who was in the RAF.  I spent as much time as I could in the gym absorbing his knowledge, learning how to resistance train and feeling how my body responded. I was small and skinny and with athletics/running being my main sport to see and feel myself getting stronger was amazing.  During the day I would be outside in the sun running, cycling, hiking, anything I could do to be outdoors!

My trainer suggested “Why don’t you think about becoming a Personal Trainer”.  Back then in 2000 I didn’t even know that was a career! 20 years ago there were hardly any PT’s and the industry was certainly not like it is now.  I realised then I had found a profession that I was so passionate about, I could actually work in health and fitness. I spent the rest of my 3 years in Cyprus embracing and learning everything I could about fitness and training.  I went back to the UK and did my Personal Training qualifications straight away. Even doing the course I found another group of people who were into the same things as me and it was a revelation, I was finally happy and felt like I was living my purpose.  I felt as if I had real friends for the first time. 

After finishing my 3 month full time personal training course, I again made a pretty spur of the moment decision and decided to try to set up business in York.  I checked out the gyms there and found one that felt like the right fit. I set myself up as a self employed Personal Trainer in York in 2003. There were few female trainers back then, I built a really nice business there in a great community.  Fitness was just becoming, it was a really exciting time to be part of the growth.

My training at the time was really focused on building my physique and getting stronger.  I think it’s important to experiment and be open-minded to different things so I tried a variety of strength and weight training methods and really enjoyed the learning process and watching my body change too.  I also competed in a bodybuilding competition in 2005 to learn about and experience that process for myself, to see and feel the discipline, focus and sacrifice involved in the training and diet preparation.

After 4 years in York I was starting to get comfortable.  Constant evolvement and self development are some of my highest values so I decided it was time for a change and to drive things on.  I moved to London in 2007, which at first was scary, starting all over again, but growth only comes from seeking challenges and trying new things!  I started building my business from scratch again, this time at Fitness First on Tottenham Court Road.

The first part of my time in London was focused on building a client base again, weight training hard in the gym and competing in running for Belgrave Harriers.  I got to the point where business was steady and so I wanted to refocus my own training. In around 2010, after a couple of years in London, one of the guys at Belgrave, my running club, mentioned that he was starting a triathlon team and would I like to be part of it.  I was apprehensive at first, as I couldn’t swim! My teammate reminded me that setting limitations was not the way to move forward. He was a swim coach and we worked together to get me up to speed, it was an exciting (and sometimes very frustrating!) journey to learn something new.

Over the next few years I was living my athlete dream, I competed in A LOT in triathlons, duathlons, endurance events, the Etape du Tour, trail running and more.  I was racing all over the world and signing up to anything that came along, endurance sport was addictive! You can read more about my competing journey here.

Then in around 2014 the wheels started to fall off and my health started to suffer as years of living to the max started to catch up with me.  The high of living the athlete life was starting to become scattered with the lows of health issues. You can read about my health journey here.

I realised that I had to sort myself out before something went horribly wrong but being a relentless, Duracell bunny (as one friend called me) was hard to change.  I felt as if it was my whole identity. Without the competing and always training for that next race I felt lost. All my years of training up to then, age 34, was all ‘Yang’ - pushing everything to the max, training as hard as I could, never slowing down or taking time to just be.

I started to explore and learn about other forms of training that could bring more balance to my life and structural balance to my body, which was feeling pretty wrecked and of course sharing that knowledge and experience with my clients.  One thing that has always remained is resistance training and I believe that has been the glue holding my body together throughout.

I began with Pilates Mat and Reformer Teacher Training, learning how going slow, controlling movements and creating tension in the muscles could, in a different way, be as hard as weight training or running.  The Pilates teacher training really complimented my strength training knowledge and practice too.

Next came yoga and then my yoga teacher training, this was eye opening for me, especially all the different types of yoga.  Until then I’d thought I hated yoga, I’d found it was way too spiritual or not enough movement for me but the truth was I hadn’t really found a teacher that I resonated with or yoga was not really what they were teaching.  What they were saying felt like it was just words from a book, just going through the motions. After trying out A LOT of teachers I finally found some I resonated with and I realised a regular yoga practice could be beneficial and extremely complimentary towards the other activities I wanted to do.

The biggest thing I probably got from yoga initially was a greater understanding of the breath and how the breath is EVERYTHING.  I realised how much this kind of thing could benefit not only myself but also many of my clients who also were competing, type A, high stress individuals.  Through my thirst to learn more and restore my own energy this then led to me studying and exploring many other modalities including PRI (Postural Restoration Institute), Breath Work and FRC (Functional Range Conditioning).  All which opened a huge can of worms and lead me down many exciting rabbit holes!

One of my biggest influences and what tied everything together for me was attending Ben House’s Functional Medicine, Nutrition and Strength and Conditioning course in Costa Rica (2 years in a row).  On this course there were many different expert speakers and fitness professionals, mostly from the USA. It was the environment I’d craved to be in for so many years but had yet to find. I wanted an environment where I was ‘the dumbest person in the room’ and here I truly was!  I learnt, listened and experienced so much and had so many ‘aha’ moments. I realised that true health is not incessantly worrying about your health and it reaffirmed my belief that there is no one right modality, we all need different things at different times in our lives.

I feel like now, at nearly 40, I’ve restored my health; I’ve come full circle.  I’ve learnt a lot from my mistakes that I can share with others and although at the time going through the health problems sucked and I felt very low I don’t regret any of it because it’s lead me on this path of learning so much.  There is a difference between training for performance and training for health. I now train for performance again but regularly check back in with my health so I can perform at a sustainable level. Although there will always be sacrifices to be made when training for performance the key is limiting those potential negative effects and building a strong and resilient body and mind.  Through my experience and learning I believe that whether training for performance or health we all need elements of all types of fitness/training/activities in amounts appropriate to us at appropriate times in our lives.