February Hits and Oh God NO’s 2016

I am a Certified Personal Trainer, a Licensed Massage Therapist, and a Certified Z-Health Coach.

That’s what I am.

I chose my fields of study and those certifications because of who I am, and because of what I believe.

I am an advocate of life in motion.

I believe that we all live happier, freer,and  more fulfilling lives when we can move powerfully, gracefully, with joy and without pain.

I believe that we are all athletes – professional, amateur, casual, or occasional. All of us use movement to express ourselves, to explore our world, and to enjoy our lives.

I believe that we don’t need to be fanatical to be fit.  We don’t have to commit to grueling exercise regimens or deprivation diet plans, we don’t have to submit ourselves to fitness instructors who think yelling equals motivation, and we don’t have to endure workouts that leave us too tired to do anything but collapse on the couch.

In fact, I believe that those are the exact reasons most fitness plans fail.

I’d never been particularly athletic, or even enthusiastic about sports, until I was introduced to Karate. I was about 10 years old when my parents first took me to a Martial Arts studio, and I was instantly in love.

I soon transitioned to training in (what we commonly refer to as Kickboxing) and, after years of training in the same studio, I became an instructor for them. And discovered a new love – helping other people discover what their bodies could do!

That love followed me to college where I worked as a Student Athletic Trainer for the football and wrestling teams at The University of Missouri.

And that experience brought me to yet another realization.

As a culture we have bought into the idea that pain is a natural outcome of fitness training.

And that made no sense to me, because living a fit and healthy life should imply an absence of pain, not an ability to endure it.

Assisting the MU Sports Staff and Athletic Trainers with sports rehabilitation sparked my interest in the power of massage to enable greater performance while decreasing injuries and pain.

I enrolled in Missouri College’s massage therapy program, finished my course work early, and spent the last month of the program tutoring my classmates and studying Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmacology. I chose to take the NCETMB (National Certification Examination for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork) which included therapies rooted in Chinese Medicine as well as the Western modalities.

I discovered that, while most people think of massage as something you do to reward yourself for working out, or to recover from an especially taxing exercise session – massage can actually be used to augment a fitness program to achieve greater and faster results!

To expand my abilities in fitness training I also studied for the NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) boards and became a NASM Certified Personal Trainer (CPT).

Combining fitness training with massage therapy provided exactly the edge I needed to help people who were struggling to achieve their fitness goals because of obesity, past injuries, or other restrictions. 

But I was still frustrated by the number of clients who equated getting fit with feeling pain.

They’d had the “No Pain, No Gain” adage drilled into them until they couldn’t imagine that a good workout didn’t mean walking to the car on wobbly legs, dripping sweat, and hoping they could make it home before they collapsed. That was the experience they signed up for. They expected it, they dreaded it, but they also took pride in it.

And it wasn’t the experience I wanted to provide. I’d already proved it wasn’t necessary to work through pain and to exhaustion in order to get results. And I’d seen so many people give up because they hit their pain threshold before they hit their fitness goals, or injure themselves badly enough they had to stop their fitness program in order to heal.

I’d been studying the mind/body connection, and when I read this description I knew there was another certification I wanted to take:

Z-Health bridges the latest breakthroughs in neurology and exercise to help people make unprecedented progress in pain management, athletic performance, and overall wellness. ~

I completed the R-Phase Certification, which focuses on Rehabilitation, Restoration, and Re-education. We call it “using the brain to fix the body.”

One of the primary tenants of Z-Health, “never move into pain,” is an exact fit for my own philosophy, and the assessments and drills are the perfect compliment to my approach of combining training and massage to accelerate weight loss and increase muscle mass while keeping the fitness experience fun, low-key, and pain-free!

I’ve put my experience and skills to work in many settings: I’ve taught boxing and kickboxing at boxing gyms and MMA studios, I’ve been a Certified Spin Instructor as well as a Certified R.I.P.P.E.D Instructor. I’ve managed a boutique gym, and been a Group Exercise Coordinator and Group Class Instructor for a national chain gym.

In every circumstance, I’ve found joy in working with those clients who want to reshape, not only their bodies, but their very lives through motion. People who care about feeling great as well as looking great.

My private clients are my partners in creating a life where they can work and play with abandon, with power and grace, and without pain. 

I also offer corporate fitness programs incorporating chair massage and/or Z-Health drills with simple body-weight exercises you can do at your desk or in the conference room.

When I’m not working with fitness clients you’ll often find me out for a run with my life partner and our two pups, or curled up at home with a good book and our little tom cat.