Kelsey W - Fitness for Life

Player Intro

Kelsey is a certified personal trainer through NASM, and has worked with many clients to pursue overall wellness and quality of life through fitness and personal training. She is always excited to provide guidance for those who are starting their fitness journeys, and emphasizes everyday quality of life improvement as a direct result of consistent exercise.

Gameplan

pD: What is your background in fitness, and how did you come to pursue personal training as a profession?

KW: Ever since I was little, fitness has been something that interested me. My family never really put exercising and going to the gym as a high priority, so it was always this cool thing that I wanted to learn more about.

 When I was 11, me and my sister started in martial arts, which is of course super active, with tons of focus on proper technique and just staying healthy. Even from the beginning, I was always more interested in the health and wellness side of it than the competitive side.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I got a gym membership and started learning how to work out. It was my favorite hobby and I noticed quickly how much better I felt when I was going to the gym four times a week. 

When I was pursuing a degree, I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do as a career, so my boyfriend (now-husband) really encouraged me to pursue fitness as a career because he knew it was something I was always talking about and interested in.

So I started looking more into being a personal trainer and what it was all about. I decided that I wanted to pursue a degree in Exercise Science and started taking classes at Old Dominion University. When my boyfriend and I got married, I had to put my degree on the backburner, because we moved to Richmond. The whole adjustment to getting married and moving to a new city took me a while and I focused on working instead of enrolling in classes.

When we moved to Williamsburg, I decided that the degree may not happen for a little bit of time, but personal training was what I wanted to do. So I signed up through NASM to get certified as a personal trainer. At that point is when I buckled down and really focused on learning what I needed to know to be successful. I was really blessed that, right as I was in the process of getting my certification, the gym I was attending reached out to me and offered me a job pending my certification. So I got started working as a trainer then. 

pD: So what kind of clients did you enjoy working with the most as a personal trainer?

KW: I really enjoyed people who were not necessarily after specific goals, but just really interested in the health and wellness side of it. The weight loss is going to be a side effect of it, and muscle growth too, but really focusing on being fine with taking it slow, not wanting to rush results, is what will get you where you want to go. And the more patient they are to reach those goals, the more successful people end up being. So I liked those clients, people who are new to fitness, helping them find out what their niche was going to be, what they really enjoyed. Because I didn't really care if they wanted to do the stuff I enjoyed doing; it was just finding something they could do on their own and stick with it and love it.

pD: Through your journey in fitness, what habits have you developed as a result of your work and your experience?

KW: So one of the big things is just being mindful of how I move throughout the day. I notice a lot of people develop back pain just from when they bend over to pick something up off the ground. People bend at the waist and arch their back, so I'm a lot more mindful of squatting to pick things up and really focusing on using my muscles when I'm doing stuff throughout the day to prevent common injuries. So that would be on the physical side of habits.

As far as talking to people, it really forced me to get out of my comfort zone, to not only engage in conversations with people who are maybe shy, or didn't want to be there, and really figuring out how to find a common point to get them to be more talkative. So that's been helpful on the social side of things. Usually I'm able to start a conversation and keep it going, even if the other person may be uncomfortable at first, helping them to relax over the course of the conversation.

pD: So how have some of those things carried over to other parts of your life?

KW: Something that has been nice is that, where I work now, the kids get rec time, and they're all interested in exercising, so I'm able to give them tips, and they're usually really receptive to it as well, what I say about their form, making sure it's good.

I also have a lot of people who are starting to get into fitness, who just want some advice and not necessarily a whole personal training session. So I'm happy to give them all the advice they want and probably more than they even need. My in-laws are getting into working out at the gym, and they're asking me for tips and how to make things more challenging, and it always makes me happy to know they feel comfortable coming to me. It's a lot more enjoyable when there's not the pressure of trying to make money off of it, and I'm just telling them the stuff because it's something I really care about. And I'm happy to see them caring about it too. 

pD: So your passion is really seeing people grow through their own pursuit in fitness and exercise.

KW: Absolutely. And the physical side is a really great side effect, but a lot of people see fitness as a chore to do, or something they have to do and they hate it. So I really love helping people find what they enjoy doing, even if it's something like dance or martial arts or kickboxing, showing them there's more to it than going to the gym and running on a treadmill for an hour. I love helping people find what they enjoy doing.

I love helping people find what they enjoy doing

pD: So you talked about this attitude of being mindful of your movement and enjoying the process of becoming more fit and healthy. How do you share that mindset with clients you worked with or people you're giving advice to?

KW: Usually I'll ask clients I'm working with, "Have you noticed things outside of the gym that you feel better about?" or I'll comment "Your posture is looking a lot better," or "I notice you used to do this when you were lifting this weight, and now your posture has gotten much, much better." So just pointing out those little things they may not be caring about, and a lot of my clients came to say "Initially, maybe I didn't see the weight loss like I wanted to," but they would say "I feel so much better, I have so much more energy, I'm sleeping better." So they were getting those lifestyle changes that were going to help them in the long run. 

pD: So that gets them to pay attention to the changes that they're making through their work.

KW: Exactly; so a lot of the fitness industry is focused on weight loss and having perfect six-pack abs, and looking great all the time. So it helps them to step out of that and see there's more to it than just that. There's so much more, and it will help you to feel better not just now, but ten years, fifteen years from now. Really, you may not be the weight that you want to be, but if it's the weight where your body is the healthiest, learning to appreciate that and learn how to work with that. 

pD: So you're more concerned with quality of life long-term over cosmetic changes.

KW: Exactly. I always tell my clients that no two bodies are the same. Me at my healthiest is not going to look like them at their healthiest, and that can be discouraging because that's not what's portrayed as the perfect image by the media right now, but as long as they're feeling great, and able to do the activities they want to, then they don't need to be cutting out their favorite foods or giving up going out to coffee with a friend. You should be able to live your life and enjoy it, and fitness is supposed to be a tool to get you there.

No two bodies are the same

pD: Either within fitness or life in general, what is a challenge you have faced, and how did you approach it?

KW: Definitely with fitness as we moved into quarantine, that was a really hard adjustment for me. To be actively working out, there were weeks where I wasn't prioritizing my health because everything was just funky and weird. So I was able to use the excuse, ‘oh it's quarantine, everyone's feeling weird right now’. So during that time, I definitely lost some progress. I didn't feel as strong and healthy as before, so finally as I was moving into looking for a job again since gyms closed, my husband encouraged me to change our spare room into a fitness room that I could use.

So I was able to go out and find some equipment for that, and I just worked on creating a schedule, so that even though all I had to do was be home all day, since the best thing I could do for the pandemic was stay home, I at least had a schedule of waking up, getting these chores done, and working out at specific times. It didn't have to be a specific workout, but at one point, when I was getting back into it, I wrote out every single day what I do so I can just show up and get something done and not have to think about it. So that helped me get back into it and really feel better again.

pD: So creating a new routine helped you to stay consistent with the work you needed to do.

KW: Exactly. Even though I was seeing other people do whatever they wanted or just relaxing, and knowing that that wasn't what was best for me. I really needed to get back into a routine, not only for my physical, but also my mental health. Staying busy and staying where I felt like I was accomplishing things throughout the week.

pD: And you touch on the mental health aspect, and that's definitely an area of growing research, how mental health is affected by fitness. Talk a bit about how that looked for you as you got back into exercising consistently.

KW: Yeah, so research has shown that working out regularly, about 30 minutes a day, can act similarly to a low dose of Prozac for people who are anxious and depressed. So it can potentially take the place of a low dose of medication. So people who are in that place and struggling with those kinds of things, I encourage them to try to first get into fitness, see how that helps, and then go from there.

For me, I definitely noticed staying in that routine, I had a mentality shift from being worried all the time about the pandemic, and being nervous about work, I was able to focus instead on the positive side of things and really see, even within this pandemic, that there are still things to be accomplished, there are still fitness goals that can be reached. It forced me to get creative on lifting, using jugs of water--that was one my husband came up with--using our emergency water and a curtain rod when the barbells were sold out. So working out helped a lot with the anxieties that came with COVID.

I was able to focus instead of the positive

pD: Obviously, we're not all the way through this challenge yet, but what does it mean for you to have gone through this process so far?

KW: I definitely feel like it really helped me to appreciate that I'm still able to keep moving forward; it didn't keep me down. I'm especially thankful to my husband because he pushes me not to settle, because I can get into a slump and focus on the negative, feeling like I'm doing the same thing over and over every day. So he has really encouraged me, and it's helped me appreciate him a lot more. His support has also helped me to appreciate that you don't necessarily need a gym to work out; you can do it anywhere, and it doesn't have to be an hour or nothing. It's fine if you do fifteen or twenty minutes here and there. All that it’s about is just getting you active. 

pD: Is there anything else you'd like to add to what you've shared?

KW: Right now, with the pandemic, it is crazy for everyone. If you can just take five or ten minutes to do some kind of activity, even if you don't feel it now, in a couple of weeks, a couple of months, it'll really help. You can never have a bad workout if you've done your best and put effort into it, then any workout is a good workout.

Execution

Kelsey is teaching a kettlebell combo move today that works through the entire body, utilizing the type of weight we encounter on a more consistent basis. Add this to your routine for some full-body burn.