🎊 10 Lessons in 10 Years: What I've Learned as a Personal Trainer

It's the big 1-0!

🎉 Happy Friday, Friends!

It's officially my 10-year anniversary of being a personal trainer! It hit me the other day, and I've been thinking about how much I've learned in this industry. From starting at a big box gym to training clients in my own studio today, it's been an eye-opening decade.

So today, I'm sharing 10 things I've learned in 10 years.

Community is Everything.

If there's one big takeaway from my time working in this industry, it's that fitness IS political. Choosing, regulating, and learning about yourself through your body is a solo act that extends to community easily. From empowering you to attend protests to managing your emotions so that you bring your best self to a conflict, movement is a political tool like no other.

Waking up at 5am does not make anyone morally superior.

I myself never thought that, but plenty of folx would tell me they wish they could be early risers to work out or “be more productive.” If sleeping til 7am leaves you more refreshed and able to think for yourself and fight fascism, then 7am is the best time for your body. There is no moral advantage to rising with the sun!

Movement vs Exercise

These are not the same! Movement is a holistic approach to get in tune with your body. Exercise is more structured activity that's geared towards hitting certain goals. You can have both!

Cute and expensive accessories, supplements, and fancy drinks don’t signal health

The only weighted vest I’ll accept is one that’s bulletproof, for when you’re on the front lines fighting immigration raids in Minnesota or California. I love accessories - a new pair of socks or leggings can make me feel cute and excited to move - but they’re not required, and anything that purports to be the single cure is just a lie trying to get you to spend money.

Standing for 8 hours isn’t better than sitting for 8 hours.

I'm all for finding ways to get more movement into your day through small, achievable changes, but the solution isn't to demonize sitting.

Rest and Sleep

These are the most underrated fitness tool of all! Bodies and muscles can’t perform optimally without rest days and solid sleep. Sleep is when your muscles are rebuilt and your brain reorganizes itself. Rest days are important for your nervous system. Motors can’t stay revved up and neither can we.  These processes are nonnegotiable when you've been moving around, and skimping on sleep snowballs FAST! Even scammy friends of pedos trying to sell you unregulated supplements tell us sleep is important. 

Tired: Protein Bros :: Wired: Fiber Hoes

Of course I understand what science tells me about protein, muscles and fullness, but with the increase in colon cancers hitting folx younger and younger and insurance typically not covering colonoscopies for adults under 40, I want us to focus a little bit more on fiber. Fiber helps lower cholesterol and blood sugar, helps prevent constipation (pelvic floor problems!). Fiber helps us feel full and satiated.

Health At Every Size

HAES is not a hashtag, or a cool marketing term that I throw around for SEO. I truly embody and feel this in my soul. Bodies and the humans inside them inherently deserve love, compassion and peace. My clients and I have been through the wringer, emotionally and physically, when it comes to bodies, “health”, and beauty messages. We don’t train to live up to impossible and unhealthy aesthetic standards. We have to work to undo and unlearn the last 30-plus years of shapewear, 7 almonds as a snack, drinking water instead of eating actual food, etc. We’ve keto-dieted and Weight Watcher'd ourselves and said enough. We want peace, we deserve peace.  

Burpees are stupid 

This speaks for itself.

Resolutions, January 1 are meaningless to me - My body and brain are tuned into seasons.

Resolutions can be made at any time, and seasonally, winter is not the best time to be hitting new goals hard. Maybe if you're in the southern hemisphere it would make more sense, but for me, winter and January specifically is a time to rest and recharge, similar to how nature is more dormant in the winter. I can still think and plan and dream, but I try not to force anything, especially new/overwhelming behaviors.

With you into the next decade,
Dana