Dream it. Achieve it.
Sport has not always been my passion. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite.
When I was in high school, the lowest grades I had were in sports. I was slow, I had a big difficulty in performing the exercises correctly, girls were laughing at me because of how bad I was. Once I ran in a big group of 200 people and I ended up last. I was always ashamed of myself, I hated how I looked in gym clothes and I was always self-conscious about my body, so I was wearing baggy clothes in gym class.
Then, in 2015, January 1st, I decided to overcome my fear of sports. I have this habit: on the first day of the new year, I write a list of goals for the next 12 months. So I went to a gym and got a subscription. In the beginning, I had no specific body goals, my main goal was all about this mental fear that I’ve been struggling with since I was a kid.
It was difficult to convince myself every single time to go to the gym and exercise. And it felt so hard to do only 10 abs. But I kept going. A few months later I joined some cardio classes and attended them regularly. The trainer was a 70 years old lady. She was incredibly strong and she had such a positive and motivating attitude! Every time I was going there I felt stronger and better at what I was doing. It shortly became my absolute favorite activity.
Now after some time, I started thinking of my body goals. When I started doing sports I had a normal body, not too skinny, not overweight. I was already training for a while on a regular basis. I’ve lost weight but my body was not really changing. I was doing abs 5 times a week, but I was not seeing any 6 pack showing up. Back then, I was doing 6-8 hours of cardio/week. This is how I decided to get my first personal trainer.
When I had my initial evaluation with my personal trainer I told him exactly what I wanted to change about my body. I wanted to lose weight on my legs, to have skinny legs. He assured me we’ll make it happen. Two months later I haven’t lost any cm in my legs. So I got a second personal trainer. Same story. The first trainer introduced me to weights training and from him, I learned the correct form of different exercises in the gym. But that was pretty much it, my body was still not changing. So I decided to educate myself on how the science of muscle and weight loss works.
And that’s how I learned that the reason my legs are not changing in size no matter what I eat and how I train is the fact that my body type is mesomorph. Genetically I have muscular legs and that’s something that cannot be changed. But none of the trainers told me that. They did not set realistic expectations. They told me ‘you’ll have skinny legs’ if you do these exercises. And that’s how I decided to become a personal trainer. I want to educate people and help them become the best version of themselves. And I want them to be aware of their body type and help them understand what sports can and cannot do to their body.
And now when it comes to nutrition, they say abs are made in the kitchen. I could not agree more! When my first personal trainer made my body evaluation I had a really low body fat (because I was doing a lot of cardio and I was not eating enough protein). Once I started eating correctly my abs showed up in a couple of weeks. But keep in mind that I did not have a high body fat so that’s why for this specific goal it was easy for my body to see progress. And also genetically my body type has a small waist and doesn’t store that much fat around the waist.
The passion for sports grew on me and it became my life passion. I’ve learned a lot and still learning, I did anything I wanted with my body and I helped so many people change their lifestyle, start liking sports, and understanding all of its benefits.