Getting a Personal Trainer Is the Best Thing I’ve Done for Myself in Years

Our writer realizes she is not the only one who’s been secretly seeing a trainer.  

“Five more, four, good! Okay, three more…”

I was lying on my left side, eye-to-eye with the faded indentation of a lotus flower on a purple yoga mat, laid across the hardwood floors in my spare room. My right leg was bent, hovering above my left, quivering as I opened and closed it like a clamshell in time with the soothing but firm count-down coming from a loveseat against the wall in front of me.

The voice belonged to Emily—blond 1930’s starlet waves, bright smile, chiselled calf muscles—who sat perched on the edge of the grey-blue velvet sofa in her black camo print leggings, looking intently at my legs as I struggled to keep the right one aloft. 

“Two, one more, that’s it!” 

She finished counting and mercifully instructed me to hug my knees to my chest and have a rest.

We were about 20 minutes into a 45-minute session which had become a weekly routine over the past nine months or so. I was working out with a personal trainer. A turn of events I never would have predicted for myself. 

But let me rewind.

Last summer, my 77-year-old mother was preparing to travel from Portland, Oregon to come visit me in London for a few months. She’d lived alone since my dad died nine years ago, and her health had been steadily declining.

Like many people her age, her health issues were caused by an overlapping list of ailments. Nerve damage in her spine impacted her balance. This led to a few falls that shook her confidence. She began using a cane, limiting the amount of exercise she could do, exacerbating her chronic back pain, and making it hard to keep weight off. 

As a result, she’d been diagnosed with pre-diabetes and told by her doctor that she needed to lose weight and drastically change her diet to stave off full-blown diabetes. 

I had been watching this vicious circle from afar and it was hard to imagine her cascading health conditions improving.

When she arrived in London, after the jet lag wore off, I could see that both her physical and mental health were in peril. Although she’s always had a relatively healthy lifestyle, my mom, like so many women of her generation, had never made her own fitness a priority. 

I remember coming across an academic paper when I was researching my master’s dissertation Women, Leisure and Inequality, which explained that “…aspects of women’s gender-roles constrain their enjoyment and use of free time. Constraints include domestic labor, job attitudes, behavior, and working hours of male partners and childcare…” The paper’s findings map neatly on to my mom’s experience and even though it was written in 1982, the year I was born, the same is largely true for many women today, myself included. 

Witnessing her struggle, I could also see what was in store for me. My mom and I have always had an uncanny resemblance; photos of her and me at similar ages are almost impossible to tell apart. Thinking back to my childhood, my mom made sure we were signed up for soccer and gymnastics, swim team and ballet, but I don’t recall her ever making time for her own leisure or exercise. 

Before having kids, I did yoga regularly but in the ensuing years I’d found myself in a similar pattern to my mom; I made the time to sign the kids up for tennis and swimming and gymnastics and to ferry them to and fro, but my own fitness was barely an afterthought.

I’d noticed that without consultation, Saturday mornings had been monopolized in the family Google Calendar by my partner’s bike rides, winnowing further any slice of free time I might have. I ranted (inwardly) against the injustice, but didn’t have my own exercise activity to add to the calendar. Somehow “Katie reads a book in bed undisturbed 8:00 am – 10:00 am” didn’t seem quite as  legitimate.

But even if I did have the time, I was out of the habit. My body was battered after having kids; I’d lost so much strength I had to stop doing yoga because I kept injuring myself. My lower back hurt so much I hadn’t dared sleep on my stomach in the 10 years since my son was born and I was noticing a twingey pain in my knees with increasing severity. 

I’m aware of the research on aging and bone density and muscle mass—women are especially prone to osteoporosis and 80 percent of Americans with the condition are women—but I wasn’t able to carve out the space to do anything about it. Post-40 with two kids, a busy job and busy life, I couldn’t see a way to turn things around for myself. Seeing my mom and the challenges she was facing, seemed like looking into my own future.

Having time together under the same roof was an opportunity to try to see what we could do to improve my mom’s condition. I saw a huge change in her mood and energy, just being around her grandkids and having family meals together but I was still worried about her physical health. 

I remembered a PTA Instagram post about a mom at my kids’ school who was a personal trainer (who I had once met at a birthday party) and dug out her number hoping she might have a recommendation for someone who specialized in one-on-one sessions with older clients.

Emily, it turned out, had years of experience in this area and started working with my mom once a week. After the first session my mom seemed brighter. She ordered books online about healthy diet, she changed her eating habits, and set herself ambitious step count goals every day. Within a few weeks her strength and balance had noticeably improved. 

She was only working with Emily for 45 minutes once a week, but the impact was astounding. One day she’d been out walking and came home without her cane. Only when my daughter noticed did she realize that she must have left it at a bus stop earlier in the day. She no longer needed it to get around.

At the end of the six-month stay, she had lost over 30 pounds, stopped using her cane, and was up to walking over 10,000 steps a day. When she returned to Portland her doctors were amazed. I was amazed. She was amazed!

Inspired by the progress she made and spooked by the alternative, I decided that if I could get in shape now and maintain it, that would be a lot easier than waiting another 30 years to work on my fitness. I texted Emily and scheduled a session for myself. I had long known that the only way to get myself to work out was to be held accountable and to have someone actually tell me what to do step by step. 

No matter how old or out of shape, studies tell us that exercise can help to rebuild bone density and muscle mass. In her ever-encouraging style, Emily puts it this way: “It’s never too late to start, but it gets A LOT harder after your 40’s. It’s really about forming new habits with exercise in there.”

But making the space in our lives to form these good habits is easier said than done. I conducted an unofficial poll tapping into some parent Whatsapp groups I’m on (basically the virtual hangout space for a few hundred mostly moms over 40 in East London) and most respondents said they don’t exercise as much as they’d like.

They overwhelmingly said that the biggest barrier to regular exercise is lack of time, and that was caused mostly by kids and lack of childcare, but also by guilt about taking money and time for themselves. The most common health concerns mentioned were back and joint pain, bone and muscle mass, mental health, pelvic floor health, and wanting to maintain cardiovascular health going into menopause.

Being in the privileged position of working from home with a flexible schedule, Emily and I set a regular Tuesday morning date, when she would come to my house and take me through a 45-minute workout on a yoga mat rolled out next to my desk. Then I’d hop back to work.

Quite quickly I began to experience the impact that my mom had for myself. Despite the short time together each week, the progress was noticeable and immediate. The slow build of squats, crunches, supported push-ups, and lunges made my muscles ache but more than that, they gave me confidence that I had a role to play in my physical health.

They were a building block to a healthier future, like the slow slide into physical decline had been halted and there was a chance to change the trajectory. I felt stronger. I returned to yoga with more balance and control. I took back some coveted Saturday mornings to go to aerobics. I bought a crop top.

It felt like my special little secret. A strange luxurious thing I was doing that made me feel accomplished and healthy. Then some friends came to visit from the US and while catching up over pizza in our local pub, I mentioned that I’d begun seeing a personal trainer. My friend Eleni excitedly said she’d been seeing one too! Her husband’s eye roll and description of the ripped male trainer gave me distinct Bodies by Jason vibes and reminded me of the New York Times article which must have been commissioned by a jilted editor.

The more I talked to other women, I saw that many of my friends—mostly busy women over 40 with kids—had come to similar conclusions about their health and had been working with trainers for a variety of reasons. Like me, for most of the women I spoke to, weight loss wasn’t the main goal of working with a trainer, but more toned muscles and feeling better about how my body looks is certainly a perk. I channelled Michelle Obama and wore a sleeveless jumpsuit to give a talk for work a few weeks ago and didn’t hate how my arms looked!

Over Christmas drinks in a swanky vegan restaurant, I sheepishly told my friend Gillian that I had started working out with a personal trainer and she said that she’s had a trainer for years. While suffering from postpartum depression after her second child, she felt incredibly lost. She decided to started working with a trainer, a weightlifting coach in his 70’s, and now she says she cannot live without her regular deadlifts, the Bulgarian Bag, and dreaded Sled Push. To fit it in her schedule, she meets him at 6:00 am on Wednesdays and it’s become a “therapeutic, calm wise, source of support” in her life.

My neighbor and friend Danielle also started seeing her trainer Lynsey who specialized in postpartum recovery after having her second child, which had been a traumatic birth. She needed to find someone who felt safe and who would allow her to bring her two-year-old daughter.

“Anyone from the outside listening to our sessions must think we fucking hate each other because there is a lot of taking the piss, a lot of whinging and moaning from both of us, there is a lot of being quite sassy and cutting with each other,” she says. “But it comes from a place of love–it’s actually a really supportive, safe environment. I would definitely say it’s part PT and part therapy.”

Beyond working on strength training and rehab for some old injuries, having time carved out every week has multiple benefits. “It’s a place to go where it’s not just doom scrolling on my phone; it’s a space where I’m doing something productive but is very much for me. I think as a mom that is really hard to find time and space to do.”

This really resonates with what I find most valuable about having a personal trainer. Each session starts with Emily asking how I’m doing. Both emotionally and physically. And I’ve realized she’s filing away what I say to shape the session. If I have a lot going on, she makes the combinations complicated enough that I have to focus on tapping my toes and alternating elbows to knees enough that my mind can’t wander to other things. If I mention I’ve been skipping aerobics to go thrift store shopping, she picks up the pace and adds cardio to the session.

Emily says in her 20+ years of one-to-one personal training, she’s seen all kinds of health concerns. She normally has  30 to 40 clients on her roster at any given time, and most come to her with a clear objective: after having babies, or to help with recovery from injuries or after a health scare, or once they hit a certain age milestone. 

She says menopause is also a clear trend too, “with the media finally helping women to see that this is a normal part of their journey, and that exercise and lifestyle can play a huge role in easing symptoms.”

Of course, hiring a personal trainer is a luxury out of reach for many people. But in our sessions, Emily talks about the idea of “investing” in your health. “If you don’t make time for your wellness, you will be forced to make time for your illness,” is one of her go-to quotes. 

She also says not to assume it’s unaffordable. She offers online and group sessions at a lower rate and free spaces to those who can’t afford it—and other trainers might do the same. She says to think about your real patterns: A lot of people waste money on gym memberships they don’t use; 1:1 training may seem extravagant, but it does garner results.

And if training is not a possibility, there is a lot you can do on your own. “I wish doctors prescribed exercise. It’s really just about moving your body.” If you are short on time, she says there are three key muscle groups to pay attention to: 

• Glutes: If you have strong glutes, it stops the major joints (hips and knees) from taking on too much of the hard work, and supports the spine.
• Shoulders: Shoulders are super important to help with overall posture.
• Back: We have so many muscles in our backs. They play a very important role in movement, support, and even breathing. These muscles are an absolute must in overall health and longevity.

In a recent interview with Alanis Morissette in the New York Times she said she’s been lifting heavy weights for her health. “As I grow older and I turned 50, I’ve seen the benefits of going heavier. I carry 15–20-pound kettlebells with me and I feel strong as [expletive] right now.”

I get that now. The 45 minutes of sweating and struggle have become a part of the week I look forward to. It feels responsible making the time to look after myself. My lower back pain is gone, and I feel strong as fuck, too.

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