Personal Training: One Year In

I am usually SO GOOD about knowing my anniversary dates.

David and I started dating on July 7th.

(going on 12 years ago!)

We closed on our house and moved into it on September 8th.

(over 6 years ago!)

I quit smoking on February 26th.

(closing in on 8 years now!)

And I started personal training on January 19th last year.

Except that I double checked that date in our gym computer today and it was actually January 11th last year.

And I confirmed that by finding my facebook status from January 11th last year:

“Trained my first client this morning. And no one puked. Even though I thought I might.”

So I missed my one year anniversary by over a week.

Oops.

Regardless, I have been thinking about this anniversary for a few weeks now — pretty much since the holidays, when I distinctly remembered spending the few weeks leading up to Christmas trying to find a personal training position at a gym I didn’t hate.

I even accidentally interviewed for a gym manager position. I didn’t get offered that job LOL.

After spending, like, a month now thinking about this year of my life, I don’t have a ton of life-lessons to share based on my work as a trainer.

But I do have this:

I love seeing clients surprised by what they can do.

I love that the core of my clients are women whom I either inherited last January or who began their first forays into personal training with me last Spring. They’re still here and I’m still here.

I love that my client who couldn’t do the stairs without knee pain is now doing step ups all the time, walking with her friend on the weekends, and has lost 30 pounds.

I love that my client with persistent shoulder pain is bench pressing pain-free.

I love that my client who “always sucked at push ups” is doing full-on, proper form push ups in sets of 10.

I love that one of the guys in the gym told one of my 60-year-old clients that her back was packing on some serious meat.

(And, by the way, she properly considered that a compliment.)

I love that my clients text me or tell me when a workout was hard (in a good way).

Like this:

“Whenever I can’t undo my bra after an upper body workout, I think of you.”

And then I have this:

I am better at this than I thought I would be. But I am humbled every day by what I don’t know.

That makes me want to be better.

And that’s a sign of a happy trainer.