Meet Kim
Club: Genesis Fitness Ringwood
A new relationship brings exciting new beginnings. When I met my boyfriend I was healthy and fit, weighing about 76kgs. Fast forward 12 months, I weighed roughly 89kgs and couldn’t even run 2kms. I had lost my self-respect and everything I loved seeing in the mirror. I needed to get back to the gym and I wanted a goal to keep me going. So I signed up for the Melbourne Marathon, it was extreme but so was my weight gain.
When I walked back into the gym, I saw an advert for a 6 week challenge, I signed up in a heartbeat. The challenge introduced me to the safe environment of small group personal training. It was perfect for someone in my situation; uncomfortable, self-conscious and unfit. The sessions gave me room to learn and practice good form while building my fitness.
One of the trainers, Mike, who ran the Strong training sessions, really pushed me and had this amazing ability to ignore my incessant whinging. We decided to work together to build a training plan to get me to the start line and across the finish. We incorporated the small group PT sessions, one on one sessions and long runs. The support of Mike, my peers in the small group personal training sessions and the team at Genesis Ringwood was something I never expected, especially from a gym and will always be very much appreciated. Over the past few months my fitness and strength have improved dramatically, I dropped 3.5kgs and 25cm in my first 6 weeks and a further 4.2kgs and 21.5cm.
When I signed up for the Melbourne Marathon I imagined I would be skinny when I got to the start line, but I’m not and that doesn’t upset me. The weight loss was nothing compared to crossing the finish line after 42.2kms. I feel amazing, what I have achieved in the gym and now having completed the marathon makes me proud. My journey wasn’t easy. There were times when I didn’t want to get out of bed at 5am and times when my one on one sessions with Mike felt so hard I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry. But when I look back every step I took was worth it.
I still have fitness goals and my body will become leaner as I keep training and I can’t wait to see what I will achieve in the future.
