Once upon a time, there lived a teenager who wasn’t good at sports and fitness but made it her quest to get an A in Physical Education by the time she graduated (average grade was a C+/B-). She participated in swimming lessons, ran with her PE class, sprained her fingers playing volleyball and basketball (when she wasn’t ducking and dodging the ball), begged for the ball/puck that was never given to her, struggled to do a cartwheel and backward somersault and could do the flexed arm-hang for a whopping 3 seconds! Her PE teacher even told her she looked like a beached whale on top of a pillar on the SFU climbing wall.
This teenager did get her A in PE and the teacher was so proud of her! She went on to go to SFU (avoiding the climbing wall at all costs) to get a BSc in Kinesiology and then, 14 years later, went back to get a MSc in Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology, eventually teaching in the department.
She also became a fitness instructor. She started with aquafit and gradually added weight training, personal training, third age (older adults), yoga and pre & postnatal fitness. She even started teaching other people how to become fitness instructors!
I’m sure that by now you have figured out that I am the person in the story. So, what is the point of the story?
The point is that anybody can become a fitness instructor and that there are a lot of different options out there and you just have to find the right ‘fit’ for you! So you aren’t cut out to be a step instructor…you don’t need to be! Why not take that first step (pun intended)?
Here are a list of fitness instructor courses and workshops that I am teaching in the next little while. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions!
Surrey courses:
Fitness Theory Sept 28-Oct 2/16
Aquatic Fitness November 4-6/16
canfitpro Pre & PostNatal Fitness Specialist Sept 24-25/16
Langley courses:
Fitness Theory October 19-29/16
Fitness Theory Jan 25-Feb 5/17
Workshops:
Totally Tethered – Burnaby (BCFit’16) – 8-9:30am
Stop the Run Around – Coquitlam – Sept 21/16 7-8pm
Don’t be Pushy – Coquitlam – Sept 21/16 – 8-9pm
Into the Deep – Surrey – Oct 1/16 9-11am
Totally Tethered – Vancouver YWCA – November 19/16 1-3pm
Leah Esplen is a certified canfitpro Pre & PostNatal Fitness Specialist PRO TRAINER, CSEP Certified Exercise Physiologist and BCRPA Trainer of Fitness Leaders in Aquafit, Fitness Theory and Resistance Training who had the crazy idea that she didn’t know enough about health and fitness so she decided to go back to university and get her Masters degree in Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology when her children were 3 and almost 2. She liked it so much that she decided to continue to teach in the department while running her own Pre&PostNatal Fitness and instructor education company, MommyMoves Fitness & Education, Ltd. Thankfully, her husband supports her many endeavours by cooking delicious and nutritious meals for the family! Her girls, Grace and Rose, started out as being colicky little beans who would never let their mother rest but have blossomed into active pre-teens who enjoy running, hiking, surfing, kayaking, snow-shoeing, taekwondo-ing and, above all else, swimming with their parents!