I was the 2022 AusActive Student of the Year

A little about me …

I started my personal fitness journey in 2017. I was 30 kg heavier than I am now. I hated the way I looked and I hated the way I felt. I have never really liked high intensity cardio based exercise programs or activities so when I saw some strong, muscular, thin women on Instagram doing weight lifting I decided that was the type of exercise for me.

I like many others underestimated the need for diet consistency and smashed myself in the gym hoping to earn the body of my dreams, but the results were just not coming. After getting myself a coach and learning about the role diet and lifestyle factors have on influencing your weight, I was finally able to see some amazing results.

I have had a few surgeries in my life, bilateral shoulder reconstruction and an ankle reconstruction due to an underlying ligament condition. In 2019 I was experiencing extreme pain in my left shoulder. I had attempted Physiotherapy rehabilitation but to no avail. I found myself sitting in with an Orthopedic Surgeon expecting another surgery. At 27 years old I was told by the surgeon that there was nothing he could do, the shoulder was too damaged and the surgical options would likely result in more pain and more arthritis than is already present. He advised me to stop doing any movements that caused pain and that within 12-18 months I would begin to lose functional movement and would need a shoulder replacement.

This news distressed me quite significantly, but the more I thought about it the more and more I found this advice didn’t make any sense. “If you don’t use it you lose it” right? So this is where it all started, I ceased Physiotherapy appointments and accepted the fate that if I try experimenting rehabilitating my shoulder I could very well make my shoulder worse.

I started to research, I already had a passion for anatomy and bio-mechanics so began reading textbooks and researching movement and strength training. My theory was, my ligaments don’t work or don’t exist in some of my joints so I need the muscle around my joints to be strong to hold the joints tighter which should reduce my pain. So that is exactly what I did. I am not going to lie to you, this was not a “30 days to pain free life” type of rehabilitation like many trainers try to sell. It took me 2-3 years to get where I am now and it was definitely not a pain free process. Initially I started to get strong in the ROM I had access to which did work, but I kept finding that if I bumped my arm or got my arm stuck taking my jacket off and the arm moved outside the ROM I was training I would find myself in extreme pain again. So I realised I needed to increase the ROM I had access to. This is when I started to get into flexibility training, end range strength training and loaded stretching. I decided I wanted to get back into dancing (Physie) and I needed a large amount of flexibility and strength to do so.

I will be the first one to say that I am never 100% pain free. I still have psoriatic arthritis, I still have joint damage and occasionally I have pain flare ups, but I have freedom to move that for 2 years I did not have. If you knew me over those years you saw the tears, the pain, the frustration, but you also saw the perseverance, the determination and the joy when my pain began to decrease.

Doing this for myself has grown my passion for helping people. I began my career life as an Occupational Therapist, helping people to engage in the things in their life they wanted by modifying the task or the environment. I believe this mindset can very much be applied to the fitness industry and that is where Freedom 2 Move has come from. I am not a weight loss or muscle growth or aesthetics personal trainer, but I am a movement trainer. I want to help people engage in whatever they want to do, by getting their body strong and flexible enough to do it without pain.