Out of the many subjects I can choose to write about in a first blog post, I decided to first write a little bit more about how I ended up doing what I am doing today.
Since April 22nd 2019 I have my own small company called E-Lean Personal Training with which I will help you reach your health goals. Before I tell you how I ended up sitting here, writing this blogpost, I like to give a Shout-out to a good friend who came up with the name of my Company; I am called Eline, and in short Elien, which sounds in Dutch the same a E-Lean.
As a kid I liked to read as much as being active. The later gave a problem though, I was (and still can be) very clumsy. Enough that my mother was told by our GP I should join the local gymnastics classes at an early age in order to gain some better physical motor skills. Probably I had fun, I ended up doing this until I was 10 years old, but I unfortunately do not remember a whole lot about these classes. Besides that, I absolutely did not like PE at school. Not the first 8 years of primary school nor the 6 years of High school. I was one of those girls having a headache and sitting at the side line, and ending up being picked somewhere last for teams as well as skipping PE classes a lot when I got older. Until this day (13 years after I finished high school) I sometimes still dream that I failed my High school graduation, because I did not get a good grade in PE!
However I was not a couch potato neither. The format of PE was just not made for me and in combination with trying a lot of new sports and starting over every time, I ended up believing I was not meant to be a sportive person at all, and gained a preference to workout alone so nobody could see me being clumsy.
This is how I ended up joining a gym at 16. Doing all the exercises their fitness instructor gave me, (which I now know to be somewhat useless). Then I discovered spinning! Boy, I liked spinning and ‘buikspierkwartier’ (15 minutes of abs given at the gym every hour). I also discovered Pilates and Yoga and suddenly I found myself being off and on doing one or more of these things, sometimes for some weeks, sometimes months at a time. When I was a student running came back in the picture as this was a lot cheaper than joining a gym or yoga school. These things kept coming back off and on until I was about 26.
At that point, everytime I looked in the mirror I would see myself as ugly and fat, that is how I felt. I would cry in front of the mirror of being unhappy with the way I looked and who I was, being way too hard for myself. That year became the year of losing fat and slowly my diet changed, instead of going on and off 1 or 2 times a week or not to going to the gym at all, I went 3 times a week. I was dedicated. That is the period I did my first squats with weights, in a Smith Machine, but never mind that, before I never did squats. I picked up running and I lost centimeters. I stopped having Chips and chocolate for dinner. I felt so proud and healthy, but was also scared to go back to before. However I also started meeting people with the same interests, working out, and feeling healthy, and slowly started to learn more and more. Things that worked good for me foodwise and exercises that where really getting me stronger.
I wasn’t too long after that, that I discovered Crossfit, I joined for 20 classes, discovering how far I was from being fit. However it was too expensive for me at the time. It did change the way I workout out, I wanted to learn more about effective workouts, the food that goes along with it. What it meant to be fit.
Friends started saying I should become a ‘coach sportive’ as it is called in France, but I did not see how I could make that change. I started looking for courses and possibilities, but living in France at that point I did not dare to make the step.
I let go of the idea a little as I did not believe I was ‘good’ enough, moved back to the Netherlands and finally joined a Crossfit gym!
How good that felt, also it showed me that I still needed to learn a lot. After 6 months I knew I wanted to become a crossfit trainer, that would be the way into the sports world. Our box needed crossfit trainers, but of course they were hesitant. 6 months of crossfit, is not a lot ;-). I decided anyhow to do the ‘Crossfit Level 1 course’ in January 2018. Then I started giving some warming ups, researching the best ways to warm up muscles and why. Then I became a 2nd teacher next to another coach and suddenly after a lot of critics people started giving me compliments. Seeing the positive change the owners of Crossfit071 gave me the change to follow the course Yvlo-Zwangerfit, to be able to coach pregnant ladies. From there on I wanted to build on my knowledge and guide people one on one. The plan was to work less in the office and more with the sports, but after a long and intensive talk at my old job, I left the office end of February 2019 to focus completely on setting up my own Personal Trainer classes. I signed up for the NASM and found my first clients. After getting the approval from the local government I finally found my own business at the 22nd of April 2019.
And that is the story of how I ended up writing a blog post on tuesday morning in the sun.
The coming year I plan to grow from 3 PT sessions a week to 12 to 15 a week, to post regular information on my blogpost and social media, for people who are planning to become or stay fit and healthy.
I think next to teaching people I am most excited about gaining more knowledge to share, knowledge about female athletes, senior athletes and physical impaired athletes
Along the way I hope I can give support to people on their journey to a healthy life as so many people did for me.
Are you curious what else I will have in store? Like my FB to get regular updates about my blogs and actions!
