*Post was written 2/7/18 at 11:30pm*

I can’t sleep. I’m too excited because today I got offered my first personal trainer job! So I figured since I can’t sleep anyway I may as well tell you how I got here.

My story actually starts in college, when I got my first job in a gym. Between witnessing training sessions while I was on the clock and working out with a personal trainer, I started to pick some things up. One day when I was visiting home I went to the gym with my mom. I applied the knowledge I’d picked up to help my mom through a workout and she said it was one of the best workout she’d ever had. This is a woman who’d been training with personal trainers for as long as I can remember. I loved the feeling of helping her and the seed was planted. But back then I thought I wasn’t fit enough to be a personal trainer. I thought personal trainers couldn’t make good money. I thought they had to have perfect bodies. So I put it on the back burner. In fact, it was so far back I didn’t even know it was still on the burner…

Flash forward to 2016 when I joined an amazing all-women’s gym (Healthworks Fitness Center) as a member. For the first time in my life I saw real transformation in my own body. I also learned that personal trainers in the real world actually can make really good money. The seed that was planted when I helped my mom all those years ago started to grow. I’ve always known that I wanted a career where I would be helping people and my passion for fitness was ever-growing. I started to realize that personal training would allow me to share my love of fitness in a way that would help people get or stay healthy and become their best selves! In November of that year I finally decided that I wanted to be a trainer. But I’ve decided I wanted to be a lot of things in my life; a psychologist, a politician, a professional stage manager, a teacher, a social worker… The list goes on. So I told myself, “Give it a year and if you still want to do this next Thanksgiving, buy the study materials with the Black Friday discount.”

In July of 2017 I still wanted to be a trainer and I decided not to wait until November to make it happen. I bought my study materials and I quit my stable full-time job with benefits to get a job at the gym. I struggled. I’m not good at self-teaching and the timing was terrible. Who wants to start studying something in the summer? I wanted to be spending time outside or with my boyfriend, who was on summer break from law school. Things weren’t going well, but I was still determined. I still wanted to be a trainer. This wasn’t like my past career ideas, which each quickly fizzled out.

As summer started to fade to fall and fall to winter, I could no longer spend time outside, I got bored and I got serious about my studying. It also helped that I got really sick of working the front desk at the gym. It was a grueling position and I wasn’t being paid enough to deal with it, so I decided to apply for a training job even though I wasn’t certified yet. I had been terrified to do this earlier because I was afraid there’d be too much pressure to pass the exam – I liked having the leisure of being on my own schedule (not to mention the freedom to fail my first take without anyone knowing or expecting anything of me) – but several people at the gym pressed me to apply, so I bit the bullet. Besides, there was a part of me that thought that being on a more strict timeline might help move my studying along.

On January 31st, 2018 I passed the ACE Personal Trainer exam (on my first try, anxiety be damned) and officially became a Certified Personal Trainer. The next day I interviewed for the training job at my gym. There was a week of agony while I waited to hear back from the Fitness Director, and that brings us to today. I got the email with the job offer in it and I was overjoyed. I was even happy to be working the front desk today! Unfortunately, now I am too excited to fall asleep….

~ Lianna

P.S. Check out my new instagram to follow my fitness journey!