The story behind how — and why — I became a personal trainer

With some special deals for movement professionals

Photo by James Wright

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If you’re not familiar with my background, I’ve had kind of an odd journey into the fitness industry. The tl;dr about my personal relationship with exercise is that I was a very skinny, inactive kid with zero interest in sports. I tried the gym a handful of times in college because some of my friends were into it, but hated the discomfort of lifting weights and the feeling of getting out of breath on the cardio machines. Then, after college, I discovered that regular exercise was pretty much the only way to reliably get rid of my back pain. I’ve been moving consistently ever since, and now it’s sort of my whole deal.

I’d like to share (a lot) more about how I became a certified personal trainer, in case anyone out there is curious about following a similar path. (Or just curious in general!) I also want to talk about continuing education for fitness professionals and absolutely rave about the BEST continuing education courses I have ever taken — and offer you a little discount offer if you’re interested in trying them yourself (or recommending them to a trainer or PT pal), so please either stay with me for this long journey or just scroll to the end for the goods!

Becoming a CPT

Back in 2013, I was laid off from my job as the front-of-book editor at Condé Nast Traveler magazine. (This was the early days of Anna Wintour taking over all the Condé magazines, btw, which is another story for another day! But that was more or less the reason a huge number of my colleagues and I lost our jobs: Our editor in chief was let go, and the new one came in and quickly cleaned house.)

I wasn’t really a travel-focused journalist, though — at this point I was more of a generalist with a burgeoning interest in health and service journalism. I’d previously worked at Men’s Health, focusing mostly on nutrition (read: weight loss), and SELF, as the front-of-book health editor, and had a pretty sizeable amount of experience with health and science journalism. I decided to go freelance for a while and see how things went. As it happened, my bestie Andrea Bartz*** (yes, THAT Andrea Bartz!!) had just become deputy editor at Fit Pregnancy and Natural Health, two magazines run by the same staff. (They were owned, btw, by a company called AMI, which was owned by David Pecker, a Very Weird Dude who we later learned is one of Tr*mp’s creepy cronies. Yet another story for another day and a huge yikes!). Andi mentioned to me that her EIC was seeking a part-time fitness editor, and she knew I could do it. I was skeptical, because though I’d grown to love exercising, I didn’t have much experience working on fitness stories, but I gave the edit test a try. Edit tests are long take-home assignments where editorial job applicants brainstorm story ideas, edit sample articles, and provide editorial feedback on the publication. They’re a huge pain in the ass and often just thinly disguised free labor — though some publications have started paying for edit tests, thankfully! — but they are a good litmus test as to whether an applicant has the chops for, and whether they’d actually enjoy, the work involved.

Much to my surprise, I loved it. It was so much fun coming up with story ideas and workout concepts for these magazines, and I ended up getting the job and loving it, too. One of my main responsibilities was planning workout stories, including enlisting the help of a certified personal trainer to design the workout, and then hiring another CPT to come to the photoshoot to oversee the model’s form and ensure the images were clear and helpful. I’d known some fitness editors at other publications who became CPTs, and realized that if AMI paid for me to become one, I could serve as on-set trainer and actually save the company money over time. They agreed to pay for my certification, and I signed up for the American Council on Exercise (ACE) CPT program.

This was easier said (and paid for) than done! I was never a very enthusiastic science student, and some of the formulas and in-the-weeds cellular-level exercise physiology stuff were hard. There was so much to memorize, just piles and piles of flash cards and printouts of anatomical illustrations all over my apartment. I spent about a year studying, and ironically did not even get around to taking the test until after I’d left AMI. (Sorry not sorry, Dave!) I qualified as a CPT in August 2015.

I was very lucky to have an excellent tutor as I studied for my CPT

Continuing education and becoming a “real” trainer

To maintain my certification, I have to accumulate a certain number of continuing education credits (and keep my CPR/AED certification up to date) and recertify every two years. My first continuing education course was a functional movement program offered by ACE, which I rushed through in 2017 to get it done before I gave birth to my first kid and frankly didn’t get much out of.

Pregnant with #2, newly perinatal exercise certified! (Photo by my lovely friend and former coach James Wright)

Two years later in 2019, I took a prenatal and postpartum exercise course (while pregnant again!). And then in 2021, I trained to become a mat Pilates instructor with Power Pilates. This was the most thorough course I’d taken yet, and it left me feeling truly prepared and excited to actually teach mat Pilates. Despite maintaining my CPT for 6 years at this point, I hadn’t actually really trained anyone: I used my expertise to support my editorial work at various publications, but I was a full-time magazine editor (and mom of little kids!) and didn’t have time or energy to work with clients on the side. But I finished my Pilates certifications (I did beginner and intermediate mat back to back) just as I took a buyout from my full-time job at Medium and decided to go freelance again. Between my newfound flexible schedule and the excellent preparation I’d gotten from the courses, I suddenly had the itch to actually try out this trainer/Pilates teacher thing. So I took on a few clients, most of whom I’m still working with weekly today! (I also began my Pilates for Abortion Funds project the next year, and began teaching a weekly IRL class at Esquina last year.)

Photo by Devin Armstrong for Esquina Brooklyn. That’s me back there by the window!

2021 also happened to be the year that I began working on a special project for Nike: I was brought on as a consultant to the global editorial team to serve as editorial director (overseeing all the content) and fitness director (overseeing all the exercise programming) for Nike’s first-ever comprehensive perinatal exercise program. (This program still exists, for free, in the Nike Training Club app! It’s under the Programs tab and is called (M)ove Like a Mother. Just a great, body-neutral, evidence-based resource.) This was the project of an absolute lifetime, and such a dream: The team at Nike was committed to doing it right, and even when I pushed for expensive and time-consuming additional resources — like a very beefy and qualified advisory board of experts to evaluate every bit of guidance and every workout we were putting out there — they said yes. As such, I found myself collaborating with wonderful experts, like an incredible OB/GYN, a legendary strength and conditioning coach who works with pregnant and postpartum athletes, as well as brilliant pelvic floor therapists like Laurel Proulx, PT, DPT, PhD.

Behind the scenes of the Nike (M)ove like a Mother shoot with the wonderful trainer Meghan Rosenfeld

Dr. Proulx and me, between takes

Through my close work with Laurel in particular, I began to discover that what I’d learned in my own prenatal and postpartum exercise course a few years back was not all quite accurate. (For example, no abdominal flexion, ever! Don’t exercise on your back! And strengthen your pelvic floor: kegels kegels kegels!) To flash way forward, I now understand that this wasn’t necessarily the fault of the woman who created that course — research in the field of pregnancy and exercise is very new, and until the super-recent past when good studies have started to come out about what kind of movement does and doesn’t support our and our babies’ wellbeing during and after pregnancy, we really had to rely on the old safety rules. These weren’t based on robust evidence; they were based on an understandable worry about potentially endangering babies and pregnant people. We had no choice but to be very conservative about recommended activity. All that is to say: The course I took wasn’t bad, but in the very short handful of years since it was created, our knowledge changed a lot. (And I guess in some ways, it was sort of bad, because it was pretty focused on aesthetics, especially during the postpartum period. And now the owner of the course has started to skew suspiciously MAHA-adjacent. But I digress.)

So I asked Laurel for her recommendations for a better, more up to date perinatal continuing education course, and she pointed me toward the incredible Jessie Mundell, a Canadian fitness coach and kinesiologist.

How Jessie Mundell changed everything

Jessie’s courses are divided into two: there’s one prenatal course and one postpartum, although you can sign up for both in one go for a nice bundle discount. I started with the postpartum course, Postnatal Fitness Specialist Academy (because I was working with quite a few post-baby clients at the time and wanted to brush up on that information first!), and I was blown away from the jump. Yes, Jessie explores essential topics like diastasis recti and pelvic floor dysfunction, draws on the latest research about exercise that supports the wellbeing of postpartum people, safety, and the like, and provides participants with helpful exercises, modifications, and programming guidance. But she takes it so much further. PFSA features an entire module about body image, mental and emotional health (featuring presentations from none other than Chrissy King and Christy Harrison, MPH, RD!); one on postpartum sexual and bowel health; and a lesson on supporting clients through infant loss (because, of course, some postpartum people are grieving, and they still need support with their physical recovery).

What I might have been most excited about: This is a fully body-neural and fat-positive certification program, which is still exceedingly rare. Many of the exercise-focused lessons feature people in larger bodies demonstrating the movements, and Jessie even presents specific lessons on how to do breathwork, diastasis recti assessment, and more with larger clients. I was so psyched that I texted Virginia Sole-Smith about it with a very enthusiastic rant and the below screenshot!

Jessie also supports course students in the very real challenges of building a career around fitness, from how to find clients to how to use social media for promoting your business to how to create and sell programs that can help you get a solid return on investment for the funds you spent on her course. (Her Prenatal Fitness Specialist Academy, which I just completed this summer, contained the module that actually inspired me to try my very first group program, the 30-Day Fall Strength Challenge, which is going strong right now as we speak and has been so much fun.)

If you’re a movement or body professional, whether a trainer, group fitness instructor, physical or occupational therapist, birth worker, massage therapist, etc., I cannot recommend PFSA enough. So a few weeks ago when I received an email from Jessie asking if I’d be up for helping spread the word about her upcoming enrollment session for PFSA, I jumped at the chance.

Registration for these programs is currently open, from right now through Oct. 16. Use this link to register, and if you sign up for the complete pre-and post-natal training package by Oct. 12 you’ll save $500 and get a special 1:1 strategy call with Jessie herself.

Moving forward

I’ve watched several clients transition very quickly from the postpartum period into perimenopause (and I know many of you are in this phase of life), so the next certification I’ll be doing is a menopause-related one. (I’ll report back!) I also want to take a good trauma-informed coaching course (I took a wonderful seminar from Sofia Engelman of Queer Body Pilates on trauma-informed cueing and would love to learn even more). And I may even work with a colleague to create some continuing education offerings of my own — stand by for news on that, possibly in the coming months.

As expensive and time-consuming as it can be, I’m actually grateful to be required to continuously update my knowledge and be forced to level up as a fitness professional. The longer I work in this space, the more I realize how little I know — it’s humbling and exciting.

Thanks for sticking with me through this little personal history. If you’re a movement pro, I really hope you’ll consider checking out one of Jessie’s courses. If you’re not a movement pro but you’re thinking about it, please let me know if you want to talk about it! The world needs more great, body-neutral trainers — and we especially need more people who are fat, disabled, trans, and/or queer in this space.

And please let me know if you have any favorite courses of your own to share! Always on the lookout for my next learning opportunity.

xo
Anna

***Andi also sort of forced me to join OKCupid in 2008, where I almost immediately met the guy who is now my husband of 13 years. So…pretty much my entire life and livelihood is thanks to her. I’ll do whatever you say, forever, Andi!