A Personal Trainer’s Journey to Joyful Movement
“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10
“Who’s coming on a jog with me?” I saw my sister getting changed into workout clothes in response to my dad’s invitation, and followed suit.
I knew if I stayed behind, I would regret it. I always had more fun being out and about with them, and we would always come back high on sweat and stories.
My dad was a retired army man, and has always been active. My mom was, and still is, a fitness instructor and personal trainer. Most childhood memories involved some type of physical activity: playing tennis at the beach, running the bleachers while we walked the dog at our high school, taking mom’s fitness classes.
I thought doing wall sit competitions while waiting in line or lunging up hills during walks was a normal part of life for others too, until I got to college and realized not everyone had the same experience.
I share my journey to joyful movement because I, too, became discouraged with the traditional forms of exercise. I hope my story brings you hope that movement is not bound by the world’s expectations, but an exercise in working out your own freedom in the Lord. I’ll order my story chronologically, and highlight the lessons I learned about exercise on the way.
Fear-Based Workouts Aren’t Attractive
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 1 John 4:18
I began a degree in Health Promotion and Behavior while getting certified to become a fitness instructor myself.
What they taught me in school was that obesity was the enemy, contributing to all-cause mortality, and our goal as health promotion grads was to understand human behavior so we could get people to eat less and move more, essentially.
What I learned as a group fitness instructor was that if you wanted to make participants happy, they had to feel sore afterwards. The harder the class, the better the instructor.
But I soon learned that people didn’t respond (or rather, our bodies were not designed) to simply eat less and move more. And harder fitness classes discouraged some and injured others.
After graduating, I had a chance to put these principles to work. I started working at a gym and found that while interviewing new gym members, their fitness background went mostly like this:
Played sports in high school
Did intramural activities, was an athlete, or ran in college
Gained weight after getting a job
Got a gym membership
I saw a connection and centered in on the movement problem: becoming an adult and getting a job. No time to exercise then. So I set out to work in the corporate wellness world to nip the problem in the bud.
My role in corporate wellness was to get people to work out in the workplace gym and healthify dining choices. When I first came on site, I was seen as the food police, and nobody wants to go workout with that person. Plus, most people did not want to spend their free time workout out at work. They wanted to clock out and go home and live their life and do fun things.
It was only after I built up genuine relationships with people that they started trickling in to the gym. Not necessarily because they were drawn in by the shiny dumbbells, nor because they were pushed by the fear of gaining weight, or because they wanted to be sore, but because I invited them and we had a relationship. They began to see me as somebody who actually cared about them more than their performance in the gym. Love, not fear, drew people in to get moving.
2. Focus on Weight Loss Can Be Dangerous
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other…” Matthew 6:24a
Around the same time, I created a program while living in an apartment complex called “Move It and Lose It.” I thought I was pretty clever with that name.
But out of my two test participants, one was happy about getting stronger, but the other was frustrated that her sister was losing weight and she wasn’t. She became angry with me when I encouraged her to eat more than the sub-1200 calorie diet she put herself on, concerned that she was missing out on vital nutrients. Needless to say, I discontinued that program, distraught at how weight loss could drive a person to such dangerous levels of health.
I could get people to lose weight, but at what cost?
3. A Toned Body Does Not Equal Strong Body
“For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.’ But you were unwilling,” Isaiah 30:15
Fast forward a few years. After having my first baby, I developed diastasis recti. I thought I did everything right, but after going to physical therapy, found that I did not know how to relax my tense body and my muscles would not simply bounce back into place.
This condition affected my core strength and contributed to back problems, my body image suffered when I looked at my protruding belly, and my perceived authority as a fitness figure waned.
I was like an overstretched rubberband, tight from all those years of intense exercise without proper rest and recovery.
How had nobody taught me that I must be able to relax if I wanted to be strong? I felt like I had been doing fitness all wrong.
Traditional fitness elevates strength, power, a tone and tight body. But with all of the expectations surrounding health and fitness, we know more about how to be tense with anxiety, leading to aches and pains, rather than relaxed and ready, able to adapt when needed.
I know from experience that what we need now more than ever is to not start out of the gate in our fitness pursuits with burpees, but to learn how to breathe through every movement. This allows our musculoskeletal system to return to rest quicker and contract stronger when we need to recruit it.
4. There is No One Right Away to Train, Even for Trainers
“Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” Romans 14:4
After my baby girl was old enough to start sleeping (this was not until she was two years old), I was hired as a personal trainer at a local gym.
I had a heart to train the average Joe, to usher him or her into fitness as a way to blow off the stress of life and find the joy in movement freedom. This was a gym for athletes. I had no experience training athletes. We were not a good fit.
At the same time, I had taken over a class from another gym’s most popular instructor. Participants in the class complained that I did not do things the way they were used to, and I was soon replaced.
This series of events was a huge blow to me. I thought I was unfit to be a fitness instructor of any kind. I stopped doing any kind of professional fitness work and stepped away for a while.
But I couldn’t step away from fitness and the way it made me feel. I loved to move. I felt the joy of the Lord when I moved. I loved sharing that joy and drawing out the joy in others and how God made them to move too.
And I knew that if the fitness industry could make a personal trainer feel unfit for fitness, then I could relate with those who felt discouraged by the fitness expectations on the general public. And I would not let those voices drown out the joy of movement God has made us for.
If you are feeling discouraged by fitness, you’re certainly not alone. There is not just one way to move. But there is a better way!
Finding Joy in Fitness
“Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live“ Isaiah 55:2-3
Y’all, I was ready to be done with fitness as we know it. I loved fitness growing up. I loved going on jogs with my dad around the neighborhood, loved taking my mom’s fitness classes, loved connecting with people on a deeper level in personal training. I loved trying new activities, going on hikes, taking hot yoga classes, going to Boot Camp, chasing my kids in games of tag.
But this new fitness, this fitness focused on work, weight loss, sacrificing intensity for function, elevating one’s superficial status in society with before-and-after pictures, doing it the right way or the highway, a fitness void of love and joy, this was not for me.
Enter Revelation Wellness. I went through training to be an instructor through an unusual series of events, and let God go first. My prayer went something like, “Lord, if you want me to keep doing fitness professionally, I’m letting you lead. If I succeed, the glory is yours. If I fail, that’s on you too.” It felt like a pretty risk-free prayer, considering how much I’d been hurt by my fitness career thus far.
And lead He did. I started letting go of trying to be like other fitness instructors and do what came naturally to me, what came joyfully.
I found music I loved moving to and just let the dance moves roll.
I put on timers so I could tell dumb jokes and wouldn’t have to worry about counting reps.
I created fitness competitions with teams and prizes.
I brought back old-school games so adults could have a chance to play again.
I made people slow down and breathe at the end of every session, praying for those who would receive it.
I challenged the kids to join in, make up some exercises, and called it a workout.
Sometimes I sweated, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I put on workout clothes, sometimes I just made a fool of myself blasting music and grooving in the kitchen while I made dinner. Sometimes I went running in the cold at 5:30am because that’s the only time I could hang out with my neighbor. Sometimes I signed up for strength competitions or races, and sometimes I laid low and opted for yoga.
But in everything, I found the joy. I want you to find the joy, too.
Connecting with Intuitive Exercise
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:4-5
I also found that what made me joyful was different for others. If I really wanted others to find joy and knew fitness was an effective tool designed by God to release His joy, I had to observe, experiment, ask a lot of questions. Over the years, I distilled these joy motivators anchored in Scripture into 5 different personas, as expanded in my book Move for Joy and as taught in our Joyful Health Course.
Anyone can find what works best for them intuitively, but this will help cut through all the noise and get straight to the heart.
I called it “Move for Joy” because of the Hebrews 12:2, “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Moving in this modern world is not easy. It is hard. Jesus did not live an easy life. It was hard. But He lived for the joy.
It was only after a conversation I had with someone that I discovered “Joyful Movement” is one of the Intuitive Eating Principles.
I let God lead, and lead He did.
He led me straight into a thing called intuitive health, listening to His design and following the joy for lasting health.
He led me to Aubrey, who was writing a book on the subject, a resource I could point my clients to when they had questions about eating.
God put the desire in both of us to create a course with our content combined, to help others discover that health cannot be found in restriction drudgery, but in letting go of our own definitions of health and letting Him lead the way, starting with grace and ending in joy.
Joyful Movement Life Lessons
I hope my journey to joyful movement has helped you feel less alone, and hopefully you are able to learn from my experiences, saving yourself a lot of pain in the process.
Here’s a recap of what I gleaned along the way:
Fear-based workouts aren’t attractive, but relationships are. Let the foundation of joyful movement begin with your relationship with God, and find someone else to walk with you.
Focus on weight loss can be dangerous. Keep your mind on how joyful movement can bring you more life.
A toned body does not equal a strong body, but joyful movement starts from a place of physical rest and soul restoration.
There is no one right way to train for every body, so lean on God’s ways for your life and you will find movement that brings you joy.
I may have learned all of these the hard way. But experience is stronger than any argument.
And wouldn’t you know, it is just like God to lead you right back to the place you started—childhood joy. When I think of joyful movement, my thoughts return to the jogging memory with my dad. My dad may not always be with me, but he helped build a foundation for a healthy relationship with exercise through relationship with God, who is always with us.
You may not have experienced the same events, but I can bet you have experienced similar feelings of judgement, confusion, shame, and failure surrounding your relationship with fitness.
That’s why we created Joyful Health, because there is a better way to move. Lasting health starts with grace, and ends with joy.
I can share with you my short journey here, but have expanded on all of these lessons and more in a 12-week course to lead you from feeling like a fitness failure to experiencing joyful movement. If moving your body is a no-brainer for you and you have more questions about the food side of things, make sure to check out Aubrey’s upcoming post.
And let this be an official invitation to sign up for our official 12-Week Joyful Health Course, where we can walk through this journey, together.
Grace & joy,
Kasey
