Cathelijne: “I could have never dreamed I would get this far”

Why do you train at HealthCreators?
“I wanted to lose weight until I would reach a healthy weight. In December 2013 I weighed 86 kilos and I wanted to lose at least 10 kilos.  My friend Marije is always involved in sports so I asked her advice. She regularly joins Naomi’s bootcamp, so she suggested to contact her for personal training. Naomi and I hit it off immediately. I plan was to do PT once a month and get a schedule for the rest of the month, something like that. My goal was not to overdo it like I would usually do, until a inevitable injury would take me out again. But Naomi had a better plan. To train every week together and make some quick progression first. That’s what we did for 3 months and after that I stayed. I had fun training and did get my promised progress. Now I come in once a month to work on specific things. And because I really enjoy it.”

What are your goals? What achievement are you most proud of?
“I am really enjoy the things I have accomplished in a year. I look 10x better, I feel 10x better. I can run, participate in obstacle runs, do CrossFit. I could have never imagined that kind of stuff with my weight and stamina. Naomi supported me throughout, like when she asked me to join her team for the Stormloop obstacle run, because someone cancelled. I doubted my ability to do such a thing. Then Marije told me: ‘If Naomi doubted your ability, she wouldn’t have asked you’. I had so much fun doing the Stormloop! This year I am enrolled for a couple of obstacle run and I want to improve in CrossFit. Those are my goals. I am working on it with Naomi in our monthly training session: weight lifting moves like snatch and clean&jerks.”
Out of nowhere Cathelijne shouts out to Naomi, who if training with a client downstairs: “Hey, I did 2 double unders the other day!”. That means that while skipping rop she passed to rope underneath twice in one jump. A difficult move for many people that needs practice to get the hang of it. Cathelijne: “I was so happy I did them, that I totally forgot to keep going. Otherwise I might have done 3. Now I just myself in the backside with the rope, really hard”. She is smiling ear to ear while telling the story and the smile gets bigger: “The other day a girl at the CrossFit box told me I have a beautiful athletic body. I just went on with the conversation, but later I realized that it was a huge compliment. I made such a change the last year, it also  requires some mental change. Sometimes I still look at myself in the mirror with a critical eye. We are so used to look for the faults. But I am correcting that now. I rather look how far I have come already.”

What kind of training do you like the most? And when do you think: “Oh no, please not that again!”?
“With everything I am unable to do, I think: “Oh no, please not that again!” One time we did this exercise for the core, it involved an elastic band. I just couldn’t do it! I almost walked out of the studio with frustration… besides that I detest burpees: the first few are okay, but after a while I just want it to stop. I enjoy power stuff, like weight lifting, deadlifts for example. Thank goodness we do a lot of those moves now, because I want to improve on my CrossFit technique.”

What has changed in the way you train now? What is the most important lesson you learned at HealthCreators?
“I pay so much more attention at my posture and technique now. That is also a result from the attention of detail Naomi pays to those. Sometimes she is standing behind me and she tells me: your abs are not turned on. Usually she is right, but I always wonder: how can she know that from watching my back??? I think that is the biggest change: my attention to technique. Now we are working on feeling the movement. That is hard for me. I am a logical person, I have work in which I have to think logical, to assess risks and consequences. I smell trouble a mile away. It is in my nature to go through all the steps one-by-one: core on, stretch arms, use my hip… but when you have to do them all together, you are too late when using your head. I have to be able to feel the movement.”

Tell a fun training story…
“I am not sure if it’s a fun story, but it is typical me and somewhat funny. Just before Eastern I broke my ankle, or rather I broke a piece of bone from my ankle joint. It happened when I was doing interval runs in a forest. I fell, not even while running, while walking in between sprints. I finished my interval training! When I got home, my ankle was super swollen. Maybe I sprained it a bit, I thought.
The next day I show up for training at the studio, with my super swollen ankle.  Naomi was shocked and asked me how I managed to get to the studio… well, I rode my bike… because I just wanted to keep going. I insisted on doing some training, so we worked upper body with my foot on a box. But Naomi kept insisting I would go to the doctor to check it out. On my bike, I went to the hospital. The people at the ER were as shocked as Naomi and also wondered how it was possible that I was riding a bike and walking around. I needed a cast on my leg and needed a ride home: no more biking.
I was so bummed out about it. I was going to do the extra special, extra long Eastern Bootcamp with lunch in the city… and now I was at home with a cast on my leg. My phone rang, it was Naomi, who just finished the bootcamp and offered to pick me up and give me a ride into town for the lunch. She understood how annoying it was, being stuck at home and she figured I belonged with my bootcamping-buddies. That for me is the main difference between personal trainers at a ‘normal’ gym and the people at Health Get Things Done. At the first one you are somewhat a number, at HealthCreators it is really personal. It might be a small studio, I met heaps of fun people there.”