Cathelijne: “I could have never dreamed I would get this far”
A year ago, just before her 40th birthday, Cathelijne (41) decided to change her lifestyle completely: “I kept gaining weight and felt less and less healthy”. I also suffered from pain in my neck. My job involves a lot of work in front of computer screens. I would have periods of intense training, until I would injure myself in some stupid way. And then I would have a period of not training at all”.
To prevent making that mistake again, Cathelijne sought help from a athletic friend. She told Cathelijne to try personal training at HealthCreators. She reached or exceeded all her goals: she lost over 20 kilos, her body fat percentage dropped from over 35% to under 25%. She wanted to fit into a size 40, but now is a size 36: “I used to say I would never, ever fit into a 36 ever again. But I had to buy a whole new wardrobe full of clothes.”
Unfortunately she didn’t stay injury free: she had her leg in a cast for a few weeks last year. She broke her ankle while running in a forest. What changed is that her injury didn’t trow her off her road to her goals. Even with a cast, she kept going.
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
What are your goals? What achievement are you most proud of?
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?
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.”