Working out helped my anxiety

It may sound strange but as a PT, I honestly don’t believe that your motivation for the gym should be your physical results. I also feel like a lot of the time clients are not training with me for their aesthetic improvement but more for their mind, they just aren’t aware of it. If you think about it logically; if you are overeating, more often than not, it’s because you are unhappy about something in your life. This in turn makes you overweight and MORE unhappy, now about the way you look as well as everything else and that motivates you to get a PT. A good PT will be able to recognise the assistance they need to give you mentally, to aid the achievements physically.

If you asked anyone I have ever trained I would happily bet £5000 on them saying ‘after the first few sessions they didn’t care as much about the physical changes, they just loved the improvements in their mind.’ This can be anything from; having me see them at their absolute sweatiest and me still accepting helping and encouraging them, helping them become more confident to make and build new relationships outside of our sessions. Or for the new mums, EXHAUSTED, but finding the will to move a bit, so that they can release some endorphins and power through the rest of the day!

I read a phenomenal book called ‘eat sweat play’ written by Anna Kessel, it’s all about women in sport, the lack thereof and the reasons behind this. It covers everything from periods to pregnancy to PE, basically right up my street.

In the chapter on ‘people’s confusion when women are present in fitness environments’, she’s talking about an interview she did with a female football coach, who said she couldn’t describe the feeling of happiness, completion and safety that she felt when she had a football beneath her foot. Anna writes ‘ As a modern society we are obsessed with achieving this kind of mental state — there are even mindfulness and Zen colouring books- but how amazing would it be if we could just give everyone a ball to play with?’ I feel like that should be written on a poster and put through letterboxes worldwide. Let’s not ignore what is in front of us, let’s think back to a time we were most active — childhood. More often than not, when we were children we were running around playing, 90% of the time and quite happy while we did it..

Ladies and gentlemen, but especially ladies.. Stop exercising to change your body, be active to replenish your mind and let a hot body be a by-product.

Maya can be followed on Instagram at mayasaffronhan and Linkedin at Maya Saffron.

To book Maya as a PT: https://ebc.entirebody.com/services?plan_type=OCF&coach_id=6799&coach_name=&progress=2&country=uk