I began my journey as a fitness enthusiast myself. At the gym, the other members took notice and encouraged me to become a personal trainer. A short time later, I was invited to participate in a stretching workshop and quickly noticed how much assisted stretching reduced recovery time and increased performance for myself and my clients. However, stretching was not enough to to help my clients that were injured or prone to injury due to faulty movement patterns and poor posture.  Wanting to learn more, I decided to recertify with NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) and obtain both their Corrective Exercise and Performance Enhancement certifications. The information from the certifications were greatly useful for work with my clients, but also on a personal level. I realized that I too had many postural imbalances from compensating after I injured myself falling down a set of metal stairs as well as what I discovered was scoliosis. The physical therapy that I had received following my injury had been very limited and focused on pain management with cortisone shots, painkillers, and muscle relaxers. I was only given a single stretch to practice. With all the new tools I had learned during my certification, I realized I could have benefited greatly from soft tissue assessments, manual therapy, foam rolling, multiple stretches and strengthening exercises to correct my muscular imbalances. 

I implemented the skills I had learned through my new certifications, but still knew there was more I could do. I set my sights on the performance enhancement certification so that I could more easily troubleshoot issues athletes commonly encountered and implement corrective exercise programs to improve their performance.  Over the following years, I continued to educate myself and take more courses to enrich my training and maintain my certifications. On my own time, I learned more about holistics ways of looking at the imbalances in the body. Something that I learned along the way was that in most cases of poor posture, pain, muscle imbalances, and decreased performance, it wasn’t enough to foam roll, stretch, and exercise; most individuals needed manual therapy to make the most progress and to do so in a timely fashion.  Since I wanted to be able to help my clients make the most gains and live pain-free, I knew the next step was to become a massage therapist. After researching the best places to study, I enrolled in the licensed massage therapy program at the Swedish Institute.  Now as a licensed massage therapist, I have even more tools to add to the tools I have learned from over a decade in the industry and over 10,000 sessions as a personal trainer. With all that I have learned, I hope to continue to implement my body of knowledge to help as many people as possible achieve their fitness goals and stay pain-free, all while finding new avenues to continue to finetune my craft.