Tag Archives: personal training

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Y Rallies Around Trainer

Everyone faces adversity in their life, and how a person responds to that tells a lot about who they are.  Jamie Stec, a personal trainer at the Macomb YMCA, proved herself to be strong not just physically but emotionally as well when she faced a frightening breast cancer diagnosis last July, and didn’t let it stop her from working with clients or keeping up with her own exercise routine.

Despite the fatigue and nausea of cancer treatment, Jamie kept coming in to work with her clients as often as she could “still rocking the bald head,” she says.  She finished up radiation and still has some surgery in front of her, and will be on medication for years to control the cancer, but all things considered she’s doing very well. she says. She’s back to training for the Detroit International Marathon this fall and knocked out a 14-mile training run just this past weekend.

Jamie believes that already being fit and healthy helped her stay active throughout her treatment, a fact she tries to pass along to her clients now. “Being a distance runner as well, I was no stranger to stress on my body and no stranger to pain,” she says. “I knew there was a finish line,  it would just take me awhile to get there.”

Her clients, as well as other Y members, told her how much she inspired them by continuing to work out even while she was facing such challenges. “They would tell me ‘if you can do this, I don’t have any excuses.’”

Her Y family stepped up to help her after her diagnosis. “I would not have been taken care of the same way if I worked  at a gym,” she says. “Because I worked at a place that cares about its employees, its members, and the community, I was very well taken care of.” The staff gave her children a week of day camp, so she could recover from surgery without worrying about them. A friend took over working with her small group training class and refused to take the fee, asking that it still go to Jamie.  And she especially notes that her boss, Wellness Director Christina Wollcott, was incredibly supportive.

Her family is very involved at the Y: Her husband is a triathlete and trains there, and her children are in Y sports. When she was undergoing her education to become a personal trainer, she interned at the Y, and volunteered there when she was done until they could hire her.

As her recovery progresses, she is looking at it as an opportunity to discover her true strength.

“Cancer really can adjust your priorities,” she says. “It’s been interesting, but I find I myself, as I progress through all of my treatments, finding out exactly how strong I am.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Downriver Y Welcomes Community

Staying active in Michigan winters can be a challenge — chilly, biting winds make sitting on the couch a lot more appealing than working out. The Y offers a wide variety of fun — and warm! — ways to stay active through the winter months. From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on January 18th, community members can check out the Downriver Y’s winter offerings and their state-of-the-art facility for free during the Y’s Winter Carnival.

Program director Anthony Richardson says they will be running a free cycling class in the lobby, free swim lessons, a circuit workout with the Y’s personal trainers, and a family dodgeball tournament, among other fun events. Anyone who signs up to become a member can not only waive the joining fee but will be entered in a raffle to win three free months of membership.

It’s a great chance for people who aren’t members of the Y to find out what the Y can offer them and for members to expand their horizons. The Downriver Y is located on Northline Road, just east of the I-75 interchange.

 

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New Mom Gets Healthy With Help From Trainer

It’s amazing what people can do when they believe they can. And sometimes it takes someone else’s belief in the them to spur them on to accomplish their goals.

That’s what happened for Dani Keith-Marchment. Like so many women, she struggled with her weight for more than a decade. Each year she’d put on a little more until she found herself over 200 pounds.

After having a baby in 2011, she topped out at 247 pounds. Knowing she needed to get control of her weight, she joined the Macomb YMCA with a friend in June of that year and lost 20 pounds working out on her own.

Then she met trainer Dion Kimbrough. She started taking small group classes with him, and then began 1:1 sessions. The pounds started to peel off — and more importantly, her mindset began to change right along with her body. “I found that I was physically & mentally capable of more than I ever gave myself credit for,” she says. She ran her first 5K in June, which she never thought she could or would do, and now has committed to training for a half marathon.

“I have learned and still continue to learn so many things from Dion and learn things about myself as well,” Dani says. “He always has me focused on what my next goal is all of the time, which helps me stay on track.”

She’s lost 75 pounds since December of last year, for a total of 95 pounds. She credits Dion and her friend, Crystal, who convinced her to join the Y, for their help and inspiration.

And now, she wants to share her own story to inspire others. “I look and feel like an entirely different person. I feel as though this weight loss has opened up so many more opportunities for me,” she says.

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Community Runs for One of Their Own

It was a news story that has transfixed the community: a father dead, a mother and son critically injured, allegedly at the hands of their oldest son and brother.

But, of course, the Cipriano family is not merely a headline: they are people, people suffering unimaginable pain. To the members and staff of the Farmington YMCA, mother Rose Cipriano is also one of their own. Rose was a trainer a the Y and swam on a master’s swim team.

The Cipriano family was well-known and loved in the community long before tragedy struck, and so friends wanted to do something to help the family through this difficult time. April Tini is one of those friends, and along with Jenny Birmelin, Rose’s swim coach, they settled on the idea of a run to raise money for a trust for the Cipriano children.

“They were very active in the Farmington community and beyond; they knew so many people and touched so many lives with their warm ways and community involvement, that everyone around town wanted to do something to help the family during this difficult time. The Cipriano 5K turned out to be the solution!” April says.

The final tally is still being counted, but thanks to generous sponsors and entry fees, the race generated in the neighborhood of $60,000 for the Cipriano Children’s Fund.

The race was a tribute as much as a fundraiser; Rose’s son Tanner gave a speech at the beginning of the race and designed the logos for the shirts. Jenny says one of her favorite moments was the evening of the race, when “slowly, I watched the Y’s parking lot go from 50, to 100, to 200, and climb to 2,094 participants and another hundred or two volunteers and spectators.” Many participants didn’t know the Cipriano family but were touched by their story and wanted to show support.

According to Farmington Y senior program director Leana Parker, a volunteer committee of about 35 people coalesced around getting the run together with only 5 weeks of planning. They were able to give away 150 prizes to runners courtesy of their sponsors. “It was very awesome to see the amount of people willing to help,” she says.

One thing that sets the Y apart from other places is that it is a true community — people care for each other in very real ways. So it’s not surprising that they stepped up to help one of their own. April Tini says they went above and beyond to help honor their coworker and friend. “The staff at the YMCA was truly amazing, doing anything and everything that was asked of them….they went the extra mile to help from every angle, and they jumped at the chance. They were terrific!”

Jenny says Leana and Pam Horetski were “amazing volunteers — they responded to our dozens of emails all day long, attended all of our planning committee meetings on Monday nights and also answered the hundreds of calls/emails that they were fielding from interested Y members. In my view, Leana should be the next Employee of the Month and be given that parking space she deserves.”

When a tragedy like the Ciprano family’s happens, people want to help in some way. The Run for Rose gave the community a way to show support whether they know the family or not, and used the power of the YMCA community to do it.

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Trainer Helps Clients Get Strong (In All Ways)

Healthy living is a core mission of the Y, and that means healthy living for everybody of all ages, shapes and sizes. At the Y,  it’s part of the culture that people taking their first tentative steps off the couch feel as comfortable as people who are running marathons and bench-pressing their body weight.

People like Lindsay Collis embody that philosophy. Lindsay is the group fitness coordinator and a master trainer at the Livonia Y. In just a short time she has already made a huge impact on the lives of her clients and class members.

One member, Jonathan, had a special connection with Lindsay. Jonathan had lost 70 pounds through diet alone, but knew he needed to exercise to meet his weight goals. Like many people in this economy, paying for personal training was sometimes difficult, so Lindsay made sure he knew how to get the most impact from his workouts between sessions.  Even on her own time, she would encourage Jonathan to challenge himself. She would sometimes ask him to join her for her own workout sessions. “I told him to come work out with me, and he got to see me getting all beaten up and out of breath and exhausted myself,” she said. “I wouldn’t make him do anything I wasn’t willing to do.” Another time she saw him walking on the treadmill and took him outside to run a mile with her, something that had been a longtime goal. He’d send her a text when he hit a milestone with his workouts or had a great weigh-in.

“It’s people like him that make me love my job,” Lindsay says.

Eventually, Jonathan lost 30 more pounds, but the best part for him was that he could play with his children without getting tired. He calls Lindsay one of the most influential people in his life.

Recently, another member emailed her, sharing how delighted she was when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and noticed defined muscles in her torso for the first time. “I can’t do everything (in her fitness class) all the time yet, but I am getting there and most importantly, you make me want to keep trying!” she wrote Lindsay.

Lindsay has been a personal trainer for a little more than two years now. She was drawn to it after realizing that she enjoyed fitness classes and that other people often asked her for workout advice and encouragement. She joined the Livonia Y about five months ago and says the  emphasis on family and community is one of the things she loves about it. “At the Y, we’re a team and we work well together. We help each other, and we all want to succeed together, not all for ourselves.”