After a “4-month exchange” at SFU turned into “Canadian boy meets Australian girl” at SFU, Hannah found herself back in Australia for 6 months only to come back to Canada “for a year or two”. This was back in 2015.
Hannah said “A lot of my time in Vancouver has been punctuated by feelings of future uncertainty. Considering we had no idea how long we were going to live here, we were chasing opportunities and seeing what came from it. But since I had applied for permanent residency in Canada roughly a year prior to joining Club Sweat and was still waiting for status, we knew we weren’t moving out of the country until that went through”.
Hanna’s relationship with fitness before moving to Canada was pretty “average”. She always knew it was important, never did “nothing” but definitely wasn’t athletic. She moved to Canada in 2015 (3 years prior to Club Sweat) and a strong habit of eating like she was “on holiday” continued, except her holiday to Vancouver never ended…
After moving quite close to Club Sweat, Hannah received a slip in the mail from a gym. Funny enough, it wasn’t from Club Sweat! But boy, did this spark her interest especially since she knew she was going to be in the area until her Canadian permit went through.
Hannahs goal before joining Club Sweat was to just start moving and improve her strength. “I don’t know if I had picked up a dumbbell since high school! Along with poor fitness, my weight was inching up with every year and I knew this wasn’t a good sign”
“I actually don’t know that I fully realized how important fitness was until I started. I had some reasons why I didn’t want to be unfit anymore. Ie: Sweating and getting out of breath while on a walk or a hike was really embarrassing. I also remember going for a jog one day and just feeling so much jiggle around my middle – like when did that happen?! Had I just never noticed that the body always jiggles, or was this a sign, that my body had turned into no-tone Jell-O? EEK!”
Hannah is 1 of a handful of our members who has literally tried out everything Club Sweat has to offer. She started out with our Small group classes that were the perfect level of anonymity for her. She says “I was never comfortable in larger gyms because I didn’t want to injure myself using equipment with poor form or in ignorance. But I was so self-conscious of my fitness, I dreaded the idea of something like one-on-one personal training. So I definitely started with a one-toe-in.” After she felt ready she bumped it up to 3x/week and then eventually unlimited! With the quick transition of unlimited virtual training, Hannah took full advantage of every opportunity she had to work out. Sometimes showing up to 2 classes/day! And now transitioning to Semi PT with the reopening of the studio.
Hannahs goal went from “just get fitter” to, “I AM INVESTED IN MY HEALTH!”
“When I am just going for a walk, I feel my muscles, my posture, my breath, they are all so different from what they used to be and I am totally unafraid of physical challenge. I would be gutted if I moved away from this amazing community at this point, but life takes you in a lot of unexpected directions, and at least now I feel like I can keep my commitment to my fitness into the future.”
