This Sassy Fitness Trainer Is Giving Us Serious #LifeGoals!
Trials are a part of every success story, irrespective of your gender. No matter who you are, doubts about how good you are in your chosen vocation will be drilled into your head. But let’s be honest to ourselves: women face this a tad more than men. And this is especially true for women in unconventional careers.
Sport is one such field where women are trying hard to break the glass ceiling. And one uber cool woman who gives us serious inspiration through her exceptional fitness regime is Swetha Subbiah. This Nike+ Training Club (NTC) Elevated Trainer started by unbelieving everything society wanted her to think — that fitness training is a man’s job. And in time, with proper training and dedication to her goals, Subbiah proved that fitness does not demand that you belong to a particular gender. She iterates what every successful woman has already stated: the world will try to pull you down but it’s for you to pull yourself up. She shares how her sport made her unstoppable:
1. Please no one but yourself.
“I have always stood up for myself, my needs, my sport. It started early… my need to be physically active. Running up trees, playing all sorts of sports — not a moment was left still. Sport didn’t leave me easy, but then there was university and a job that didn’t let me be the way I wanted to be. While my job wanted me to fill elaborate Excel sheets and crawl up the corporate ladder, my mind drifted into something that was essential to my being. I wanted to climb real ladders, metal and steel were my tools of choice. I wanted to have no one to please but myself.”
2. It is never easy. But it’s also not impossible.
“I took the plunge early on, but it wasn’t easy. I was the first female trainer that I knew of. It was a man’s job, they said. And even for me, a trainer looked a certain way and I just wasn’t that. Yet, I wasn’t there to stop, sit, and ponder. I dug right in, spent the first three months replacing weights, cleaning up, and nothing more. It was then that I knew that this is what I wanted to do and there was nothing that could stop me. The road ahead was hard and long: multiple courses in a male dominated world, people who threw doubts at you, who didn’t want to trust you because of your gender. I had everything to prove and everything to lose. There was only one way to go about it, and that was to let my sport do the talking.”
3. Know where you belong. Even if the world tells you otherwise.
“The world I tried to fit into often tried to pull me down, making me feel like I didn’t belong. Yet it was every stretch, every added weight, every extra mile, every nuanced difficulty that built my identity. Sport gave me a trial by fire and I used it to forge my body into steel. This feeling of strength has given me the ambition to make myself bigger than the shadows that try to overshadow me. It has given me the composure to deal with difficulties. It has made me take responsibility for who I am. The world has always tried to sit me down and tell me that this sport isn’t really made for women. I now manage 25 male trainers. That’s my statement if I ever had to make one!”
Inspired? What’s stopping you from getting out there and doing your thing? Start moving with the Nike+ Training Club app or sign up for a weekly class here.
To keep up with Swetha’s inspiring journey, follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
* This is a dedicated post in collaboration with Nike.
