Andrea Taliana

I had always been the active girl who loved sports and training. If I wasn’t dancing, I would be riding my bike or running. I just couldn’t sit still!

During high school, I was a part of every sports team, not that I was good at every one of the sports I played… except for Taekwondo. Taekwondo was the sport I enjoyed. Throughout the grading and working my way up to Black belt, I got the opportunity to instruct the lower belts. During high school I really enjoyed being active and loved challenging myself. I enjoyed being active so much that after school I would walk the 25 minutes home from the train station and then throw on a Denise Austin or Oz Aerobics VHS to finish. I guess you could say Denise was the person who first introduced me to exercise. I can still remember her “isometric hold…. Hold… hold… squeeze”. With a combination of Taekwondo and Denise, I started training at a gym. I used to get the train to my local gym in Thomostown after school and hit the weights in the female gym. I loved it!

Granted I had no idea what I was doing, none the less I LOVED IT.

Once I finished high school all I wanted to become was a Personal Trainer, but was always talked out of it. People would always tell me that “it’s not a real job”, “you can’t make a living out of it” and “it’s just a phase you are going through”. So instead, I studied to receive a Certificate III in Children Services and then my Diploma in Interior Design, I decided to move to the USA to become an Au Pair and study Interior Design further.

It was in the USA that I had my very first Personal Trainer Schaun Tez at Gold’s Gym. I was approached by another trainer, Big Mike, one day who lost it at me. You see I use to train 6 days a week, with zero consistency, training the same muscles just about every day. He pointed to Schaun and said, “Go speak to Schaun, he will get you results” and that he did. I had never been stronger and leaner in my life. Schaun, insisted I get my Personal Training qualifications and work for him, but the same negative comments about becoming a Personal Trainer from numerous people still resonated in the back of my mind and I declined the offer.

I moved back to home to Melbourne and continued what I had learnt from Schaun and kept training hard. After only 15 months back in Oz, I moved back to the USA to study interior design again. While Studying Interior Design as a major, I decided to minor in Fitness at college. I loved it, and again I saw massive changes with my body and was learning so much. I loved pushing myself at the gym and trying new exercises I would read about in Oxygen and FitnessRX magazines.

This passion and drive to train, but still not really understanding what I was doing led to over training and this was my downfall. I would trainer twice a day, weights in the am and a 7 to 10km run in the evening. I would ignore niggles and push through pain, until one day I was in excruciating pain in both my hips. So much so that to walk was impossible. Being in the USA and knowing how expensive medical treatment would be, I turned to doctor Google. I self-diagnosed bursitis of both hips, later to find out I was correct with also tendonitis…

The journey back to good health had been a long one for me. Not being allowed to train while seeing a physiotherapist was the worst advice I received. The lack of movement and atrophy made my injury worse. Until I met a Blackburn Personal Trainer, who helped me improve my hips and strengthen my glutes. He helped me revive my confidence in the gym and helped me drop the weight I had gained and again, he also encouraged me to obtain my certification in Fitness. He understood my passion and commitment to training. At this point, I had progressed a little but was still only considering completing the courses but never biting the bullet and committed to studying. He introduced to me how a personal trainer can improve your quality of life, not only from a weight loss perspective but also in mobility. Even old niggles that I had, Garrett had helped me improve and strengthen my weakness. I knew that if I was ever going to be a personal trainer, I wanted to be one that would have a holistic approach.

Fast forward to 2015, where I was working a very stressful and unrewarding office job, working 10 to 12 hours a day, just about 7 days a week.

Finally, the penny dropped.

This is not how I wanted the rest of my life to be, I wanted a job where I could help people to become the best version of themselves. I wanted to make a difference to my life and others. After speaking with my long-time friend and Personal Trainer Tim (who at the time was completing Mark’s Wolfpack program), I decided to complete my Certificate III and IV in Fitness. Tim guided me to where I should study and mentored me through my studies.

Which brings me to working for Enterprise.

Those 10 years that passed, jumping from job to job and trying to find my way, I realised that those voices in my mind that had told me that being a personal trainer would never amount to anything had been holding me back from my own happiness. Each new path that I had followed in an attempt to escape from my dreams kept leading me back in the same direction. So when I began to work for Enterprise Fitness, I found myself right back at the start.

In the end, I was still the active girl who loved sports and training.