Since we all like to know who is behind a company or brand, I thought I would tell you a little bit about me…
So my name’s Emma and I am the lead tutor at Pure Training and Development offering fitness courses and seminars for special population groups and have now created the PTD Hub where I can continue supporting fitness professionals after they qualify. But I’ll just start at the beginning so you know how and why I got to this point.
I always loved sport and fitness when I was younger and started down the path of Sport & Exercise Science at college. I managed to get myself a scholarship to university where I continued to study Sport & Exercise Science. It was during this time at University I realised that I was more interested in learning about medical conditions and health problems compared to the athletic fit population and this provided direction when it came to deciding what I wanted to do once I graduated……help people that live with cardiac disease!
I graduated and within a matter of weeks decided to train to become a Personal Trainer so that I could eventually get into the field of cardiac rehabilitation. I went to Spain to do my PT qualification (it was more fun than commuting back and forth from London each day) and once that was completed I set up my own PT business. From there, I qualified in GP Referral and started working with clients that had medical conditions and the doctors had recommended seeing us and I LOVED IT! In fact, I still do because I continue to work in this field. You can make such a difference to people’s lives and it’s very rewarding (but you probably know this already). I was still intent on working with people that had cardiac disease so I completed my L4 Phase IV Cardiac Rehabilitation qualification and set up one of our local cardiac rehabilitation schemes to work alongside the cardiology nurses at the hospital! Again, I loved it.
At this time I was also teaching sport science back at the college I first studied at and realised that additional training in our region was lacking. Subsequently, I decided to bring more fitness courses to Norfolk to help improve the qualification levels of our industry which in turn would improve the health of our communities. That’s when we welcomed Pure Training and Development. I also worked as a health consultant and would go into large workforces and test peoples cholesterol, blood sugars, lung function etc. and give them reports on their wellbeing. So everything I was doing helped me keep my knowledge fairly fresh.
However, what I noticed after working with Older Adults and GP Referral Clients for a couple of years (now over 7 years) was that I felt a bit stale in my approach to my sessions. Everything was pretty repetitive. I thought it would be good to get new ideas and exercises from somewhere so I used the internet to find them but it took sooooo long to find what I was looking for, because I didn’t really know what I was searching for. That led me to wish for a platform where I would be given more information, exercises and ideas which I could implement on a regular basis. But that idea went no further.
Now as a tutor teaching special population courses to fitness instructors it helped give me new ideas but I realised that these instructors could potentially feel the way I felt later down the line once they had been doing it for a while. That, in conjunction with learner feedback received about on-going training and support, steered me back to contemplate the idea of developing a training hub.
Fast forward to today and I am still running classes for special population groups in the industry, I am teaching special population courses and I have just created this training hub so that we can all come together and receive regular training and support plus so much more. We can continue to grow our businesses with added confidence in our abilities which in turn helps us to make more money AND helps improve the health and wellbeing of our communities.
As you may be able to tell, I am rather passionate about this topic and I am here to support you to continue to be a successful instructor (plus a team of experts along the way too) so I hope to meet you inside the hub.
Emma
