Fay­ola KJ Fras­er

Af­ter spend­ing 14 years in the cor­po­rate are­na as a busi­ness an­a­lyst, fit­ness en­thu­si­ast Ker­ine Farmer pur­sued her pas­sion for health and fit­ness, build­ing her brand as a per­son­al train­er.

Dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son, Farmer en­cour­ages her clients to find “the spot in the mid­dle,” the ide­al bal­ance be­tween en­joy­ment in mod­er­a­tion while still be­ing mind­ful of their health and fit­ness goals.

Farmer be­gan her fit­ness jour­ney at 19 when she start­ed weight train­ing at a gym in Ch­agua­nas. Un­der the men­tor­ship of a fe­male in­struc­tor at the gym, she made sig­nif­i­cant strides and un­der­went a ma­jor body trans­for­ma­tion in her mid-twen­ties. Even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ing she could pur­sue her train­ing on her terms, she com­plet­ed her first per­son­al train­ing course and was cer­ti­fied by the In­ter­na­tion­al Sports Sci­ences As­so­ci­a­tion so she could start pro­gram­ming for her­self. Farmer sub­se­quent­ly be­gan pro­gram­ming vir­tu­al­ly for clients, of­fer­ing them coach­ing and in­ter­ac­tive ex­er­cise pro­grammes through an app.

Just af­ter turn­ing 40 in 2018, Farmer lost her job. With ru­mours of re­trench­ment cir­cu­lat­ing, she had al­ready de­cid­ed that if she lost her job, she would pur­sue a fit­ness ca­reer. Now un­en­cum­bered, she went to Flori­da for six months and at­tend­ed the Na­tion­al Per­son­al Train­ing In­sti­tute in Or­lan­do, where she ben­e­fit­ted from hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence with both phys­i­cal train­ing gym ses­sions and the­o­ret­i­cal ex­er­cise sci­ence. She de­scribed the six-month course as the best ex­pe­ri­ence of her life and it so­lid­i­fied her de­ci­sion to go full-time in­to the fit­ness in­dus­try.

For the past sev­en years, Farmer has been build­ing her fit­ness busi­ness. Ini­tial­ly un­sure of how to start, she be­gan by sell­ing fit­ness pro­grammes through an app, where she de­signed work­outs, up­loaded them in­to the soft­ware, and pro­vid­ed ac­count­abil­i­ty through the app. Her niche even­tu­al­ly be­came train­ing peo­ple pri­vate­ly in their homes, which start­ed through word of mouth and per­son­al ref­er­ences. Farmer al­so does vir­tu­al per­son­al train­ing by teach­ing on­line class­es cam­era to cam­era.

“I like to in­ter­act with peo­ple,” she says, “and one of the best parts of this work is be­ing able to do that con­sis­tent­ly.”

Through her train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence, Farmer has de­vel­oped a spe­cial sen­si­bil­i­ty in train­ing for women specif­i­cal­ly.

“Women are of­ten most con­cerned with the scale and want to make sure they don’t gain weight, while men rush to the weight room.”

Her best ad­vice to women is to not be afraid of the scale and in­volve them­selves in re­sis­tance train­ing, whether with body weights, weights or sus­pen­sion train­ing.

“Help­ing women un­der­stand the vi­tal im­por­tance of weight train­ing is a big part of my brand,” she says, “we need to fo­cus on build­ing mus­cle and pro­tect­ing our bone den­si­ty. Us­ing car­dio as the cen­tral tool to con­trol your weight can be detri­men­tal in your lat­er years.”

She es­pe­cial­ly stress­es this with old­er clients who can be at high risk for bone frac­ture, en­cour­ag­ing them to use weight train­ing as a tool to pro­tect their bones.

She al­so ac­knowl­edges the spe­cial needs sur­round­ing women when it comes to ex­er­cise.

“Women are dif­fer­ent phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly, we are more emo­tion­al in our nu­tri­tion, es­pe­cial­ly sur­round­ing our cy­cles. We are al­so more prone to knee in­jury, more prone to is­sues with bone den­si­ty, and our pe­ri­ods af­fect our abil­i­ty to train and cause fluc­tu­at­ing en­er­gy lev­els.”

Tak­ing those fac­tors in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, she en­cour­ages women to al­so train dur­ing preg­nan­cy, once cleared by their doc­tors, as it can be very ben­e­fi­cial through­out the preg­nan­cy, set­ting them up for an eas­i­er de­liv­ery and a less dif­fi­cult jour­ney back to fit­ness post-de­liv­ery.

Ahead of the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val sea­sons, Farmer’s ad­vice is to “be re­al­is­tic.” Ad­vo­cat­ing for bal­ance dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son, she says that “peo­ple think you can on­ly ei­ther be mis­er­able and watch every morsel, or fall in­to com­plete and ut­ter de­bauch­ery by overindulging. But that’s not true.”

She en­cour­ages peo­ple to con­tin­ue get­ting steps in, sched­ule at least two weight train­ing ses­sions of 30 min­utes through­out the sea­son and fo­cus on get­ting their pro­tein and veg­eta­bles re­gard­less of what else they’re eat­ing. Al­so en­cour­ag­ing “mind­ful eat­ing,” she says that eat­ing slow­ly, chew­ing food thor­ough­ly and stop­ping to as­sess if we are sa­ti­at­ed, can pre­vent overeat­ing.

In the New Year with Car­ni­val on the hori­zon, she says that “the cos­tume is a huge mo­ti­va­tor to do ex­treme things. And I want to en­cour­age peo­ple away from the ex­treme.” These ex­tremes in­clude juice fasts, fat burn­ers and self-star­va­tion which can have sig­nif­i­cant long-term ef­fects on over­all health. In­stead of forc­ing one­self to go through these ex­treme mea­sures, she says that “stay­ing away from sug­ar, es­pe­cial­ly liq­uid sug­ar, up­ping your car­dio to cre­ate a big­ger deficit, all while man­ag­ing your ex­pec­ta­tions of re­al­is­tic fat loss,” are good ways to en­ter in­to the new year.

Mak­ing health and fit­ness a lifestyle are sure­fire ways to live a long, healthy, qual­i­ty life. Farmer en­cour­ages peo­ple to not fo­cus on the short-term by-prod­ucts of look­ing good and in­creased con­fi­dence in a dress or cos­tume, but in­cor­po­rat­ing fit­ness in­to their lifestyle.