I'M A TUFF GIRL Showing Women the Way to Fitness and Health
	JANUARY 2005

by Michelle Connors

I’ve been interested in helping women achieve fitness ever since I began my own first fitness program in high school. Before that time I had been a shy person, going through a lot more problems than the average teenager. I was working three or four jobs, living at home on my own, and enduring a lot of trials that distracted me from a normal life.

My early years were spent in a chaotic family situation that finally culminated when I was seventeen years old by my dad’s decision to move back to San Francisco. My sister and I chose to remain where we were. We stayed with friends and moved around a lot, living first in one place and then another. Our environment remained in a chaotic flux.

I think teenagers require a certain level of stability somewhere in their lives and I finally realized that any solidity I would ever find would have to come from within my own spirit. I would have to become tough and find enough grit to face challenges without blinking.

First Steps to Physical Development
My whole world turned180 degrees, it seems, when I became friends with Jeannette Fenald, the leading female athlete at my school. Jenny had the heart, talents, and skills to make her a star competitor on the school’s acrobatics, football, and track teams.

I saw in Jenny a resource that I might perhaps use to make the adjustments in my life that would make me a more happy and fulfilled person. I hoped that she might mentor me and lead me through the changes that I desperately felt I had to make.

Jenny was the opposite end of the athletic/fitness scale from where I was at the time. She was tremendously fit; I couldn’t’ do a push-up. She could perform with distinction in all athletic areas; I couldn’t run a hundred yards without getting faint. I wanted to be like her.

For some reason, Jenny agreed to help me reach my goals. I can only imagine that she saw something in my eye that made her think I might have a quality of determination that might serve to overcome my almost total lack of physical abilities at that time.

“Come over to my house,” she said, “and do aerobics with me.” For whatever reason, Jenny really pushed me. We would get together at five o’clock in the morning in order to do aerobics for an hour. That was only the beginning of our typical daily regimes. After aerobics we would go swimming or running.

When we started working out together, I had low energy levels and would run out of breath right away. Jenny was like a drill sergeant, however, and would not permit me to give in to my weakness. “Come on, Wuss,” she would say.

With her pushing and me pulling we began to get my body started on the beginning stages of fitness.

Moving Forward into a Life of Energy and Power
I joined the high school track team before I was at all ready to compete. I remember how amazed I was at how fast the other girls on the team could run. The first time I competed in an actual meet I was a real joke, running the mile in 15 minutes.

Some of my teammates altogether lacked the vision that Jenny seemed to have of my potential. They laughed at me. “Why is she on our team?” they asked.

The taunts of my fellow team members didn’t discourage me, because I was a woman on a mission! I would train with my coach as long as he would put up with me. When he went home I would continue training and running with my friends.

By the end of that first season I had cut my time by more than half — running the mile in six minutes. I had the satisfaction of having some of the girls on the team change from being my tormenters to becoming my fans. At the beginning I had been amazed by their speed, and now they were amazed by mine.

The process of becoming physically fit provided me with the means of relieving stress by burning off stored energy and frustration. My exercise and fitness programs were key factors in getting me through those bewildering teenage years.

Setting the Pattern for a Lifetime of Growth
By graduation I had set the pattern for my life. I had become hooked on fitness and after graduating from high school I began taking jazzercise and exercise classes. I joined gyms and continued running. I soon got my first aerobic job teaching a class in Fairfield.

During those early years I spent great periods of time every day expanding my abilities. I began hiking and took up rollerblading. I enrolled in martial arts courses and kick-boxing classes.

I eventually entered a number of fitness and figure competitions. These are bodybuilding and posing contests that judge contestants on their physical condition. For example, entrants are required to do a one-arm push-up and to perform a two-minute routine that demonstrates endurance, strength, and flexibility.

The contests also demand some talent. I put on routines that combined dance moves with a series of strikes and punches.

I’m a perpetual learner and intend never to stop exploring new ways to develop myself. I’m planning to take brake-dancing classes, for example. I’m also going to learn hip-hop dancing.

I recently began taking lessons at Black Diamond Gymnastics. My coach, Dorothy, is awesome. I feel like a kid again when I’m there. The place is so colorful. It is neat.

I’m 36 years old and am finally doing cartwheels, round-offs, and handstands. It feels good at my age to be able to do things that I couldn’t do when I was twelve.

Physical fitness ended up accomplishing for me exactly what I had hoped for when I did my first aerobics exercise with Jenny. I am constantly full of energy and always on the go. The exercise makes me feel energetic and youthful. Having a regular physical fitness program helps me to eat right and to discipline myself in other areas of my life.

Showing the Way for Others
I’ve devoted my life to providing an example of the benefits that come from perusing fitness as an important activity.

I’m illustrating every day the principle that women who have lived sedentary lifestyles can turn things around completely and begin to live active, physically fit lives.

Women who did active athletic things in their youth should get back into those things now. Women who, like me, didn’t do those things as a child should begin doing them now. For example, I have only recently begun rollerblading. What a wonderful exercise that is!

Regular exercise is better than lotions, creams, or expensive nips and tucks to help a woman retain or even regain her youthful appearance. For example, at 36 years of age I’m still get carded at clubs.

People tell me I look like I’m a high school kid. That comes more from having good sessions with my punching bag than from having good genes. I look better now than when I was 17.

I’m convinced by my own experience that exercise leading to fitness is a key that unlocks a lot of good things in our lives. So for a long time whenever people would talk about their struggles and stresses, I wanted to jump right in and offer to help them to discover for themselves how exercise can be an effective source of therapy and healing for a number of mental and physical ills that they might be enduring.

I developed a passion for creating a career in fitness and to help other people the way my friend Jenny helped me. I began teaching group physical fitness classes about 15 years ago.

Six years ago I started training my first clients, beginning with kick-box training, sessions with a punching bag, and no-contact sparring. I got my certification with the ISSA (International Sports Science Association) and added weights, nutrition, and dancing to my list of choices. The next year I started my Tuff Girl Fitness business.

Getting Tuff Together
We don’t have a specific curriculum at Tuff Girls, or formal programs that I try to fit clients into. I prefer to incorporate the things I learned, or am learning, with my clients, matching my skills and resources to their interests and desires.

A few younger children are learning with me. For them I offer a program which includes kick-boxing and other exercises, concentrating on improving posture, poise, flexibility, and self-esteem

My adult clients are fully capable of taking charge of their own goals and activities. I want to make exercise challenging, fun, and rewarding so I gear my program around the women’s own expectations, wishes, and (in some cases) dreams.

For example, I go hiking with some of them. With others, the form of exercise might range from walking and running to rollerblading and sparring. I might show still others how to do gymnastic stretches.

One of the reasons that I’ve gotten involved in so many different kinds of physical activities myself is so that whenever a client tells me what she would like to do, I can usually help facilitate the experience no matter what the request is. For example, if a client says she wants to learn to box, I can say. “Sure! I’ve done that. I can teach you to box!”

I always take delight in learning almost anything that involves physical activity so that if a woman ever manages to express interest in an area that is unfamiliar to me, I might invite her to learn it with me. If a client ever comes with an intense desire to learn belly dancing, for example, we’ll probably go shopping for beads together. I’m already studying hula. If a client wants to learn that, my grass skirt is already hanging in the closet.

Speaking of hula, last August my cousin, Tina, and I started teaching a class in Hula Kick-boxing. (No seriously!)

I treat my clients as my friends. We joke a lot, laugh a lot. There is a lot of humor in my training. They feel good when they leave; they can’t wait to come back.

Besides the fun, one of the reasons my clients come back is that we really work hard together to face up to and overcome physical challenges and fears.

A Life Stuck in Overdrive
I try to get my clients signed up with me as lifetime members of the “Feel the fear; do it anyway” club. Overcoming physical challenges is what I live for. I jumped out of an airplane, for example, not because I had no fear of heights, but precisely because I was terrified for some reason of bailing out of a plane two miles up in the air. I needed to get that fear behind me.

In the same way, I’m afraid of some of the things in gymnastics. Doing handstands without a spotter, for example, was a terribly frightening thing for me, but now I can do it at the drop of a hat. I was scared to death of rollerblading and have now been rollerblading for four years.

That spirit of facing up to physical challenges and fears is the quality I seek to help my clients develop. We’re all becoming Tuff Girls. That means we are learning never to be intimated by obstacles in our paths or by goals that we have set for ourselves.

I work part-time as a Club One personal trainer and teach classes in muscle-max, cycling, and kick-boxing. I also teach yoga, palates, and ballet exercise at the Brentwood Adult Education Center.

I continue to occupy my free time hiking, running, and rollerblading with my girlfriends. Exercise is my avocation as well as my vocation.

I’m living out my dream and doing what I’ve always wanted to do. I plan to continue in the directions I’m going for the rest of my life. I want to grow the business and help many others while I continue training and working out myself.

I plan to be doing gymnastics when I’m in my 90s. I’ll show those other old ladies in the retirement center how to stay fit. I’m a tuff girl planning to be a tuff old lady sixty years from now.

If you have any questions or simply feel in need of encouragement, feel free to give me a ring or email me. 925-368-6906 tuffgirlfitness@aol.com www.tuffgirlfitness.com/