Stevie's achievement

The month of May is about creating awareness around mental health and trying to encourage people that we are ok to talk about it, it’s also a time for us to share our own stories.

Meet one of our members here at Places Gym, Stevie Colledge; Stevie is also a client of one of our personal trainers, Ben Yates.

Stevie has taken part in different fitness events over the years; she has cycled to Cornwall and completed Triathlons. Although these were great achievements for Stevie, unfortunately they still wasn’t something that she felt she was really enjoying which wasn’t helping her with how she felt, still feeling a little lost and wanting something new to work towards.

After having a chat with Ben, he suggested trying something that uses weights, Stevie was then tagged in a power lifting competition and felt she had finally found something for her.

“Working and training with weights made me train harder and gave me something to work towards. I found that even on a bad day I would still leave the gym with something positive, there is just something about weight training.”

When asking Stevie what may cause a bad day in the gym her reply was, “Having little sleep, not getting up early enough to have something to eat, generally not feeling great because I do struggle with my mental health. Just 2 weeks before the competition I was struggling with an old elbow injury and couldn’t lift above my head the weight I needed to, I felt I couldn’t do the competition, all my training had been for nothing and was a waste of time. I am a single parent and had managed to find this time for myself to train, which is hard enough and felt like it was all just for nothing. I had to really try and mentally talk myself around.”

Stevie not only managed to participate in the competition but came 2nd!!! A massive congratulation to you Stevie, well done and well deserved.

“After the competition I felt excited and was looking forward to the next one, unfortunately I am not able to find one that I can do at the moment and because of this and losing that structure, I am finding I am struggling again and having some emotional days. I am still very proud of what I have done”.

I want to thank Stevie for sharing her story; it’s so easy to think that people are ok when you see their big smiles. We are proud to have you here at Places Gym Stevie.