As a kinesiologist registered with the College of Kinesiology of Ontario, I opened Brampton’s first and only kinesiology-based clinic in January. I work with the general public and with cardiac rehab patients to provide specialized exercise programming that aids their recovery from cardiac incidents and teaches prevention to reduce risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
I took a two-year diploma program at Humber College in fitness and health promotion. From there I decided to find my passion and went to York University to do my undergrad in kinesiology.
As a teenager I played soccer and I was involved in track. I love the outdoors, running and taking my body to extremes, so I had an interest in learning what happens when you push your body.
At Humber, I studied human physiology and basic anatomy and specialized in exercise programming on how to train the body. Exercise physiology fascinated me the most – all the changes that occur within the body and how everything has an effect. We all have a body and start off at the same level, but some people take their bodies to different heights through training and discipline.
After Humber I became a trainer at the YMCA. I wanted to stay away from commercialized gyms driven by sales and didn’t want to be pressured to harass people to buy personal training sessions. The YMCA allowed me to work with a wide range of individuals.
I decided to take this a step further and go to York and learn as much as I could. In class one day, it struck me: why aren’t gyms teaching us this? That’s why I opened my own place, to take people through proper assessments, proper follow-up and proper exercise programming, all with a regulated health professional.
At Humber I took a business class for fitness professionals, and while I was at York I transformed my garage into a private studio so I could schedule clients around class time.
In my industry there isn’t a lot of regulation, so anyone can call themselves a trainer. But in 2013, the Ontario government passed laws regulating kinesiology as a health profession. York didn’t really prepare me for the certification exam, so I went back to Humber for a post-grad in exercise science and lifestyle management.
I wasn’t concerned about my marks on the exam, but about making the transition between school and the real world. The Humber post-grad program gave us the freedom to learn different things, do internships on and off campus, so all that helped me finalize what I wanted to do and root my clinic in certain protocols and assessments.
The fitness and health diploma program taught me the majority of what I know, which is why I came back to Humber a second time.
In this field, you have to know how to communicate. You could be training someone who has never exercised before, so you can’t go into that situation and be all peppy and high-energy. You have to get to their level, so it’s about assessing your clients and which approach works best. There are courses that help with the step-by-step process and how to establish a rapport with different personalities. While I was in that class I didn’t see the benefits, but out in the field that course became one of the most relevant.
The best experiences involve seeing people reach their goals. We set small ones as we go along, and without the clients even being aware of it, they reach that end goal. I have some clients who’d never run in their lives, and now they’re running.
The most challenging part of the job is that few people understand what kinesiology is. The hardest part is explaining why we’re different from the typical gym or trainers. I see people going to gyms just because they recognize the names, but you can get better service and prices if you open your eyes to all the small businesses out there.
I’m hoping to grow kinesiology as a profession so everyone has a kinesiologist on their health care team to go to for specialized exercise or to learn how to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
