If you don’t know this about me, I have a long history of being “the odd one out”.

Literally. From birth. Because I was born in the south of Italy in the late 80s and, as you can probably imagine, I was the only brown person in most rooms I walked in. If I wasn't the only brown face, I was probably in a room with my two cousins, who are also mixed raced. But even in that situation, they were “Irish twins” and I was the younger only-child tagalong. Even though they were and are like siblings to me, it was a them and me kind of dynamic. Outside of my family, I was the only brown girl in my class and the only one in my dance school group.

As a teen in my local dance school, I was told by one of our choreographers that I had great potential, but unfortunately I would not be in an ensemble or corps de ballet because of the colour of my skin. Because, in the early 2000, companies wouldn’t cast a brown swan. He basically laid out for me a future where I would either need to become a principal dancer or there would be no opportunity to be a dancer at all.

Then I moved to England to go to ballet school and this is probably the only time where I had an ally on my journey. In my year, there was another mixed raced girl and we often encountered the same struggles: from not being able to make our glutei flat and have no curves, to being unable to slick our afro hair in a French roll like our caucasian mates (our hair was “messy”). And I guess at that time the difference I felt the most was to do with my nationality. I didn't speak English when I got to London, and once I learned the language, I had a strong accent that I was pretty much reminded of in every conversation I had. Even before acknowledging what I had said, people would parrot my sentence back to me, mimicking my accent. And to this day that is something I don’t take well to. Accents are such a major component of class and culture in the UK and perhaps even in the most open and liberal of spaces, it is the first thing that constitutes an unconscious bias.

I don’t know how this happens in an office environment, and perhaps you can be the one to tell me, but I know for a fact that myself and my fellow foreign performers can all recall a time in the studio when a casual debate about a piece of choreography was taking place: a white British colleague says what they think the movement phrase is, and you (the foreigner) share what you know to be right and the immediate response you get is “mmm… that doesn’t sound right”. At that point, you just have to walk away and surrender to the circumstances.

I have spent so many years thinking “This surely doesn’t happen where I am. Not my friends. Not my workplace?!”. And if you have a good nature, you want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but when your fellow “odd-ones-out”, who have more experience than you and have already accepted the reality of things, tells you “Oh yeah! That’s definitely happening”, suddenly you realise how naive you were.

Because suddenly you realise the difference between belonging and acceptance.

My white British colleagues or my white fellow Italians were born with the privilege of automatically belonging without a question. But in my case, even in my own country, I needed to be accepted, because in a space where the majority doesn’t look or sound like you, you have to pass the test. The test that informs them whether they want you or not. Whether THEY want to make you one of them or not.

So I am incredibly grateful to my fellow mothers, midwives and all those people that from the moment I got pregnant, welcomed me into this circle of power where my race and my accent didn’t matter.

And for those out there who didn’t have a pleasant experience of belonging in pregnancy or motherhood, I am sorry. Because race didn’t matter for me, but I am aware that it really mattered for many, so please know I feel for you and I am your ally.

After my first pregnancy, I was back on stage eight months postpartum. I was blessed with a child that slept through the night by five months, and even though my body didn’t bounce back (let’s be honest, bouncing back and breastfeeding weight loss are a myth for most), I was able to regain a good amount of strength and range of movement pretty quickly in the grand scheme of things. So, that journey left me feeling positive at the prospect of going through the same thing again.

When it comes to my second child things were and have been very different. First of all, while my first pregnancy was in between jobs, my second started during a contract and I kept performing until I was 23 weeks. And even though being on stage made those first 6 months go faster than my previous pregnancy, that time wasn’t all unicorns are rainbows. Far from, but that is a story for another time. Society is somewhat informed about postpartum depression, but I can tell you that they are definitely not ready for a heavy load of ante natal depression. To be honest, I wasn’t ready either because I didn’t know what it was, until it hit me. Twice. So, you go from a debilitating time where you are tired from growing a human and living with depression to a state of sleep deprivation when your child is finally in your arms. And this is where things get strange.

In my experience, most people understand and acknowledge how tough it is to have a newborn and how tired you are, but they also expect you to be in a state of total bliss. And don’t get me wrong, the joy of having the child you have been cooking and twirling with on stage is undeniable, but if that cute sack of flesh you gave birth to doesn’t sleep or rest for more than 90 minutes for weeks and months on end, your sanity starts to slip…

And what happens when that ambitious side of your personality knocks at your door and asks: “Are you ready?” Well, in my case, I don’t have any other answer than “Yes - I thought you’d never ask”.

But what if my ambition doesn’t match what energy and sanity I have left? Because being ambitious in my experience it’s a full time job.

Mentally, you have to be ready and prepared to back yourself and believe that the things you aspire to in life are a possibility. And let me tell you that that isn’t a walk in the park when you are brought up with a scarcity mindset that gets reaffirmed in the performing arts by this idea that as a dancer the glory of being on stage is more valuable than financial compensation. And practically, you have to be disciplined enough to get yourself up everyday to take action on that belief that you can get more out of life.

Over time, I have gone through a transformation in how I view myself and my place in the performing arts or any professional industry really, and I have realised that I am done thinking that I am worth only what people are willing to pay me, rather than my actual value. With the skills that I have acquired over the last few years and the development I have gone through, I can’t make sense of why I wouldn’t be seen as an asset. And if you are suddenly feeling “wow, she is really confident”, I am actually not. The real question is: why are you so uncomfortable with a woman that knows what she brings to the table? Because that’s the most tiring of all. That’s the thing myself and many female high achievers out there have to battle with day in and day out is people underestimating your professional drive after starting a family and people being uncomfortable with female confidence.

And yes, being a mother is hard and trying to get everything that you want from life is tiring, but the other most exhausting thing I find is having to fight this society that keeps treating me like I am wanting too much. Let it be clear, there is no universe in which Nicole Kabera-Savage isn’t a working woman ready to offer the best of her abilities. It’s not lost on me that I can’t have it all at the same time, but I really don’t see myself not wanting to work on balancing all the things that I want out of life and allowing them to take priority in turns. And if you are thinking “how could a mother not always have her family as first priority?” Let’s not forget that priority and hierarchy are two different things.

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A lot of female performers find themselves leaving the stage (often not by choice) to pursue the next phase of life and developing their family. Many of my friends asked me if I was done performing after the birth of my first child and I was truly taken aback by that assumption, considering I was in my early thirties. And then last year, when I was pregnant with my second, my director asked me a very significant question: “What makes you want to take all those things at once? How do you do it?” and my answer was very simple: my ambition is founded in love. Pure love for the core drivers of my existence. I love my family more than anything, dancing was my first love and I am still in love with it, and I never thought I could love any job like I love performing, but then I found personal training.

Some days it might be extremely hard to get out of bed after a sleepless night and put my ambitious hat on and get to work, but I am not tired of being ambitious, I am not pressured into proving anything, I am not desperate to gain anyone’s approval. I am just done having to justify why becoming a mother hasn’t changed who I am and how I intend to operate.

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And before you think that I am a hater of my own industry, please know that I am very impressed by all the above, and let it be known that I would love to have my middle life crisis at a fitness retreat in Thailand by 2030. But until that happens, I am just an average woman and PT trying to navigate my own fitness journey and helping others with theirs, SO…

What if someone is looking to change something about their body? Or they are trying to get better at a sport? What if all the algorithm is serving is a confusing and overwhelming word salad of fitness terms that leave the viewer unsure of the path they should or want to be taking?

Well, I sat and wrote down the client transformation journey people go through at The Performers Circle. It’s actually a very simple 5-stages process, and I really believe it would bring more clarity than confusion to anyone who was considering making changes.

STAGE 1: MOTIVATION

The number one reason people reach out to me is to change something for the better. Whether that is to improve their self-esteem, build their strength or feel more confident in how they look. They realise something is missing and once they decide it’s time to feel whole and fulfilled, they believe their biggest obstacle to getting the thing done is lack of motivation. At this stage, they are not aware that motivation isn’t really their problem. In fitness terms, motivation would be explosive power, intense bursts of energy that only last a short time. Which brings me to the next stage…

STAGE 2: DISCIPLINE

If motivation is explosive power, discipline would be endurance. One ignites the flame, the other one keeps the fire burning. What most people fail at is staying disciplined, because we want a quick reward. Humans are wired to prefer what can give instant gratification, whether it’s good for us or not. That’s why it’s more appealing to grab a highly palatable meal at the drive-thru, than spending an afternoon in the kitchen meal prepping for the week. What most people are missing isn’t the drive to achieve goals, but the small and easily repeatable systems that streamline everyday life, and support the person’s fitness goals. Once those are in place, my clients are on a roll.

STAGE 3: SELF-RESPECT

Streamlining successful systems to implement discipline leads to a lifestyle change where doing what’s best isn’t a chore. It’s second nature. Meal prepping and training are as systematic as doing your weekly laundry (daily laundry, if you are a parent). Consistency is made up by discipline over time, and what I have observed with my clients is that, after a few weeks, they begin to rate themselves and their behaviour and, for the first time in a while, they finally start believing that change is actually possible.

STAGE 4: SELF-TRUST

This is the first stage of achieving a transformation. But it is not yet about how you feel, it’s about what you know. The knowledge gained from the process of turning methods and systems into a lifestyle/second nature, makes my clients trust the fact that their results are not just visible, but also permanent. It’s a transformation from the inside out. And even if their circumstances were to change and they need to start all over again, there would be no problem, because they would know what to do. The question wouldn’t be about where to start, it would be about when.

STAGE 5: CONFIDENCE

Knowledge is indeed power and, in this case, that power is that self-trust, which leads to the ultimate feel-good feeling: confidence. At this stage, my clients feel fully ready to believe in themselves. They feel complete, fulfilled and brave enough to take risks they wouldn’t have before.

THAT is what a fitness journey is.

And I am eternally grateful to my clients to have taught me that.

If you have been thinking about embarking on your own fitness journey, tell me more about you and what you are after... Click this link!

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One of my favourite content creators on Substack is . I love their topics, I love their style and a lot of the things they talk about resonate with both my private and professional life.

In this one article about detachment (and how attractive it is), this quote stayed with me: “Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t care, it just means you refuse to place the outcome above your sense of self”. And it got me thinking about my own behaviour and emotional investment in the performing arts over the last 16 years.

I think a lot of dancers pride themselves on their dedication. They wear their ability to cope, no matter how tough the circumstances, like a badge of honour, and that is easily acknowledgeable considering that the financial return for a performer doesn’t quite match the reward you are supposed to feel from the glory of that honour.

The covid pandemic saw many dancers having to take muggle jobs in order to pay their bills. I was one of those dancers, having just qualified as a personal trainer, I took a job in a gym in a well-known 5-star hotel and my role included responsibilities that went beyond my PT role, like taking care of machines and training equipment, re-stacking waters and towels, and provide hotel info to the club members.

One thing transpired from my time there, I wasn’t just good at the personal training, I was also good at the additional stuff. And when I mentioned that to my husband, he was very unsurprised. Why? Because as a man who worked in hospitality overseeing people from reservations to events and service, he knew performers made the best workers.

Performers in normal jobs are attentive, detailed, efficient and eager to please. They have a load of transferable skills and they outperform most people without a background in theatre. For them, doing a job to the best of their ability is the baseline. And as proud as I am of that, when it comes to actually working in the performing arts, I can’t help but wonder if that is working against us.

Is being a performer one of those jobs where elite skills are compensated by low tier income? (I think we all know the answer to that).

Because let me put things into perspective for you, take the example of one of my personal training clients, they are in a very successful West End show and they have been for a few years. When they started on this show they were nearly 30 years old and had already had a successful career in musical theatre. They started off in the ensemble, which meant they would have been paid the same as a recent graduate. Their pay increased over the years with each contract renewal, but should they decide to leave and audition for another show they would have to take a significant pay cut even though now they are older, more experienced and have a family.

The performing industry is the only place where you could be at the same level of someone younger than you, who has been in the same company for half the time, yet they get to be paid more. Something that wouldn’t be remotely possible in any office or corporate job. It wouldn’t be possible in the offices of the production companies that set those standards for the dancers, actors and singers they employ.

So how can there be an expectation so high for love and dedication to the craft? Why shouldn’t performers be encouraged to be detached?

Let me be clear detachment isn’t the same as not caring or being emotionally frozen. I can so easily see my husband be absolutely brilliant at his job, while not feeling so categorically pulled to sacrifice his needs in order to be validated and praised. The reality of his industry is that his experience is valued, his brilliance is compensated, and if he is no longer happy, he can move where the grass is greener, with no financial loss. All that is currently not available to a performer. Especially dancers, the majority of whom do not have an agent.

So if the industry does not want to shift, is it really so unreasonable for performers to be detached and put themselves first?

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Watching those friendships, marriages and strange relationships unfold on TV has got me reflecting a lot on what makes a relationship successful or not.

This is not a creative signal for help. Regardless of what you are about to read, you don’t have to worry about me (lol). I just have found myself analysing many of my own interpersonal dynamics and I am puzzled by a few, but there is without a doubt a clear winner.

They say that the closed people to you are the ones you fight the most, and that is certainly true in my life. My husband and mother are the people I share most conflicts with, but he definitely holds the top spot. With him, I go between absolute harmony and bliss and questioning all my life choices. It was just last week that after a few days of calm, I dared to say to myself “We are doing so well. We have really found our happy place”, and needless to say, that same day all happy thoughts came crashing down when a far too familiar kind of conflict wiped away any trace of joy and positivity.

So what is the issue? What keeps bringing us back to the dark side?

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One thing I know for a fact, it is not the topic of the fight that taints the debate, it’s the fighting style. And you are probably now wondering what that looks like for us, so I am going to politely overshare, while trying my best to call out an equal amount of responsibility and flaws for both my husband and I. The bias I am very conscious of carrying will be restrained in the name of equality and, in the spirt of keeping peace, I won’t tell you how much more often than me he is in the wrong.

He is very much the classic “react first, think second” type. To me, often the reaction is disproportionate to the circumstances and usually what tops off my fury, after him quickly going from zero to a hundred, is his ability to go from a hundred to zero even quicker. By then, my red mist has joined his, especially when I realise he has forgotten what the issue was in the first place, and believe it or not, this is one of our major points of conflict. Considering I can already feel my blood gently simmering just by writing this, I think it’s best if I swiftly move onto the mea culpa.

My biggest trigger is a behaviour or reaction that is not shifted by logic. I don’t take well to someone who has emotionally charged responses that doesn’t change after logic is presented. And when (my) logic is rejected enough times, then I become the one emotionally charged. But, unlike my husband, I am not able to leave boiling point suddenly and out of nowhere. I need to gradually go through a process of conflict resolution where either common ground is found or we (bitterly) agree to disagree.

“Just letting it go” for the sake of brushing an argument under the carpet it’s just not an option for me.

On top of that, you have to keep in consideration, not just your fighting style, but also your own fighting timing. My husband used to always walk away for a time-out mid argument to de-escalate and carry on later. Which is all well and good if this time-out period wasn’t indefinite. So indefinite and so long that he would return to interact with me like nothing has happened and he would start to wonder whether we had both silently brushed it under the carpet.

Well… NO, WE DID NOT.

Because I am convinced that for every husband that needs space mid argument to forget what he had done in the first place… ops, sorry! I meant: to forget what the fight was about, there is a wife with a photographic memory and a brain like a voice recorder, still very clear on what the events were and that is not going to share pleasantries or small talk until there is a proper debate and a resolution.

And that is my fighting timing. Why put the anger on pause to stretch it and re-live it all again later? You might as well have it out there and then and solve the issue. But that’s my opinion.

And that’s the hardest part, it’s remembering that I am not right. Well… I may be right about the circumstances, but my fighting style is not right. It’s just mine. It’s what I know. And his it’s not right either. We are the product of what our parents have taught us and we now have to choose a healthy fighting style that leads to conflict resolution and that we feel proud and comfortable to model in front of our kids.

Despite everything, everyday I keep choosing him because he is a great father, he is domesticated, he makes me laugh, he makes me feel loved and desired and most of all he sees me and treats me as his equal partner. Recently, we have chosen to put all our efforts into showing each other the best version of ourselves to communicate better. Therefore for now, I’ll keep him (if he’ll have me).

So, what is external validation? My research best defines it as “the acknowledgement of your strengths and emotions from others”. For us dancers that would translate in our audiences and fellow artists acknowledging our talent. Put in those terms, it seems pretty harmless. My logical brain tells me that I need feedback from a teacher, rehearsal director or a theatre lover to know that I am doing my job correctly. At the end of the day, we are doing it for an audience. But on the other side, my emotional brain tells me that, if this is about my talent being acknowledged, it is personal. And maybe that’s where the trouble starts.

Take the life of any professional dancer for example. As a student, what you see in the mirror and what your teachers think about you matters, because these are the first forms of feedback you get during your formation. I have always loved learning, but if I take myself back to the years of ballet school (and before), I can tell you that some days all I would hope for was some praise from my teacher. Why? Probably because I needed to hear someone say that I was good. I wanted validation! The problem with seeking validation is that your confidence begins to depend on it. You get praised, your self esteem goes up. You don’t get praised, your self esteem is at a negative balance. The aim of the game is no longer being the best you can be, but it becomes being told that you are the best. This behaviour often carries into professional life, where all the doubts about talent and performance come to surface as the time for praise and positive feedback is very limited. As I often say, rehearsals aren’t the space where you are going to have your ego stroked. There is a shared mission: putting the show together, and it is far more likely that you will hear notes and corrections, over positive feedback. On top of that, there is social media. Social platforms have become a vehicle for self promotion. You are (or feel) expected to share about the show you are on, the creative projects you’re involved in and personal profiles become a catalogue of showreels that need to impress the viewer. How do you know if you are doing things right? Likes and follows accumulate and you become “popular”.

I am all for treating your dance career like your business, but I would lie to you, if I didn’t point out how all consuming and triggering dancers find their experience with social media. I have seen people worrying about the performance of a post, I have seen people on international tours calculating the best time to post for theUK timezone, I have seen people puzzled with what to post, because they felt they had to post, I know of people going to certain classes because they know they’ll get footage from the teacher. As a millennial, I have known life with and without social media and I find myself worrying about what social media is doing to dancers’ self esteem. The undeniable feeling that I am sensing is that if someone else doesn’t tell you that you are talented, then you might not be… This sparked the question: why is the opinion of others more valid than yours? I am going to take a wild guess and say that most dancers feel like positive things should be said about them, rather than by them. But I am going to have to politely disagree. In the normal world, during job interviews, you’d be asked what your strengths are and why you should be hired. But dancers feel very uncomfortable being or saying kind things about themselves.

1. They have probably been told that if they are going to be “that cocky” then they should have the talent to back their behaviour;

2. The words of the ghosts of teachers past are still swirling around in their heads;

3. Social media anxiety is perhaps getting the better of them.

But I bet most dancers would struggle to name someone in the industry who is truly so full of themselves. And that’s because most of us struggle to even feel confident, let alone cocky. So how can we overcome the need to be defined and praised by others?

Self-validation and growth mindset are my winners.

Before I elaborate on those, I feel the need for a cheeky disclaimer: self-validation is in no way cockiness, nor delusion! Let me be clear on the fact that I would never encourage my clients to be complacent in the name of confidence in themselves. I would never ask them to dismiss critique and feedback, because all they need is their own opinion. Even when at the top of the game, the standard can always get higher and the challenges become tougher. But that’s why a growth mindset is the way forward. If you believe that your talent is on an ongoing path of development, you will be thrilled by challenges and will learn from criticism. External validation and praise doesn’t seem so necessary when you are moved by inspiration and desire to master your craft (If you want to learn more about this, I would highly recommend reading Mindset by Dr Carol Dweck). With self-validation you can learn to rely on your personal assessment of your efforts and offer a perspective that won’t destroy your confidence. What does self-validation look like?

Re-imagining situations. When you find yourself in a situation that may be triggering your insecurities and seeking validation from others. Re-explore the events through the eyes of a third party. Your perspective is personal and could be a distorted version of the events. By imagining, through a different pair of eyes or a lens, you may find a less catastrophic view.

Taking a social media break. This is a no brainer to me, but if you have been involved and dependent on the validation of likes and follows, it may be a very healthy practice to delete socials off your phone and find some space for personal growth elsewhere.

Reframing negative thoughts. Saying and thinking nice things about yourself is much harder than allowing the demons to flood your brain. So, practising self-love and self-compassion through affirmations or journaling, will help feeling stronger about your authentic self and rely less on the opinion of others.

Using values as a guide. If you know what values represent your authentic self, you can come back to them time and time again and check if your mood and behaviour align with what matters to you the most. The knowledge of what your purpose is allows for less worry about what others expect of you.

Ditching the need for external validation isn’t a way to pretend that you don’t care what the world thinks, but a way to fulfil the talent and potential you have been blessed with.

I actually feel very embarrassed admitting this, because I have always felt super confident about my potential and deep down in the most logical part of my brain, I know I have everything I need to be able to be successful in my work and in my life. But in the last year to year and a half, things have been a bit tougher and despite the fact that I know my worth, a little voice has appeared in my head that says “maybe it’s not going to happen”.

I am actually really ashamed about this because I am in the business of showing people what they are capable of and nurturing them until they can see for themselves that they can do it. And I am everyday reminded of how easy it is to champion others and completely neglect your own need for encouragement (I am a dancer after all). So, in the effort to attempt some exposure therapy, I decided to bare all my deepest emotions on this article and share with you a letter I wrote to myself over two and half years ago.

Let me give you a little bit of context. A girl I followed used one of those websites where you can write a email to yourself and she pretty much jot down her hopes and dreams for the future and she set it to be sent a year later. Fast forward 12 months, by the time she received the email, she had exceeded expectations and achieved pretty much all that was on the letter and more. I won’t deny that if it had happened now, I wouldn’t even attempt this as The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are giving manifestation a really bad rep, but fortunately this was March 2023.

This felt like the most appropriate and significant time as I was days away from giving birth to my first child and life felt very intense. Everyday felt like the most important 24 hours of waiting for the most life changing event of my existence. So I decided to get my phone out and write a letter to myself to be delivered a year later.

Yes. I am sharing it here. Deon’t judge.

Share Nicole Kabera-Savage

That makes me feel very emotional, because every single thing I wished for my future self in that letter did happen. I read that email while I was away on tour, my business was doing incredibly well and my baby was happy and healthy and I managed to secure the day off for his first birthday.

Reading that makes me feel I made those things happen and my mistake right now is not believing that I can be at that place again, strong and confident in myself. The only difference between then and now is that I have more awareness now, and I want to intentionally behave and do the things that can make me successful, knowing why they are working. I want to consciously make choices that are going to give me the outcomes I desire. And If I am honest with myself, at that time I was working with consistency and following the direction of mentors, but I was learning and putting into practice new found knowledge. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you exactly how things were working out in my favour.

What I know now is that I am not stuck. Being stuck means that something is holding me back, something is happening out of my control.

I am in a rut and a rut is a moment of stillness.

Stillness is about me, consciously or unconsciously, not moving. It may feel like the circumstances are preventing me from moving forward, but if I am really honest with myself, |I recognise that I am a contributing factor to not progressing. Right now I am still, not because I am not applying myself and doing my best everyday, but because deep down I am questioning whether my vision for the future is realistic. When I felt successful, there was no doubt in my mind that I would have everything I wanted one day. So, why can’t I believe that right now?

In life, like in fitness, you don’t make big strides everyday. The journey is made of one little step in front of the other everyday. Is the one, plus one, plus one percent everyday till it amounts to a hundred. Along the way, you have to remind yourself that you believe in your ability to get to the end. And that’s the tricky part. But if you have achieved something once, you can do it again. If you haven’t achieved it before, there is no reason that it won’t happen, unless you decide to stand still.

If you are wondering if I keep dragging the rest of my generation into those statements to make myself feel better, you are right on the money! I believe if I keep saying enough times that I wasn’t the only one, then I can’t judge myself as much as I objectively deserve.

One of those terrible posts in my early 20s was some kind of lament about waking up “early” at 7am following a night of debauchery at a regional pub after a show. You know… normal young gal on tour stuff. And as embarrassing as my own share was, one of my colleagues topped my cringiness by saying “Don’t have kids then, woman. If 7am is early for you…”

We were peers and they had chosen the family life in their 20s and kudos to them for doing that, but I couldn’t help but ask why on earth would I care about being able to get up for children that didn’t exist?! And frankly, why did they care? Loved that for them, but I had a serious hungover to tend to.

Over 10 years later, with the help of my extensive independent research on sleep deprivation, with pre and post motherhood data, I can confirm that party animals make top-notch parents.

I have practiced performing on few hours of sleep PLENTY! There were times that we would go out to clubs till the early hours of the morning before single (and sometimes double) show days. It’s a work hard, play hard kind of dynamic and dancers are some of the most hard working people around, they deserve to blow off steam.

Unknowingly, I was setting myself up for parenthood. Someone like my husband, with a 9-to-5 office job, would go wild at the weekend and be able to spend the following day recovering in bed. While I had to get up for class, rehearsal and a show. No watching TV in bed. No hair of the dog. No time to feel sorry for myself.

As a PT now, I understand what goes into peak athlete performance more than I ever did and I would never promote sleep-deprivation to anyone, let alone dancers. Now I know better. I know how much sleep impacts performance, body composition and stress and frankly I like my clients to get impressive results, rather than hangovers.

BUT, as a former party animal who will encourage her children and clients to stay away from any vice and bad behaviour, the hypocrisy of it all it’s not lost on me. And I am not ashamed to admit that I am actually kind of on board with it.

When the mums at nursery drop-off ask me how is my baby sleeping and I tell them she isn’t, they so kindly tell me that I don’t look as wrecked as I feel… Little do they know that the reason I don’t is because I have been practicing covering up my lack of sleep with make up since 2010.

I believe we should all take inspiration from my client M. She is on of my OG clients and she embodies motherhood in its highest form. Literally. She is about to give birth to her fifth (YES… FIFTH!) child and she is still training with me online twice a week. Over the years, her and I have bonded on our love for sculpted arms and our party animal nature. We are both very keen on defined triceps, in fact, she shared with me one her arm definition tricks from her youth. Before a night out, especially if she was wearing a sleeveless top, she would down a shot of tequila and drop to the floor to do 10 press ups. Yes, in a world where more and more people are reaching for the enhancing substances, THAT is how she would get a nice pump in her arms. A much better choice in my opinion.

Would I recommend this trick to anyone? Probably not.

Am I gutted I didn't think of it myself? Definitely.

Will I try before my next night out (whenever that will be)? 100%.

Look, one thing I know for sure: party animals make great parents who are ready to pace the corridors at night, holding their babies, armed of noise cancelling headphones playing Defected In The House.

Not only we wake up at 7am. For our children we are ready to ride at dawn, at 1am, at 2am and at 3 bloody o’clock in the morning if needed. Watch us!

I often tell people that, if personal training was solely about the programme, anybody could do the job. AI could probably write you a fairly decent programme nowadays. The real gold is in the human interaction and relationship you build with your clients.

Until that client is your spouse.

You have to be a people’s person and have great human skills. And in my journey as a PT, nothing could prepare me more for that lesson than coaching my own husband.

If you qualify as a PT, one of the first things they teach you is to never train friends and family. That’s because friends and family are people… Difficult people. People that feel comfortable being their worst when they are not paying a penny for your work.

Training my husband taught me that you can absolutely despise training someone you love so deeply.

When I first got my qualification in lockdown, I was so excited to coach him and practice my new skills on him. But the dream turned into a nightmare pretty quickly.

Let me give you a bit of context. My husband it’s a very sporty type. He played ice hockey as a teenager. He played rugby at university, he often cycles nearly 20km to work and he is in a squash league. He is that very annoying naturally athletic type who does zero exercise for months, then out of nowhere boshes out a 10km run without struggle.

Yes. THAT annoying type.

Working out was not a new experience for him, BUT when he got back into it with his newly qualified (at that time) PT girlfriend with 10 years experience as a professional dancer, he didn’t like to be corrected and he had very poor technique.

As a professional dancer who went to ballet school, my unique selling point in personal training is that I am so attuned with mind to muscle connection that I can easily verbalise how a movement should feel and I can spot very fine errors in movement or alignment. Technique is my bread and butter.

And boy, did my husband not like that. He was so upset about not being able to get an exercise perfectly on his first try that he would be borderline rude to me. Because somehow, as the bearer of bad technique news, it was all my fault (allegedly).

He eventually saw the error of his ways and apologised. But not without first trying to feed me some nonsense where it was good practice for me to deal with tricky clients. Needless to say, that day I learned what my boundaries are, and if any client behaved like him, they would be immediately dropped.

That was the last time I trained him… until recently.

Many years on, life is very different now. We are married, we are parents to two cracking children and both our lives are busier than ever. We both have very limited time to exercise, but we both really want to keep elevating our fitness.

My husband has asked me before for a simple programme to do at home. And I have created one for him multiple times, but, for a reason or another, he never really committed.

But something recently has shifted…

Maybe because we are more mature, we managed to have a very successful conversation where I could talk to him as a coach and explain what he would be capable of, and he really listened like a client, for the first time truly ready to make a change.

As we were on a train heading out for a nice wine tasting lunch, I explained to him that it is easy to look at your schedule and think that there just isn’t time to workout. But many of my clients are just like him: busy, rushed, overwhelmed, sleep deprived. They are simply not measuring their ability to exercise on the last time they could leisurely go to the gym for 60+ minutes. They, just like him, have a few 30 minute gaps in their calendars and that is all they need.

He is now committing to the programme. To all the elements of it: stats, steps, progress photos, check-ins. The LOT. Should he allow himself to be rude to his PT again, he will be put on review and will have to start paying for my services.

But do you know what?! I believe he is going to do it this time.