Today we have our first guest blogger and personal training client of rb5 Nottingham Liz Cumberland .
Liz has overcome great adversity with mental illness which had locked her away in her own home like a prisoner.
Please read and be inspired by a remarkable transformation.
Want to get your life back?
Overcome anxiety and depression with exercise!
When I first approached rb5 a year and half ago I was struggling with an overactive thyroid, panic attacks, anxiety and depression.
This meant that on some days it was even hard to leave the house so coming to an environment like a gym seemed impossible. At times my levels of anxiety where so high that I felt sick, I struggled to eat and could no longer work. I didn’t have any confidence in my ability to train and felt very unfit, weak and lacking in energy.
I knew I had to take action to improve my health and wellbeing but didn’t know where to start. This was when rb5 stepped in. Ricky immediately set to work on finding out how I was feeling.
With his motivation and encouragement I started to work on building my confidence by learning a new skill. That skill was boxing. I had never boxed before but found that I could find some relief from my frustrations with my health. After about eight weeks I started to feel like I could see a way forward. Ricky continued to build my confidence by helping me to see that I was making progress with my fitness.
This in turn had a positive effect on my mental health as I was proving to myself that I could train and come to the gym. One of the side effects of high anxiety was increased adrenaline in my body which would make me feel ill. Ricky suggested that we take an approach used by the army to expose yourself to what you fear again and again to lessen its impact.
So this is what we did. By using a piece of equipment called a prowler I began to push a heavy weight up and down to get used to the way adrenaline felt in my body. As a result of this training the feelings slowly started to bother me less. At first I could only manage one personal training session a week as even getting through the door was a battle in itself.
Since then I have overcome a lot of self-doubt, my level of fitness has improved and I’m now working out three times a week. Thankfully I can now say that because of training with rb5 I haven’t had a panic attack in over six months and am much less anxious.
I’m now back at work three days a week and will soon be increasing this to four days a week. It has been a long and hard journey to reach this point but I couldn’t have done it without rb5. Recently I have managed my first 5k run in eighteen months. I’m now looking forward to improving my running and enjoying my training. Exercise has given me my life back! Liz Cumberland
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