Training Effects: Reflections On The Art of Personhood Training

by Joanne Blackerby

Overview

Get to know the soul and heart behind Spirit Fitness Training in Joanne Blackerby's first book, "Training Effects," a journey through her tumultuous to triumphant life interwoven with tales from and about those she has trained, plus her keen observations on the pursuit and profession of personal training. It broadens and enhances the art of the memoir to reveal the craft of navigating oneself through life's chaos and challenges, and sketches out the map of the individualized route she offers all her clients for achieving full and enduring fitness.
"Training Effects" was born out of Spirit Fitness Training and how those Joanne has known and trained shared their stories with her, which inspired Blackerby to open up and reveal memories painful, touching, revelatory, sometimes harrowing yet ultimately loving and inspirational about her privileged yet tumultuous childhood in Kingston, Jamaica and her family's flight from their homeland's political violence to North America. and ultimately finding herself and her place in life. Joanne's legacy of family and sexual violence, struggles as a multiracial immigrant, and how she overcame it all plus bouts of chronic depression and ADHD in adulthood to find fulfillment as a wife, mother and noted professional managing her own business are recalled within the key principles of training to illuminate how fitness is about body, mind, soul and ultimately one's whole life.
Joanne's dynamic and warm interactions with clients whose tales she also tells throughout the book will feel familiar to longtime Spirit Fitness Training members and inviting to prospective and new ones, revealing her philosophy and approach regarding full fitness. "Training Effects" also takes a candid look at how her profession functions today with a sharp eye for how it must up its game and better serve the millions of people that practice its programs.
Blackerby's book is also an engaging read that for all the trials she has faced leaves one with much the same sense of satisfaction and renewal that comes from a vigorous workout in which real progress is made.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781497318229
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	05/27/2014
Pages:	130
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

Joanne Blackerby was born in Kingston, Jamaica, the second child of five of a Chinese medical doctor father and a Trinidadian mother. Her family moved to the suburbs of Toronto, Canada when she was six years old, and then at age 12 to Dallas, Texas. Blackerby received a BA in Communications from Trinity University in San Antonio. With initial careers in college admissions and child social services, Joanne completed most of her work on a Masters in Social Work degree from the University of Texas (until motherhood intervened). She started Spirit Fitness Training as a home-based business in 1999. Joanne has been named both Fitness Trainer to Watch 2012 and The World's Top Personal Trainer. She is a nationally certified fitness professional and continuing education provider. Joanne and her husband, Chris live in Austin, Texas. They have three children: Caleb, Tyler and Bennett. "Training Effects" is her first of many books to follow.

Editorial Reviews

2014-08-07
In this debut memoir, a personal trainer shares how fitness helps in handling life's challenges, including her own.Blackerby's narrative begins with her father's ghost: She reprints portions of a letter he wrote in 1993, which asked her to write again "[i]f you feel so inclined," then briefly recounts his death by cancer, although his demise really began long before. "I know this now," she notes. "Life is merely a procession towards death, its meaning defined only by the results of our movement, our journey through it." She then describes her own journey, largely through the lens of her work as owner of Spirit Fitness Training in Austin, Texas. In chapters organized by exercise concepts ("Balance," "Breathe," "Triggers," "Pain," etc.) that often contain client stories, Blackerby explains how to find one's core, to persevere and to achieve "overload": "If we want growth in our lives, we must be willing to bear the stress and discomfort of the change we seek: Overload. If we do not achieve overload, we will not achieve growth." Blackerby established her company after a breakdown that followed a stormy past filled with abuse, racism and rape. Her doctor father was autocratic and abusive; her mother was timid and defeated; as a 6-year-old, she was repeatedly raped by a 15-year-old family friend; she was also raped twice in college; and her multiracial family experienced major upheaval when they had to leave their privileged existence in Jamaica for Canada and, eventually, America. Blackerby concludes her saga by recalling her grandmother, a positive force in her childhood, and with a poem of self-empowerment that ends: "See you at the gym." One can easily see how Blackerby must be a wonderful trainer. She demonstrates great empathy: Her encouragement of a retired widow seeking to climb to the heights of Machu Picchu is a particularly inspirational and heartwarming example. Blackerby is at times a bit elliptical relating her own rather overwhelming story, which may leave some readers wanting more. Overall, however, Blackerby has effectively harnessed the power of "muscle memory," providing a series of gracefully written vignettes from her own and others' lives to support a larger narrative trained on hope and recovery.An evocative, compelling account of childhood trauma and the strength of a mind-body connection.

Kirkus Reviews