SAANICH, BC
Training for the way Saanich actually uses its body
Big lots, long flat trails and one properly steep mountain. Here is what that combination does to a body over 50, and what I would train instead.
What sets Katie apart
The same hour, with me, wherever in the world you happen to be sitting.
- Private one-to-one coaching — never a group, never a video you follow along to
- Two live sessions a week, at times chosen around your week rather than a class timetable
- A plan built for your body, your history and what you actually want to be able to do
- Strength, mobility, balance, Pilates, yoga and restorative movement, in whatever mix the week calls for
- Nutrition and wellness guidance woven through the coaching, included rather than added on
- Someone who notices when something changes, and adjusts before it becomes a problem
Your garden is already coaching you, and it is doing a poor job
Big lots are what make this municipality what it is. Gordon Head, Cordova Bay, Broadmead, the streets running off Royal Oak. The houses sit on real ground, and real ground needs doing. Compost hauled up from the driveway. A hose that lives at the far end. Four hours on both knees the first Saturday the weather allows it.
That is a genuine physical demand and almost nobody here calls it exercise. The problem is the shape of it. All at once in April, nothing at all in December, the same three positions over and over, and never a single moment where you do something hard slowly and on purpose. A garden will keep you busy for thirty years. It will not make you stronger, and it is extremely good at finding whatever was already weak.
Getting down is easy. It is the getting back up.
Watch anybody past sixty stand up from a lawn and you have the entire story in four seconds. Down is fine. Up involves a hand on the raised bed, then a hand on the fence post, then a small private negotiation with the hip.
That is hip and thigh strength, ankle range and a bit of nerve, and all three answer to training faster than people expect. It is one of the most satisfying things to work on, because the change is not abstract. You either got up unaided or you did not, and you know which one happened this morning.
What Mount Doug tells you that the Lochside never will
The Lochside and the Goose are lovely and they are flat. You can walk an hour of either, feel you have done something substantial, and never ask a leg to produce real force. The loop around Elk and Beaver Lake is the same pleasant shape. Thousands of people here do exactly that most mornings, which is genuinely good for them.
Then there is the pitch up Mount Doug, or the steps down to Gyro at Cadboro Bay, or the climb back up from the beach at Cordova. Ninety seconds into any of those and you learn something the flat trail was never going to tell you. It is not that the flat walking was wasted. It is that it answered a different question, and the steep one is the question your knees are actually asking.
What the drive costs you, twice a week, in February
From Broadmead down into town at four o’clock on a wet Tuesday is a real piece of your evening. Add the parking, add finding the place, add getting home. Call it fifty minutes of moving around for a fifty-minute session.
Nobody quits training because the exercises are hard. They quit because the hour turned into two and a half, and the second half of it was traffic on Quadra. Training in your own house removes that entirely, and what it protects is not your calendar so much as your consistency in the fourth month, which is the only month that has ever mattered.
How a session works from your own living room
Twice a week, live, on video. Me watching you move and talking while you do it, not a recording and not a plan sent to your inbox. You need clear floor about the size of a bath towel and something to prop a screen on at roughly hip height.
I can see a knee drift inward on the way up out of a squat. I can see a heel lift, a shoulder hitch, a breath being held. So I stop you, name the one thing to change, and you do it again. Over an hour that loop happens dozens of times, and it is the reason this is coaching rather than a workout you happen to be doing while somebody watches.
The year, as Saanich actually lives it
Spring is the heavy one, so we build the hips and the back through the winter to meet it. Summer is walking and travel and grandchildren, so we keep the load steady and the sessions short enough that they survive August. Autumn is leaves and hauling and the first dark evenings. Winter is the stretch where most people quietly stop, so that is the stretch I plan hardest around.
None of it involves you becoming a person who trains. It involves the garden, the trail and the stairs getting easier while you carry on being exactly who you already are.
Let us get to work
A fifteen-minute call first. You tell me what has started feeling harder and what you want back, and I will tell you honestly whether I can help.
Then one session together before you commit to anything, so you find out what an hour with me is actually like. If it is not for you, we will both know inside a week and nothing is lost.
Work with me
How to start working together
Four simple steps. We start with a conversation, you experience what one-to-one coaching is like, and then we build your personalized plan.
A complimentary discovery call
We talk about your goals, your current situation and what you're looking for.
There's no pressure to commit.
Your first session is free
If we're a good fit, we'll train together so you can experience what personalized online personal training is actually like.
Receive Your Personalized Plan
Your workouts, nutrition guidance and goals are personalized to your body and your life.
Begin Training
We’ll train together, build your strength and fitness, and adjust your program as your body gets stronger and your goals evolve.
You’ll have a plan, a coach and the accountability to keep moving forward.
Start where you are. We build from there.
- We talk for fifteen minutes.
- We train together once, free.
- We build a plan that fits your week.
- We keep adjusting it for as long as it is working.
Book a discovery call and we will find out whether this is a fit.
Training in Saanich — questions
Do you come out to Saanich, or is this all remote?
All of it happens on a video call. I do not drive to houses and there is nowhere for you to drive to either.
Which, for a municipality this spread out, is most of the point. Cordova Bay to anywhere with a squat rack is a real journey twice a week, and that journey is usually the first thing to get dropped when the rain sets in. Take it out of the equation and the only thing left to organise is one clear hour.
I garden all summer. Does that not count as strength training?
It counts as work. It does not count as training, and the difference matters more than it sounds.
Gardening loads you hard for six weeks in spring and barely at all in December, keeps you in the same handful of positions, and never asks you to do something difficult slowly and on purpose. It will absolutely tire you out. What it will not do is build the hip and back strength that make the next April feel easier than the last one.
What equipment would I have to buy?
Nothing at all to begin with, and not much ever.
The first several weeks run on your own body weight, a dining chair and a wall. When you have earned it, a set of resistance bands. Later, one or two dumbbells at a weight I will pick once I have watched you lift. Things get added because the work stopped being hard enough, never because a new toy looks like progress.
How steep does this get? I am not looking to be an athlete.
Good, because that is not what I do. I will challenge you. I will not punish you.
An hour with me should leave you feeling like you have worked and still perfectly capable of getting on with your day. Turning up twice a week for years is what actually builds strength over 50, and nobody keeps turning up to something that wrecks them. Hard enough to matter, easy enough to repeat on Thursday.
Training from Saanich, wherever you are in it
Tell me what you would like to be able to do, and we will find out on a call whether I am the right person to help you get there.
Fifteen minutes, no cost and no pressure. If it sounds like a fit, your first session is free too — so you find out what the coaching is actually like before you commit to anything.