A Bit About Me

Hello!  Welcome to Fit by Hanna.  Health and fitness have been a passion of mine for quite some time now. I am a certified personal trainer, certified yoga teacher (200 hour RYT), and am currently working on an additional nutrition certification.  I am also a huge foodie so I love to make delicious, macro friendly creations. I would call them recipes, but most of the time I just throw ingredients together, and it works. While healthful food is a newer interest , activity has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I have been an active person my whole life.  My mom was an acrobat teacher at our local dance studio, so naturally I was a dancer and her young assistant.  With all my time spent in the studio, II was doing cartwheels and back bends by age 4.  In addition to dance and acrobats, I got into softball at an early age. I was a tomboy that always wanted to be outside, play kickball, climb trees and ride bikes with my neighborhood friends.  Being a dancer, I also loved choreographing routines with friends.  My sister had a Spice Girl themed birthday party one year and of course I was Sporty Spice.  To say that I loved athletics from a young age is an understatement.

In middle school I was still involved with dance, but was also participating in school sports.  However, I enjoyed the sports more so I ended my dance career.  I played school volleyball, swam, and played on a club volleyball team as well.  When high school came, I played volleyball, cheered, swam, and even pole vaulted one track season.  I chose cheerleading over all the sports.  I was on an all-star cheerleading team as well.  With my love and history of performing, cheerleading became my main passion. Outside of practice, I started to go to the weight room from time to time and did conditioning for cheerleading.  To condition, I mainly walked or ran on the treadmill and did a million crunches, but cardio was all I was informed about to enhance my performance as an athlete.

When I got to college, I cheered at The University of Toledo where we did more conditioning and working out.  I met someone that was heavily interested in lifting, which expanded my horizons greatly.  I did want to major in something nutrition or sports related, but quickly and with lots of money later, I learned that college was not for me.  I did end up going to a personal training trade school that I LOVED.  While at my personal training school, one of my instructors introduced me to hot yoga.  I fell in love instantly. When asked if any of us had ever done yoga, we brushed it off as an easy workout.  He took us to a hot power class and it was incredible; the mind- muscle connection you can create and concentrate on is awesome.

I finished my personal training school, began training a few clients, and started teaching a few different types of classes for about a year or so.  I decided I wanted to try college again for a dietetics degree, moved to Columbus but then remembered that college was still just not for me.   I was still working out myself, trying new things like Crossfit, but not training clients.  I took a bit of a fitness hiatus for a couple years while I was working in the bar scene, working late hours.  I would go to the gym randomly, but never a consistent schedule with my work agenda.

A few years went by and I found a yoga studio in Columbus that I loved and clicked with.  I joined the studio’s yoga teacher training and got my own teacher certification.  I was still a bartender but I began working out a little more consistently.  After I became more motivated to work out, I met my now husband who also has a passion for fitness and health, so gym dates became a regular thing.  

He and I moved to Florida for about a year and went to the gym, but not consistently.  We drank a little too much and did not care what we were eating, so I put on a few too many unhealthy pounds.  I also gained some weight during the COVID-19 lock down due to lack of exercise, drinking wine (lots of wine) and home cooking too many meals that were not-so macro friendly.  When we moved back to Ohio, we started on a regular gym schedule and I started to fall back in love with fitness.  Because of this, I decided I wanted to pursue training for myself and help others with their journey once again.

I started teaching a couple classes at my local gym and about a year later I launched ‘Fit by Hanna’, where I started taking on clients again.  At the gym, I was also asked to take over the SilverSneakers class that I very much enjoy.  It is inspiring to see my ‘older adults’ come to class each time and want to continue to stay healthy, active, and social.  I do have in-person clients, but my goal is to reach as many people as I can virtually to help them with their fitness and health journey from any location.

Currently, I wear a couple hats.  I am a lunch lady at my local intermediate school (grades 3-6).  I never thought in a million years that I would be a lunch lady but I absolutely love it.  The work schedule still allows me to do all of my training and coaching; I have a few in person clients that I train, I teach SilverSneakers 2 days a week (SilverSneakers is a fitness program offered to senior citizens through their healthcare plan, and I teach my local high school football team yoga every Saturday morning.  Additionally, I just signed up to help with an after school program for our kids where two days I will teach a cooking class with them and one day I will instruct them in a fitness/yoga class.  I also have some other yoga opportunities on my radar with teachers and coaches.

My fitness journey has been quite a rollercoaster throughout the course of learning, growing, and now teaching.  I am so excited to see where my experiences can enhance my abilities as a teacher and a student. Fall in love with fitness with Fit by Hanna :)