Tiana Turner

I've been in the fitness industry for going on 4 years now, and my journey started from my own fitness experience. I did a lot of sports in high school, and when I got to college, I was originally a nursing student at Liberty University. I started getting in the gym and it just started to resonate with me. Everyone was telling me I should be a trainer or do health and fitness, but I was so focused on my nursing path. Eventually, I realized nursing probably wasn't the pathway I wanted to take, so I switched over to fitness. Currently, I work as a wellness coordinator and personal trainer at the YMCA of Central Virginia, Jamerson branch, where I'm also the head trainer. I have around 14 clients right now, ranging from mid-age to older, with my oldest client being 92 years old. My typical day varies - on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I have my client-loaded days with anywhere between 5 to 7 clients, doing a lot of back-to-back training. On admin days, I coordinate wellness programs for our members, work with other wellness coordinators and directors at the other YMCAs under our organization, coordinate events for our trainers to get them more clientele, help with onboarding and scheduling, and do auditing for our personal training packages. The wellness portion of my role came from working with my clients and seeing the YMCA's beautiful mission about community and helping people get plugged into life, not just in the gym itself, but through group fitness, aquatics, and community events. On the entrepreneurship side, I have a fitness apparel brand for Christian women called God Girl Fit, focused on building women inside and outside the gym. I also do online personal training on the side of the Y, so I'm doing both online and in-person training. In the next 5 years, I would love to continue personal training and grow my clothing brand to a good sizable community, having women being brought together through faith and fitness.