Strength By Sophie

Hello friends!

I’ve been so so proud of everything the ladies I’ve been training with have achieved recently, and well…

Maybe it’s the hot weather we’ve been having, or I’m feeling a bit dehydrated, but I wanted to do something fab for you all.

See, ever since qualifying as a Personal Trainer, I knew what my mission was.

To help women of Nottingham wear the clothes they love again, to have their friends go “what have you been doing? You look great!”, move confidently without pain, and wear a strapless top again for the first time in years.

I want you to feel comfortable getting out of bed in the morning, walking upstairs without your knees aching, carrying shopping without struggling, enjoying holidays and days out without worrying about your body “giving up” halfway through, and moving through everyday life feeling strong, capable, and confident again.

After working with over 30 women, I know that it’s a common struggle to have ongoing aches, low energy, stiffness, and be frustrated, feeling like their body isn’t working with them anymore. It often makes exercise feel intimidating or even impossible to start.

That’s exactly why I do what I do — to support, guide, and empower women to rebuild strength, improve mobility, and move with confidence again.

You deserve to feel good in your body — not limited by it.

To celebrate the recent wins of my clients, losing weight, improving their health and reducing their own aches and pains I wanted to do something EPIC and do a giveaway for women in Nottingham.

My goal?
To guide 10 women (40–60) through a simple, supportive plan that helps them move more freely, feel stronger in everyday life, and reduce the aches and pains that are stopping them enjoying life fully.

We’ll focus on building real, functional strength in a safe and supportive environment using movements that actually carry over into daily life.

So, I invite you down to Real World Fitness (Colwick) for a free 90-minute Personal Training session.
(don’t worry, we won’t be working out for the whole time!)

What’s the catch? There is no catch.

I'm simply trying to promote awareness of my business in the local area by doing something for the community for free, and if it's good, I hope you'll leave a review and perhaps tell your friends and family about me!

But of course, if you'd like to hear more about my Personal Training services, all you have to do is ask 😉

If this sounds good and you'd like the full details, comment "ME" on this post and I'll reach out personally to you.

PS. I only have space for 10 sessions in my diary!

PPS. I'm closing this giveaway on Sunday.

Lizzie has made incredible progress over the last 5 months.

I asked her to leave me a review and when i read it, it made me smile with pride.

After a period of illness, Lizzie came to me wanting to get stronger and reduce her risk of injury. Despite it not being a main goal, she has also gone from being extremely nervous to step into a gym, to getting two sessions in a week on her own. And actually enjoying it!

When I met Lizzie, she had tried to start strength training on her own but struggled to know what to do and how best to do it and understood that she needed someone to guide her along.

Lizzie also lost 5kg since starting with me in February and fat loss wasn’t even her initial goal.

I wrote her a personalized program that would help her improve her strength, and support her climbing. we got to work on learning and perfecting the movements and slowly added in extra days to her program when she was ready and confident with the exercises.

She also became convinced I was secretly increasing the weights at least once a week (I usually wasn’t 👀)

Lizzie has learnt how to:

- Follow a program in her own gym and switch things around if things in the gym were taken
- Be confident enough to go in and get a gym session done
- Do the exercises she swore she couldn’t do — or definitely didn’t want to do — and realise she actually *could*

She also had:

- Whatsapp support which meant she could ask any question she wanted when she was training by herself
- 4 weekly reviews helped keep Lizzie on track and meant she always knew what to do next

Has it been hard work sometimes? ABSOLUTELY!

But just look at the result after 5 months!

Well done Lizzie, excited to see you keep progressing!

There’s so much about health and fitness that people never get shown — and having guidance can save years of confusion, mistakes, and second-guessing.

If you’d like some help to work out if you can achieve the same result, comment the word “BRAINSTORM” and let’s make a plan together.

No thoughts
Just buffering

The most mentally draining part of adulthood nobody talks about…

I feel like most of my conversations with friends — and even clients — are about the amount of decisions and tasks that have to be done on a daily basis.

Yeah, working full time is tiring — even if you do love your job.

But it’s everything else across the week that really takes it out of you.

The washing, the cleaning, the cooking, the appointments and everything else on top of it.

Realistically, if you only did things when you felt like it… they’d never get done.

A lot of people set certain days to do certain things, like washing on a Sunday.

But what about when you don’t have the same routine every week?

Planning in advance makes such a difference.

You can decide what needs to be done, when it can be done, and then put it in your calendar like it’s an appointment.

Monday — clean bathroom
Tuesday — wash bedsheets
Wednesday — hoover
Thursday — food shop
Sunday — clothes washing

Honestly, planning these things into my week took so much decision making out of it.

I stopped wasting time thinking about what to do, getting overwhelmed, and then sitting scrolling on my phone for an hour instead.

Life feels a lot less overwhelming when your brain doesn’t have to constantly decide what’s next

Decision fatigue doesn’t happen all at once.

It builds slowly across the week.

Tiny decisions drain mental energy:

what to wear

what to eat

what to reply to

what task to prioritise

whether to rest or be productive

Eventually your brain stops looking for the *best* decision…

and starts looking for the easiest.

That’s why overwhelm often looks like:

procrastination,

scrolling,

avoidance,

indecision,

or shutting down completely.

Sometimes the solution isn’t more discipline.

It’s reducing your mental load.

fatigue

How to stop your brain feeling overloaded all the time.

We think freedom = more options

But sometimes more options just create more mental noise.

the goal isn’t controlling every part of your life.

It’s about protecting your energy for the decisions that actually matter

Try out some of these things to help reduce the amount of small daily decisions you have to make.

1. Repeat the same meals
2. Outfit formulas
3. Planning tomorrow the night before
4. Having fewer tabs open
5. Setting defaults (I train at 7am)
6. Giving yourself less options
7. Having routines for boring tasks

Give it a go and let me know how you get on!

I’ve noticed my idea of “health” has changed a lot over the years.

When I started training 10 years ago, all I wanted was to be smaller and lose weight.

But the older I get, the more I realise how much more important other things are.

Now, I care far more about:
• Being strong
• Having sufficient muscle mass
• Having healthy bones
• Having enough energy to go about my day to day business
• Recovering well
• Getting 8-9 hours sleep
• The health of my hormones
• Living well for a long time

because I don’t just want to look healthy.
I want to feel strong.
I want to move well.
I want to have energy for life outside the gym.
I want to still be capable, independent, and active decades from now.

And honestly, shifting my mindset away from constantly trying to shrink my body has been one of the healthiest changes I’ve made.

Health looks very different to me now — and that’s a good thing. 💖

It’s been a week of PB’s!!! Test week this week after the last 6 week block and before a well needed few days away next week. Left with the sound on for some realness
Sunday - 5k PB with run club
Monday - back squat failed 1rep at 117.5 but got 1 rep at 115 (.fit said he’d sign a statement to say he didn’t touch the bar😂)
Tuesday - bench PB 1 rep at 62. Getting some tips and a bit of a confidence boost from ready for Jans comp
Wednesday - deadlift PB 140!!!! Chuffed as wanted to hit 140 for years and that’s over 2x bodyweight. Wednesdays moral support came from my friend Josh
Time to keep getting stronger 🫡