We were lucky to catch up with Bree Frazier recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Bree thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Is there a heartwarming story from your career that you look back on?

Im a personal trainer that specializes in strength and conditioning but before I was strictly a gym girl in the weights section, I was a yoga instructor. My most heartwarming memory is with one of my first clients who practiced yoga with me one on one. She had a personal trainer and a boxing instructor as well as working with me and we all collaborated together to work with her and her goals. She had trouble walking from a car crash years ago and she wanted to lose weight and move better. One day we were going through our yoga routine, which had a lot of balancing poses and she turns to me and goes..”I have feeling in my toes!” The amount of joy to know you have helped someone come back from injuries caused so many years ago with your colleagues and friends kind of makes you want to cry. Its like wow! You make a difference.

Bree, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi! My name is Bree and I grew up overseas in Thailand. I got into the personal training profession because I was always active in some way growing up. Once I went to college and transferred school two years in to a different state, that all kind of fell away. I was partying a lot, trying to find my people and went through a really deep depression because I missed home, my friends and my family overseas. My outlet was following workout videos on facebook (pre social media days) and creating a workout routine and structure for myself by combining videos that I liked. I can thank my sister into noticing progress in the gym and in my mood after a workout and she sparked the idea that maybe I should look into training people as a part time gig while in school. This led to me actually becoming a yoga instructor for a year before returning to a gym setting to train people. This part time gig eventually became a full time gig once I moved to NYC.

My main goal with my in person clients is to push them to become stronger, both physically and mentally. NYC is notoriously known to be a stressful place so I strive to provide a driven but laid back atmosphere for my clients to come and workout and work on themselves without added pressure of being a trainer that is like a drill sergeant.

Im really proud to have been doing this for ten years now! I truly enjoy the people I train and getting to know them and what makes them tick to keep coming into the gym. It’s really humbling to have these relationships for that long and having people trust you to take care of them. Its sort of like pinch me, sometimes I feel like I cant take care of myself but then you look around and its all about consistency and outlook, which fitness greatly helps with. Im looking forward to expanding my training online with programming and would love for anyone to check out my fitness app launching in a few months if you aren’t in the NYC area!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I came to NYC with $100 and ghosted my family for three months to become a personal trainer. There are 10000% better ways to have done this but when I was young I didnt want my parents to persuade me to move back to Thailand and miss the opportunity of trying to ‘make it’ in NY. I stayed at a friends house who traveled a lot throughout the year, got a job at a luxury gym that paid pennies, moved into project housing with coworkers who also werent making much when said friend lost their job, moved into a bedbug infested apartment unknowingly and lost all my furniture, started taking clients privately because I was determined not to be living in terrible housing and got a second job doing alcohol tastings at night and finally after another year managed to live in my own apartment. Thats what I mean when NY is chaotic. it can be uncertain if you have no support but if you set a goal for yourself and are serious about it, it may take time and a few emotionally and financially frustrating mishaps to get there. Time and grit will 100% get you there.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

People think personal training or the fitness industry is very saturated. Its true! However, instead of seeing other trainers as competition, its helped to collaborate with other trainers and learn from each other. Many trainers, including myself refer people we cant add to our roster to other trainers because we respect their training style and energy and by doing so it creates a sense of community and our clients are always well taken care of.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: bree.t.frazier

Image Credits

Victor Bustos