We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Caprice O’Bryant a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Caprice, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My parents never spoke fear into my big dreams, ideas or goals. I believe that is one of the million things they did right. I’m confident that what they instilled in me allowed me to become relentless in my pursuit to create opportunities for myself! I was able to open my own gym at 22 years old because I simply believed that I could. Although I know that even if I did experience persistent naysayers I would have still went the same route but my parents made it a point to encourage, uplift and support me. I am forever grateful because I know that not everyone gets that opportunity.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am the proud founder of Excuse Free Fitness! We are an online fitness coaching and consulting company. We serve women looking to get fit for the calling on their life without dieting by teaching them how to combine faith & fitness. Our signature program, Prayers Up, Weight Down was born from my first book: a 30 day devotional to releasing what is weighing you down. We also partner with corporations to bring more wellness to their workplace and increase employee satisfaction and engagement by teaching them how to eat well, move well and work well. I got into the fitness industry about 11 years ago, shortly after I had a seizure, hit my head and woke up in the hospital and didn’t know my name. Navigating newly diagnosed Epilepsy and retrograde amnesia created lots of challenges for me and I was determined to not just give up on life. The discouragement from constantly hearing no was starting to get to me. (No to going to work, school, concerts, or anywhere alone). So my dad took me to the gym! It was the yes I was able to give myself. Yes I can walk, run, lift weights, do yoga. It changed my entire outlook on life and I wanted other people to experience what was lighting up my day. I felt like if I can forget about my excuses of Epilepsy then I can help others get rid of their excuses too and not let anything get in the way of their wellness! Since going online in 2019, we’ve been on a mission to get as many women as possible on team no excuses to lead more healthy and fulfilling lives!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn that self-care was just for the weekend and needed to be this grandiose event. Unfortunately, it took life forcing me to slow down to truly understand the value of self-care and the consequences for not practicing it. I was so burnt out and my idea of self-care was a charcoal mask from Target. Then at the height of the pandemic I decided to study it and actually learn all of the 8 different areas of self-care. I interviewed experts and really did my homework. This experience opened my eyes to understand why there are so many people in corporate operating in dis-ease. It’s because we are not practicing enough self-care. We have started to believe that rest is a reward, which just is not true. So I began a series called “Self-Care is Not Just For Saturday”. I now believe that if I’m alive everyday, then I should be practicing self-care everyday. It doesn’t have to be a $150 massage, it can be 15 minutes of knitting because that brings you joy and regulates your nervous system :)

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

As cliche as it sounds, I believe that being myself and actually loving what I do helped me build my reputation. I was the personal trainer that was bouncing off the walls excited about your goals and this was without energy drinks. My clients really knew that I cared, I was prepared every session and I was invested in their goals right along with them!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.excusefreefitness.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachcaprice/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/capriceobryant/

Image Credits

Derek Lindsay is the photographer for the first photo submitted. I have permission to use that photo and the other photos.