We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cornelia Gyura a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Cornelia, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

I am a former IFBB (Body Building) German- European- and World Champion from 1986. I always represented the female side of Body Building. Yes, in the 80s there were a couple of female looking body building girls. I was able to get big sponsors like Nike International, Multi Power ( Weider Europe) Nutrition, Galaxy high end fitness equipment. I was in every health and fitness magazine issue, on all the covers, inside as poster and I was one of the first Germans having a one whole page in the US Flex Magazine. I got really famous in Europe, financed my University degree (Diploma) in Economics, University of Heidelberg, on my own – independent of my parents. I was holding seminars and posing dances in front of thousands of people all over Europe, Japan, Kenya. I got them to stand on their chairs cheering. I loved to be famous – and yes, I have some narcissistic behavior patterns :-).

1993: I thought it was time to go into High Finance at Commerzbank Headquaters in Frankurt, Germany – switching from making money by having a perfect body to working with my brain: I speak fluently German, Hungarian and English. Eastern Europe just started to open up and barely anybody spoke Hungarian. Summarizing 3 years at the bank: women were mostly welcomed at the bank for bringing coffee, filing papers and serve the directors. Kindly said I had other ideas. And after being able to speak to our Commerzbank Board Member (who turned later CEO) and sharing what I saw internally going on inside the bank I decided to quit even though the Board Member promised me to take me under his wings. I could not. I already have canceled inside. But till today I am still into “banking and investing” on my own with my own money.

Fast forward 2005 : after owning a big gym in Germany for 8 years I decided with my husband that we had enough from German people’s negativity, slow moving decision making, clients who were always against every new fitness development I wanted to introduce to my gym and business suffocating laws. We were in the US every year twice for vacation – we loved it! Every time I had to leave Miami behind after vacation and saw the coast line disappearing on the Lufthansa flying back home to Frankfurt I was crying, really crying. Tears were running down my cheeks (doing it now too just by remembering the unbelievable sadness to having to leave my beloved USA).

Then in February 2005 everything fell into place and my husband and I made the decision: We sold everything we had in Germany and prayed that the money was enough to get started in Florida (Pompano Beach) with my Fit & Fight Private Gym, specialized in clients over 40 years. This was the biggest gamble I/we EVER took in my/ower lives.

We opened in August 2005 our small design gym: Fit & Fight Private Gym – 2 weeks later Wilma hit. And 2 months later Katherina hit. We survived it by turning around every single dollar. Then 2008/2009 the financial crises hit. We thought that would be the end, but our Jewish American Clients stepped up – and please do not forget we are Germans with our German Jewish history on our back – and told us that we were so special as trainers and as humans that we would deserve to get help. They were very, very wealthy. They allowed us to charge their credit cards for every amount we needed to survive. Jewish Clients helping us (Germans) to survive . My tears are running again by writing this. We had to promise these very special clients that if we would make it in America we would have to help other, new Immigrants who would also be a valued addition to America, to survive too. I never forgot that!
I am helping Americans with food addiction to change their life styles, to change their values in life – money is not everything – and see how their energy level is ascending by changing consumption and their exercises. I work with a couple of executives of the biggest companies in the world. And members of my gym – famous or not- HAVE TO workout min once a week. Otherwise I am canceling their memberships. Members at Fit & Fight have to realize when they sign up:
1. HEALTH is the most important in life,
2. without HEALTH you have nothing.
So exercising in my gym is not an option it is a must. I change habits of my clients. It takes an average of 3-4 months till client’s habits changed toward health.
I am into investments too – I love to discuss with my high powered banker clients investments and stocks. Bloomberg TV and the WSJ are part of my daily news update/ routine.
By the way: I saw in advance that inflation would rise to around 10% already in June 2020 when nobody predicted it – I am a Friedman Monetarist – and I saw till now no recession signs on my Google and Bloomberg data which I analyze twice a week.

Till today there was not a single minute in my/our life that we regretted to leave Germany behind and to settle in the USA. We both LOVE LOVE LOVE America – the natural beauty in the whole West US (we are travelling a lot there), New York, Miami and my beloved Washington. I never made it here in the US to the heights of my European fame -yet- and still we love to work and socialize with Americans – the ones who support Immigration, follow US law and support America’s superiority in the future through progressive development in all areas.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Most of above questions I already answered in the previous bloc. I started with weight exercise when I was 14 – very unusual in Germany in 1981. It was so unusual, that I was the only female in our Hardcore Professional Gym in Mannheim, Germany. I was too thin with 95 pound and 5.2″. I needed some body weight/muscle weight. That was the start of working out – my Mom Eva always by my side to make sure that I would be safe. :-))

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I already wrote the resilience part in the previous bloc. But: I learned through social media that feelings, hugs, body image, self respect are only possible though human to human contact. Not through social media. I am also not a huge fan of monitoring every data of your body – we all need to learn/relearn how our body is talking to us. We need to listen to symptoms, Pain means that something is wrong, something is not functioning and we should search for the reason of the pain and not just numb it with pain killers . We need to listen and hear what our body has to say. I had to go to lower spine surgery in 2019 – 210 pound deep squats for having the perfect butt in the 80’s destroyed my lower back. I had to learn to say “good bye” to heavy weights and change and adapt my workouts to my body’s needs. Till today that is not that easy for me. We need to learn to age without trying to compete with ourselves when we were 20. very hard – for me too. So I am teaching exactly that to my clients! I am also a Reiki Practitioner which taught me to calm down and let everything coming to me as it should. Also very hard for me – I am leader, I like control over my own life. I got my lessons through the Hurricanes and through the 2008 disaster.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.connygyura.com
• Instagram: connygyura
• Facebook: Conny Gyura, Secrets of a Personal Trainer
• Linkedin: Cornelia Gyura
• Youtube: Secrets of a Personal Trainer by Conny Gyura
• Yelp: Fit & Fight Gym Pompano Beach
• Other: Podcast: Secrets of a Personal trainer by Cornelia Gyura My book on Amazon: Secrets of a Personal Trainer by Cornelia Gyura

Image Credits
Photographer: Gabriel Cuesta, Soho_EStudio, Coral Springs and Kay Mueller, Weinheim Germany