We were lucky to catch up with Ediva Zanker recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ediva , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Creating a trauma informed boxing modality is not something I knew I was going to do. It was something that I decided to pursue after experiencing trauma myself. About 3.5 years ago I found myself in an unstable relationship with someone who ended up being violent. One of the scariest and most proud moments in my life was when I called the police when my ex-boyfriend attacked me. From that day, I went through a long healing process with EMDR therapy to help with the PTSD. But I knew that I would need many methods of healing besides just therapy. I turned to boxing as an outlet to help me process the trauma and move through it in my body. When I realized just how cathartic it could be for me, I knew I wanted to give that feeling to as many people as possible. I decided that I could help other survivors of assault or DV move through their pain as well. The mission for my modality is to create a safe trauma informed space / class for other survivors who are looking to connect with their authenticity.

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?

I started boxing at Syracuse University on the club team. As one of the few females on the team, I didn’t let it discourage me from continuing to show up to the practices. I always had a mentality that I could do anything that anyone else on the team could do, no matter my gender. My senior year I competed in boxing nationals from my school and continued pursuing boxing when I moved to NYC. I took countless boxing classes at different studios, and fell in love with the boutique fitness industry. In 2019, I partnered with my family to start our own boxing concept called GRIT BXNG. It’s a very unique brand that’s 50 minutes of boxing, treadmills and weights in a nightclub setting. We have a full liquor bar post class to keep the community connected. We closed briefly during the pandemic when all fitness studios were ordered to shut down, but made it out stronger than ever. I am extremely proud of starting a business that helps make fitness fun.

After going through trauma, I realized that there is an entire population of people who can use fitness for fun, but also to heal. I learned that I could process my feelings of shame and powerlessness by coming together with others who have gone through something similar. I started teaching my own modality of trauma informed boxing classes as a result.

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

There was a very memorable week in my business where I remember everything was going wrong. First, we had someone come into our studio and steal all of the beautiful retail items we had worked so hard to get designed and manufactured. It was thousands of dollars of revenue lost that the police were never able to recover. Then we had an issue with our plumbing, and the entire downstairs of our studio started flooding while people were upstairs in classes. There was a couple inches of water destroying the downstairs floors and everyone had their items in lockers. That same week a girl lost her diamond earring down the sink drain in our bathroom, so I worked with plumbers to get her diamond earring back. It felt like one disaster after another and all of these things were completely out of my control. I definitely broke down multiple times while these things were happening, but I kept going because I knew how much the classes and the studio meant to the class participants. Whenever things get hard, always keep your consumer in mind and your reason for doing what you’re doing.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The pandemic was a struggle for us in the fitness world. I will never ever forget the day we left NYC, closed our doors and put up a sign on the door that said “We will reopen next week.” Little did we know that we’d be closing our doors for about a year and a half. During the pandemic, virtual fitness was blowing up and we saw the rise of Peloton and Fightcamp etc. We still wanted to stay true to our brand of community and relationship building. I did this by remaining as true to the brand as possible even when we closed. For example, I wrote handwritten notes to a lot of our top clients because I really cared about making sure they felt like we were still thinking about them. I led virtual runs where we could all track our paces together and donated the number of mileage people ran as a dollar amount to charity. I even started Instagram lives where I had various celebrities participate in our lives with us, like Ashley I. from the bachelorette. I also started a YouTube channel where I posted free shadowboxing workouts for friends and clients. My advice when pivoting is to always stay true to your brand ethos and people will continue to follow you no matter what.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shes-got-grit.squarespace.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ediva-zanker
• Other: Email [email protected]