We were lucky to catch up with Tamara Nisanov recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tamara, thanks for joining us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

I started my health and wellness professional career about seven years ago. That began after my mom passed away. When my mom was alive and battling cancer, I started taking better care of myself to take better care of her and it improved our relationship and inspired my desire to stay fit and strong, mentally and physically. After she passed away, it was such a difficult time in my life but I continued to exercise consistently and I began to feel happy again so I asked my fitness instructor, “How can I do what you do?”. I wanted to help others feel better through fitness like it helped me. The same year my mom passed away I became a certified fitness instructor and the next year got my personal training certification. Ever since then, I’ve been truly passionate about helping my clients and it has been my mission to help others move better, feel better and look better through gaining confidence, strength and improved performance in their movements. I’ve actually developed into a niche of clients 65 years old plus and in a sense it’s a continuation of me helping my mom when I work with this clientele. Sometimes really challenging situations bring about in you a desire that could turn into a honed skill set and a professional career. I miss my mom and at the same time I love what I do. Through this experience I’ve found my passion.

Tamara, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a Personal Trainer, Fitness Instructor, Nutrition Coach and Corporate Wellness Coach. I provide fitness, health and wellness coaching and training to clients, individuals and companies. I mainly work with clients as their personal trainer, creating individualized fitness and exercise programs for them to achieve their goals. Most often people have aesthetic goals, they want to look good in their clothes and feel better in their bodies. Sometimes people want to avoid pain and move better, especially my clients who are 65+. The exciting part of what I do is helping all my clients improve their performance in their movements, become more functional, get stronger and then the results of those achievements help them look good and gain confidence. As my clients gain skills and progress, they become more aware of how they move through the world and they use what they practice in our training sessions in their daily lives.
What differentiates me from other trainers is that I am extremely detail oriented, focus on the whole body in functional movements and empower my clients. My clients are my students and what they’re learning is how to use their body better as well as their mind; since I have a background in mental health and psychological counseling, I bring mindset into my movement and fitness training. It brings me so much joy to hear my clients tell me that they felt better in their everyday lives, whether it’s with balance or picking up their dog to walk up stairs, or lifting their grandchild and not having back pain. This is what makes the hard work worth it. I challenge my clients so their bodies can adapt and improve, this means training isn’t a piece of cake but it is fun. We focus on the client’s goals so they can stay happy and then I use various fitness variables to make the program work for them and as they improve, they progress and when people see progress, it inspires them to continue and makes being and feeling strong a lifelong habit.

The other differentiator is that I understand mindset through my psychology background and it makes a huge difference in fitness. Not everyone will have the most energy to exercise every day and sometimes people are in pain or just not happy and I’m attuned to that so we adapt when necessary. If lack of confidence is impacting performance, we discuss that so my clients can be more focused and open to the movement, no matter what comes. As long as they do their best, it’s all that matters. If my clients don’t perform well, I help them understand that it’s a wealth of knowledge we’re gaining from that performance and peeling the onion to show us what we have to improve. There are always lessons to be learned and since I’m in tune with my clients and open communication is a main foundation of my training, we discuss the mental to help the physical. This is a unique blend for this profession and I am proud to be able to use my care and unique skills with the people I help.

Another focus that is very important is that I meet every client at their baseline by assessing them when we begin. We don’t focus on comparing them to others yet we do focus on comparing their current performance to their future improved performance, utilizing the idea that “if we know better, we do better”. So the training is very accessible, clients feel comfortable when I ask them to do something new because they are fully capable and they know I wouldn’t have them do something they couldn’t do. Helping my clients feel successful is really important because everyone wants to feel successful. When my clients can perform a movement well, they feel confident as they perform it and their body stays pain free and we work on eliminating potential pain or injury which is huge because we can’t really look good if we’re in pain. I’ve been able to eliminate chronic pain from my clients through focusing on their bodies from head to toe, literally, since I train my clients barefoot so they can feel the ground beneath them which results in moving better, being more engaged and finding better balance.

The pandemic has helped me develop into training clients online so that no matter where we are around the world, we can train together. I provide specific verbal and visual cues so even virtually, my clients know what they have to do and perform beautifully. In addition to my 65 year old+ clientele, I also train pregnant and postpartum women or women who want to become pregnant, in essence the children of my 65+ clients. I started on that journey a few years ago when I got pregnant with my son who is now almost 2 years old. I knew that being strong during pregnancy had so many benefits for mama and baby that I became a certified pre/postnatal fitness professional. I have two options for pre/post partum clients to work with me, either virtually one on one training or through the on demand fitness programs I offer on my website. I have even worked with a personal training client one on one solely virtually through her entire pregnancy experience, before she became pregnant, the whole 9 months and up until now, 6 months postpartum. Through our daily training, I helped her feel strong, confident and safe. She looks amazing and feels good in her body. As she’s recovered post partum, she’s come back to her pre-pregnancy body, which is spectacular and she’s confident and pain free as she moves around lifting and carrying her quickly growing baby. We’re lucky to be able to work virtually since we don’t live in the same state and although we’ve never trained in person, her results speak for themselves: she doesn’t have back pain anymore, which she had for over a decade and she’s built her strength and confidence performing movements successfully that she’s wanted to achieve for years.

I am most proud of helping my clients learn how to move their bodies better throughout their everyday lives because truly that’s what matters. Our training sessions impact the rest of their life so I use the few hours a week we train to inform the rest of the hundreds of hours a week they have. It’s a continuous dialogue of their goals, their desires, how they feel, what they want to do in their lives and I, as their trainer, help them achieve all of it through our open communication, partnership and consistent work together.

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

Truly caring and wanting to help people is what is most important for success. If you don’t care about people or don’t care about truly helping them, you won’t do the hard work it takes to help them. The hard work is being focused, honing in on the details, having open dialogue every day when you train them, improving your fitness programs, not letting your clients stay stagnant, and always wanting to do better for your clients and for yourself. The passion for truly helping clients achieve their goals, and staying focused on that, is essential because if you lose track of that, you won’t be able to maintain your clients for the long term and they won’t make improvements and the worst is that you may injure them. When you really care about helping people in this field, you will be adaptable in the way you teach them and in making their goals the priority. When this happens, the reward for the trainer, which I feel every day, is that your client actually learns something, they feel better, they become happier and they move through their world with confidence rather than fear or doubt. That is the joy I feel because I truly care and I am so happy and grateful that my clients trust my philosophy and commit to the dedicated work it takes to achieve their goals and create longevity.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

Not at all! Being able to change the lives of my clients is so rewarding. I have a graduate degree in mental health counseling and being able to use this knowledge to blend the mental with physical when training my clients is a wonderful experience. I get to witness how my clients not only feel better in their bodies but also happier in their minds. I would always choose this profession and continue to do the best I can with my clients.

Contact Info:

• Website: TamaraNisanov.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/tamaranisanov
• Facebook: facebook.com/tamara.nisanov
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/tamaranisanov
• Other: https://tamara-nisanov-personal-trainer-fitness-and.business.site/