Andrea Taliana

During high school, I was a part of every sports team, not that I was good at every one of the sports I played… except for Taekwondo. Taekwondo was the sport I enjoyed. Throughout the grading and working my way up to Black belt, I got the opportunity to instruct the lower belts. During high school I really enjoyed being active and loved challenging myself. I enjoyed being active so much that after school I would walk the 25 minutes home from the train station and then throw on a Denise Austin or Oz Aerobics VHS to finish. I guess you could say Denise was the person who first introduced me to exercise. I can still remember her “isometric hold…. Hold… hold… squeeze”. With a combination of Taekwondo and Denise, I started training at a gym. I used to get the train to my local gym in Thomostown after school and hit the weights in the female gym. I loved it!

Granted I had no idea what I was doing, none the less I LOVED IT.

Once I finished high school all I wanted to become was a Personal Trainer, but was always talked out of it. People would always tell me that “it’s not a real job”, “you can’t make a living out of it” and “it’s just a phase you are going through”. So instead, I studied to receive a Certificate III in Children Services and then my Diploma in Interior Design, I decided to move to the USA to become an Au Pair and study Interior Design further.

It was in the USA that I had my very first Personal Trainer Schaun Tez at Gold’s Gym. I was approached by another trainer, Big Mike, one day who lost it at me. You see I use to train 6 days a week, with zero consistency, training the same muscles just about every day. He pointed to Schaun and said, “Go speak to Schaun, he will get you results” and that he did. I had never been stronger and leaner in my life. Schaun, insisted I get my Personal Training qualifications and work for him, but the same negative comments about becoming a Personal Trainer from numerous people still resonated in the back of my mind and I declined the offer.

I moved back to home to Melbourne and continued what I had learnt from Schaun and kept training hard. After only 15 months back in Oz, I moved back to the USA to study interior design again. While Studying Interior Design as a major, I decided to minor in Fitness at college. I loved it, and again I saw massive changes with my body and was learning so much. I loved pushing myself at the gym and trying new exercises I would read about in Oxygen and Fitness