I'm often asked the question in the room:
«What sports did you play when you were little?»
And the answer is... a bit of everything.
Hockey, football, netball. We also did athletics at school, and I did pretty well. But if I'm honest, all my report cards said the same thing:
she could excel if she applied herself more.
Actually, I never really fell in love with any of those sports. The gym was the first thing that really clicked.
In my mind, there's no competition with others. It's just you, your music, and that incredibly satisfying feeling after the effort, when you know you've really worked hard.
Even so, sport continued to guide my life after school.
I was desperate to leave the UK, so I trained as a scuba diving instructor and spent my first summer away from home at Gozo, a small island in the Mediterranean.
It's also where I discovered that I loved teaching.
Try convincing someone to take off their mask underwater and exhale gently. You learn very quickly to build trust.
After a busy season of work and my instructor's diploma in hand, I swapped the sea for the mountains.
My first winter in the Alps, in 2013, completely hooked me. I settled in Samoëns in 2014, and that's really where this new chapter in my life began.
Everything seemed right.
Then life took my breath away a little. During the second lockdown, at the end of 2020, my dad died. It was a real shock.
I went back to Wales for a month and now I can see that I was just looking for something to hold on to.
Something solid. Something to stabilize me. So I hired a personal trainer. And it changed everything.
For four years, I trained with Ian Mellor at Project Performance, Morzine. He literally pulled me through the worst period of my life by pushing me to discover a strength and physical condition that I didn't even know I had.
Nothing complicated. Just come. Lift heavy. Repeat. There's something strangely powerful about fighting under a barbell. It silences everything else.
Somewhere along the way, the idea of becoming a coach began to take root. Which meant learning in French, which was… slightly terrifying.
Building the room, completing the training, six very intense months trying to understand everything and not panic every time I had to speak. But I made it and Uplift too.
Today, I help other people to rediscover that same feeling that I discovered almost by chance - feeling capable, strong, supported by your own body.
If you need something to hold on to, we're here.
And if you want to find out what you're really capable of, come and train with us.