Andrea
Andrea brings over a decade of coaching experience and a deeply personal passion for health and fitness. She’s helped clients do everything from lose weight and clean up their nutrition to run marathons and, yes, even touch their toes. But for her, the most meaningful wins are the ones where someone finally feels confident in their own skin.
With a background in college softball, roller derby, figure competitions, and marathon running...including qualifying for the Boston Marathon... Andrea knows what it means to chase big goals. As a long-time vegetarian and holistic nutritionist, she’s also well-versed in how food choices fuel both performance and long-term health. She loves helping clients find doable, sustainable habits, especially when it comes to simplifying nutrition or fitting training into a busy, family-filled schedule.
Andrea’s coaching style is rooted in support, structure, and contagious positivity. She’s the coach who’ll cheer you on every step of the way...and also help you map out your schedule to make sure it actually happens. Whether you’re chasing a pull-up or learning to eat without guilt, she believes the best changes happen when you take it one win at a time.
Credentials:
Certified Personal Trainer (CPT)
Holistic Nutritionist
Pilates Mat & Reformer Instructor
omg! I’ve got a chronic joint condition where, among other things, a few of my spinal discs are fused in my lower back.
Many other experts told me, there’s no way of doing certain exercises properly if I can’t bend over or stand in a very particular way… but your alternative with laying prone on a bench is basically just what I was looking for!!!
Now I’m really interested in getting the rest of your arm burners set, if the extra options included are all like this!
I use a wheelchair to get around, manual of course for the workout, but unless I go around backwards (which i sometimes do for a while in my “jogs”), my triceps only get worked on steep hills. Already aware of the risks in uneven development, I had been looking into ways to build my upper body strength more evenly.
I’ve already got a pull-up bar, since that doesn’t put the same kind of strain on my back and leg joints as a push-up, and I already knew the posture and so forth from karate classes years ago. So that way I can build my strength even when I can’t make it outdoors.
But your resources have gotten me thinking about trying to incorporate other kinds of postures too, and maybe developing workouts that involve switching between them. Which is great, because I thought I’d have to find a gym with a trainer who actually knew things about working with wheelchairs before i could diversify my options. I’ve had too many bad experiences with trainers who just winged-it with this or that lift/posture and I ended up temporarily dislocating a shoulder! Which bruised for weeks afterwards, despite popping back in immediately. So I’m very wary about trying someplace new now.
Your earlier article about foam rollers also helped me a lot – I had already been massaging most of the locations in most of the ways you mention, but only finding very temporary relief (my joint condition is also known to cause muscles to overcompensate for weak connective tissue).
But your tips helped me find the couple of areas I had been missing (such as going under the armpit as well as around the rotator cuff – which naturally gets a lot of working out in a wheelchair!) and it’s helped me get longer-lasting relief from joint tension as a result. Certainly far more effective than the “reach round your back and grab your hand and pull with both arms” stationary type stretches I had learned in karate class!
Sorry for this getting a little long, haha. I’m just very appreciative for your inclusion of altered postures at all, it really increases the accessibility of all these exercises. So many “exercises you can do at home!” videos and blog posts are not an option due to my disability, so seeing you accommodate different needs is a real breath of fresh air. It’s much nicer than having to wait for a special “no standing!” video to come out. Thanks again.
Hi Kaitlyn So glad the article helped! Sorry I missed this comment before! Always ways to tweak things to meet our needs so we can get in a killer workout and the results we want. Definitely if you haven’t already also check out my seated exercises video on youtube. Just even more amazing upper body, and even cardio and core moves there! 🙂 Always here to help if you have any questions!
Is it true that if you need to modify the bent over row exercise that you “just shouldn’t do it” bc the modification (for example, where we put one leg on the bench), puts uneven pressure on the hips? I really love your modifications they seem to not bother my low back as much, but want to understand if I’m actually getting the same strength effects or if I need to just not do this exercise in the long term. Thanks so much!
I like to do a unilateral variation when putting a knee on the bench to help brace, which then shouldn’t be a bad “uneven” pressure?