Even before my diagnosis, I had always been a big supporter of CRY and their work, so when I was diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White in April 2016, I just knew I had to give back to them for all of their amazing support. I am a fully qualified Personal Trainer & Nutritionist and run my own fitness company on the Isle of Man so it was a no-brainer that my fundraising event would be something fitness related. As I am still undergoing treatment for my condition I wasn’t able to take part in my events, but I organised and ran each and every session.
I decided to run a charity week, whereby, my 1 to 1 personal training sessions would be free of charge, however it would be up to my clients to decide whether or not to donate to CRY, so I was massively overwhelmed when each of my clients donated the full session fee (£25). I also ran 3 charity classes at my local gym, Quay Fitness. I ran a charity ab attack class (and was made up to see so many people turn up at 9 am on a Saturday for it!), a bums, legs & tums class and I finished my charity week with a good old circuits class, however with a twist – with Christmas so close, I made my circuits Christmas themed, based all of the stations on festive things (my ‘Tinsel Twister’ station was Russian twists and my ‘Load the Sled’ station, was shuttle runs.. the list goes on!) and asked everyone to bring their Santa hats along, however they soon came off once everyone started working hard!
Fitness has always been and will always be my passion, so when I was first diagnosed, it was hard to come to terms with the fact that I may no longer be able to keep up my fitness/personal training as I had done beforehand. However, thanks to the support of my amazing fiance, family and friends and under the close watch of my cardiologist, I soon bounced back to my regular ways, but focusing more on pushing my clients hard, than pushing myself! I was so made up to have so many people asking about CRY and their work, it was great to be able to raise awareness and support for CRY, even to people who didn’t take part in any of my charity week activities.
As a personal trainer, educating people on how to live a healthy life is SO important to me and if I can also teach them how to have a healthy heart, then that is even better. I still face my everyday battle with WPW, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help other people along the way by raising awareness on the importance on having your heart checked out. The work CRY do is incredible and of course, so close to home, I look forward to supporting them again in the future.
Kesha Watson
