Beating the bulge!

FITNESS fanatic Anoeska Drent is on a one-woman mission to help Bahrain residents beat the battle-of-the-bulge and get in shape.

Entrepreneurial Anoeska, 33, from Riffa Views, balances her time between heading marketing at Fashion Funding N.V and her latest venture, Skinny B Bahrain personal training.

Her main goal is to get people in shape and she admits the sessions are going to be challenging, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be fun too.

She said: “In the beginning you will feel like you suck. You will feel tired and clumsy and useless. You will be wrong. You do not suck, it’s the people at home on the couch eating bad foods watching TV who suck. Soon you will feel better; you will feel healthier, more competent and strong. You will feel alive.

“Your physical limits are in your head and it’s my job as a trainer to make sure you don’t go past your physical limits and hurt yourself, and between the mental and physical limits, close the gap.”

Anoeska is just as flexible with the location of her training sessions as she is in her training sessions.

She said: “Some of my clients are Arab ladies who don’t want to go to a gym so I go to their homes and we do the session there. Since my fitness programme doesn’t involve machines I sometimes hold classes at the beach too.

“My style is a mixture of dance, yoga and martial arts training and a typical session can burn over 500 calories.”

As far as the pint-sized Tortola native’s credentials go, they are as varied as her training sessions. She has an extensive background in yoga, kickboxing and Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics and music.

“This session will be hard. This session will always be hard. No, it never gets easy. Your body adapts because we stress it. But you will feel better, because you will have done difficult things you thought you couldn’t do.

“At some point during this set you will want to stop. I will quietly say no, keep going and never mind, I know first aid!”

Anoeska’s initial sessions proved so popular, she was asked not to hold them at her local gym anymore because the gym’s customers were requesting her instead of the in-house trainers.

“I took it as a compliment really,” she explained. “I must be doing something right because lots of people from the gym now take my sessions instead.”

She is currently in negotiation to set up a purpose-built facility. Her sessions cost BD15 for one hour. For details, visit www.facebook.com/SkinnyBbahrain

Assistant Editor Charlie Holding puts Anoeska’s Skinny B prowess to the test.

Like countless other people, come New Year I make a resolution to get in shape, go to the gym, eat healthy and make a positive change to my life.

Well, this year, it wasn’t just hot air – I finally made a start.

I ditched the McDonald’s breakfasts, started utilising the fruit and vegetable sections of the supermarket and bought my body weight in whey protein powder.

Admittedly, it has been a slow progression, but the journey of a thousand miles starts with but a single step, right?

My first gym session was abysmal, I struggled to lift a 10kg dumbbell more than 10 times and almost collapsed on the treadmill after 15 minutes. I genuinely thought I was going to die and the janitor would find me slumped over with the Rocky theme tune still playing on repeat on my iPod.

I’ve come a long way since then. OK, I still don’t look like a Greek god, but I’ve put on 6kg of lean muscle in the last month and I thought I was in pretty good shape … then I met Anoeska.

Don’t let her diminutive size throw you, this petite punisher is tough as nails and fighting fit.

She invited me to try one of her sessions and I felt pretty confident I could handle it. I’d been lifting some heavy weights in the gym and thought to myself, how tough could this little lady’s class be? In a word, VERY.

No machines, no weights, just resistance and high intensity interval training, but in one hour, she worked every muscle in my body, in fact, she worked muscles I didn’t even know I had.

Skipping was a big part of the session. “We’re going to do 300,” she told me with a smile on her face. She strapped me up to a heart monitor so she could keep an eye on my heart rate, a clever way for her to tell if I really was going to die from exhaustion or was just being lazy!

She wasn’t lying, we did 300. That’s what I liked most about the session, she doesn’t just bark orders and put her feet up, she does everything with you.

In fact, I found it very motivational having her there with me, I thought, if she can do it, surely I can too, she’s half my size (and twice as fit)!

Side planks, vertical crunches, squats, leg raises and various other fitness manoeuvres I’d never heard of later, it was time for some yoga stretching.

This part of the session was hilariously funny because I’m about as flexible as a coffee table while I swear Anoeska is a contortionist. We had some great banter about that, which was confusing because although I hated the pain she was putting me through, she’s far too friendly to stay mad at!

Although she definitely pushed my physical limits, several times actually, I felt totally safe under her tutelage. 

At the end of the session I was exhausted. As I lay on the ground, catching my breath and trying not to move, I realised something … this petite punisher had pushed me further than I ever thought I could go.