Innovative Fitness Tools and Techniques with Jana Barrett

Honestly , I'm blown away by the reach of this podcast , from all over the UK and America to Germany , india , indonesia , spain , ireland and Australia and lots of other countries I haven't mentioned Indonesia , spain , ireland and Australia , and lots of other countries I haven't mentioned .

Your support is what keeps this podcast going , and I hope you're all enjoying the content as much as I enjoy bringing it to you . Now about today's episode . I'm really excited for you to hear this one . I had the pleasure of chatting with Jana Barrett , a body movement specialist who also describes herself as a feminine warrior .

I do have to start with a quick apology for pronouncing her name wrong at the beginning . She was kind enough to correct me , so all sorted there . Jana offers a truly unique style of training and I think you're going to find her approach as fascinating as I did .

I split the podcast into two parts for this episode , so in the first part , jana talks about her journey with exercise and how she discovered this new exercise regime focused on ability . In the second part we dive deeper into her role as a TAC fit instructor and what that means for her training philosophy .

So , without further ado , let's jump straight into it , and I really do hope you enjoy our chat as much as I did . So you're thinking about running , but not sure how to take the first step . My name is Brian Patterson and I'm here to help . And welcome to Brian's Rompod .

So hey there , running enthusiasts , welcome back to another episode of Brian's RunPod , where we dive into inspiring stories of local runners , athletes and experts on the world of fitness .

I'm your host , brian Patterson , and today we have a truly special guest who's not only transformed her own life through movement , but is also an empowering and countless women to do the same Now , as you know , I'm all for interviewing guests that can provide alternative to traditional forms of training .

So , anyway , back in 2002 , jana Barrett made a life-changing move to New Zealand and embraced the joys and challenges of motherhood with three beautiful children and , like many of us , she found herself caught up in the whirlwind of daily life , where personal care took a back seat to family and responsibilities .

Fast forward 10 years and Jana found herself , dealing with aches , pains and realisation that she had forgotten about her own well-being . But Jana didn't let that be her story's end . Frustrated and determined , she took a bold step by hiring her first trainer , and that decision sparked a profound transformation .

Within months , jana felt not just physically stronger , but mentally unstoppable . This newfound strength ignited a passion in her to help others , leading her to become a personal trainer herself in her to help others , leading her to become a personal trainer herself .

Today , jana is the first and only certified female task fit trainer instructor in New Zealand , a proud badge she wears with honour . She's also certified in personal training , kettlebell instruction , strength and conditioning . And Jana's mission is clear to empower women to nurture and move their bodies , enabling them to live their lives to the fullest .

We'll be diving deep into her journey , discussing the power of movement and how she's building a tribe of strong , amazing women capable of taking on the world . So lace up your running shoes and get comfortable , and let's get inspired by the incredible Jana Barrett . Welcome to the podcast . That's quite an introduction .

We just had a very unstructured kind of wild childhood where we basically weren't allowed to come home . We were given a sandwich and sent on our merry way with a group of other children and when the church struck five o'clock in the evening , oh right , okay , and what sort of things were you doing ? So we rode out of everywhere in the country .

It was no good . We stole fruit from orchards .

So I realized quickly that I'm going to have to keep up with these kids if I wanted to be an active , an active , fun mom , and I started because it was busy , you know , the kids were small and I just doing was doing a little bit of yoga and running , actually okay , I was around , okay , I was running , because my husband then had a very busy career in

the film industry and all right .

So I've done up my sneakers three to five times a week and just went for a little 20 to kind of 40 minute trail run .

You're putting seats in the cars , lifting , twisting , You're on the floor a lot and my body just wasn't up for it . And I remember my youngest was like six months old and my husband just left on a five-day fishing trip where he had no telephone reception .

And then , literally after the injury has resolved , I hired my first person all right , okay , and so was there .

I really did and I was running and then doing strength training at the gym , weightlifting with with a trainer I mean I totally .

But at the time you know you're , at the time , you know there's there's a lot going on and there's a lot of pressure going on and stress you know , everything like that so and , of course , a little time to yourself yes , exactly which is you know yeah .

So so was it that you thought that you know , you , you've had this training from the person that you thought , well , oh , sort of I could do this , you know I could do this was , was that after a few months , or ?

Like it was a challenge , it was something that I was doing just purely for me and I loved it and I really appreciated that mental strength from it and I thought I think more women need to know about this , because obviously I had a lot of friends who had young children and they often forget themselves and put themselves really last in families and their bodies

suffer . Because now I coach women in their 40s and 50s .

It's still teaching , it will be flexible , you know , I can choose my own hours . It will be great job , and then I can help women find not only the physical strength but the mental strength as well yeah , yeah , and I suppose , in a way , you're kind of incorporating the two .

I loved the subject matter , I loved I forgot how much I loved chemistry at school as well , because you know I was obviously studying biochemistry in my personal training course .

It was six months , um , it was quite part-time so I was able to fit it around family life too , which was what I really needed .

But , yeah , loved it , loved being challenged , loved learning new things and and just thinking about all the clients that were like literally waiting for me to to , you know , to qualify and start working and then I could just go and change people's lives in the way that my personal trainer changed mine all right , so you had a ready , ready-made market as soon as

you finished . So yeah , a lot of people interested , a lot of friends

. First I started with friends and then I started working at a gym a traditional kind of weightlifting , you know , backs and legs kind of you know really typical traditional kind of weightlifting . And I didn't realize that women are actually quite scared to go to the gym and a lot of them are quite intimidated .

Yeah , I can understand that , yeah that you know who's waiting for you is also a woman inside the gym . There was that barrier that I removed for a little bit and I I loved it and I just still to this day . I get so excited about people's results and transformations and now , you know , I do slightly different things .

I probably get people more out of pain now . In those days I was still getting people , I was still doing weight loss and just general conditioning and weight lifting . Now I do quite different type of training and so , but the transformations are amazing . That's what gets me out of bed every day .

I really believe that that's my purpose in life is to empower women and to get people out of pain .

So between that 45 and 60 , which is where most of my clients are , I think that there is a massive shift now to using exercise as a longevity tool and a modality to be able to live a very full , vibrant life for as long as people possibly can , and so people are more now conscious of leaving the the kind of the past where women , especially women , were

generally exercising to look a certain way and to lose weight , to be skinny and yeah . Yeah , now you see , women are going to gyms and lifting heavy weights to preserve the strength of their bones and lean muscle mass , to avoid dementia and Alzheimer's , to prevent heart disease , to have… .

Now there's so much stuff , the studies and research coming out basically weekly about how exercise is one of the most potent things you can do for your health yeah and not just physical health , but mental health , emotional health , brain health or cognitive health and yeah and physical health , but mental health , emotional health , brain health or cognitive health , and I

think we're becoming more . we are the generation that's becoming more and more , especially as women more aware of watching our grandmothers and mothers age , and we don't want to age like that yes in in assisted living , where we don't remember things and we are frail and we constantly breaking our bones because we have osteoporosis .

I think we are now choosing to do everything possible to age , you know , while doing anything we choose and living in our own homes .

I still had achy back time to time and I had quite a bit of injuries and I had a lot of tension in the body and I was just starting to look at some other ways

to exercise . And then I saw this man in the gym and he was swinging a club bell and I was looking at him and he was doing a lot of mobility . He was doing like really beautiful mobility flows with his clients and he's running small group classes .

And I was looking at him and I thought , wow , that looks way more interesting than anything I'm doing in the gym barbells and dumbbells , because when you imagine so , the club bell is basically looks like a baseball bat , but it's made out of metal .

Yeah , audience can't see it , but you can see them behind oh , yeah , that's right , yeah , yeah it's like a baseball bat but it's made out of metal and you can swing it around the body and you can do flows with it so you can transition from exercise to exercise , like from squat to a lunge to a press , all in one continuous flow .

And I was watching him and I thought that's so interesting and it made a lot more sense to me as a exercise to build kind of really strong humans all around life or sport and so I booked a session with him and he put me through a tech film and I just never looked back . I said this is what I want to do . I don't want to go back to the barbells .

I this so boring and I don't think it really gets people fed for like something like surfing . You know , like when you think about surfing , I have to do so many different things while I surf , and a deadlift and an overhead press with a barbell will never get me fit for that .

And so , and then I started training with him and learning about mobility , which was massively missing out of my routine , and I was kind of like this is making me feel so good and my shoulders are moving well and I'm losing all the tension and all the stiffness and I'm moving like I'm a young person again .

And and then all these tools like tech fit works with kettlebells and club bells , and now they've introduced steel mace as well , which is my biggest love , and I thought this is this is brilliant , like I need to bring this to more people . And at this stage , tech fit was still very focused on the tactical community .

So a lot of the , and I traveled to the us to certify in it the , the , the creator of it , and they're very clever people like you know , scottson and who wrote techfit was . Was was in russia like 10 years studying their special forces and how they dealt with exercise and stress , and it was a phenomenal body of work .

But at that time it was very targeted for the really so , either the tactical community , so the soldiers , the , the um policemen , firemen and it was it was all like , even though their website was very much about big , strong , muscly , extremely fit men . But I wanted to do tech fit for normal people yeah just moms and dads people .

They're in their 40s or 50s or 60s , so I kind of modified it slightly to just normal people and then , after I certified I I love tech , fit to this day .

that's like another keyword , like you were talking just incorporating what you were saying earlier about lifting children , that kind of thing , you know , or even in your working life , lifting boxes or that kind of thing . It helps you , prepare you for those movements .

So it doesn't make sense to me that you would go to gym and you would do back and chest , because in daily life you know when you think about someone running through a forest , they're using every single muscle in their body .

When I surf , I use every single muscle especially when you're doing surfing yeah , synergy is a symphony of everything working together , so it never made sense to me to be isolating muscle groups and putting them under so much tension in a very two-dimensional way , because traditionally we're about up and down , side to side .

But once you start seeing the steel mace or the club bell , you quickly realize that you can access multi-directional movements . But that's how life works , right ?

Sometimes you have to catch a child that's falling over , sweating and you're lunging , you're pushing , you're pulling , you're using power and agility and videos showing this , because I particularly liked the one which is on your website .

It's nothing new , yeah . It's just that we , the West , didn't know about it and it's slowly coming and kind of , you know , seeping into more of the conventional fitness styles .