'Life-changing' things a PT wants you to know about fitness in 2025
If you're struggling with your January motivation, we'd like to point you in the direction of personal trainer and life coach Chloe Thomas.
A quick scroll of her ultra-inspiring Instagram is enough to motivate even the most exercise-fatigued among us.
It's not just the impressive transformations she helps her clients achieve, but also the fact that Chloe is completely realistic when it comes to training. She knows not every day is a workout day and encourages her clients to rest when they need to, rather than push themselves.
We caught up with Chloe on Blue Monday for a much-needed dose of inspiration and found ourselves ready to tackle the rest of the month – and year! Here's what we learned in just 30 minutes with the fitness powerhouse.
1. Training is for everyone
At 33, you might expect Chloe's clients to be mostly young women, but she explains that 70 per cent of her community are perimenopause age and beyond.
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"My youngest client is 18 and my oldest is 72, but most of them are in perimenopause. People in the older age group come to me because I focus on health rather than looks. My clients are done with fad diets and want to be healthy, but to fit it around their busy lifestyle.
"My younger clients tend to focus on building their glutes and toning their muscles, while my older clients have a different perspective. In our twenties we have fewer responsibilities, while the majority of my clients have to fit exercise into an already jam-packed life. Everyone has different struggles, but they all want to be healthier."
2. You need to unlearn diet culture
Chloe says that 80 per cent of her clients come to her with the goal of losing weight but says that's not where she starts with them.
"Before we can get on to weight loss, I need to understand their mindset and their mental health in order to help them unlearn what they learned from diet companies.
"A diet is not sustainable, so I teach people about slightly reducing food intake, plus educating on nutrition and teaching them how their cycle impacts their progress."
READ: Why do we blame ourselves when we can't lose weight?
3. It's all about your cycle
Chloe is an advocate of cycle tracking – monitoring your period throughout the month to understand yourself better.
"We all have off days," she laments. "For women this is often down to our menstrual cycle, which can impact everything from how much energy we have, how we sleep and how strong we're feeling."
Chloe has been tracking her own cycle for two and a half years and says knowing where she is in her cycle has been "life-changing."
"I massively changed my life by tracking my cycle," she says. "If I start to get tired, or self-conscious and find myself doubt my abilities, I now know why," she says.
"I know there's a certain time to push myself and go for personal bests, and there are times not to."
She's quick to point out that this doesn't mean she abandons exercise altogether at certain stages in her cycle, nor is she a slave to tracking it and amending her workouts because her cycle dictates.
"I train with awareness," she tells HELLO! "It allows me to take the pressure away if I have an off day."
4. Don't work out if you haven't slept
If you've ever slept badly then found yourself lagging at the gym, you're not imagining it. "If you're tired, your strength massively drops," Chloe warns. "Not sleeping prevents your recovery and limits muscle growth, as that's when muscle repair and strengthen rather than during your workout.
"I always say to my clients that if they haven't slept, they should go to bed, not to the gym. It's better to skip your workout and go to sleep an hour earlier than exhaust yourself in a workout."
