Caroline Girvan!
Today, Monday, March 20, 2023, this article was published that tells you all about Caroline, her family, and her mission to help people in their goals toward physical fitness … all for FREE!
She is a Northern Ireland Mum who became an internet sensation with her “at home” workouts. But how it all began is so simple .. so sincere .. and so successful.
“Personal trainer Caroline Girvan put a couple of her living room exercise sessions online in April to give her family, friends and clients a boost.
But the mum-of-two’s videos proved such a success that she ended up buying a professional camera and filming almost every day.
The 36-year-old has now been viewed in almost every country in the world and has almost 400,000 subscribers. Her videos get around 300,000 hits every day.
“At one point I was one of the fastest-growing YouTubers in the world,” she says. “It completely took me by surprise but the messages I get from people have kept me going.”
“Health is not valued till sickness comes.” – Thomas Fuller
Generous Caroline has kept her content free to view, saying she wants to be accessible to everyone.”
“I’m actually quite a private person,” she laughs. “I’m not out for stardom, I just want to help people.”
She takes her responsibilities as a YouTuber very seriously, uploading new workout videos for her 398,000 subscribers five or six days a week.
“My videos have been viewed in almost every country around the world,” she says. “It’s crazy if you think about it. My biggest following seems to be in the USA, the UK, Germany, India and Canada.
“It’s really important to me to keep the videos free to watch because then they can help people from all different kinds of backgrounds.
“Some people have made their own dumbbells using cement. Others use bottles of Bollinger as weights. I’ve had messages from people recovering from anorexia and people who have been stuck at home due to lockdown, saying I’m the highlight of their day. That’s what keeps me going.”
“Once I had children I realized how much misinformation is out there about weight and health,” she says. “I was speaking to other mums who were constantly on a diet and constantly feeling guilty. We’ve all been there – beating ourselves up after eating a cupcake. I wanted to focus on how my clients were feeling and whether they were having fun. It’s really sad that both men and women are bombarded with images expecting them to look a certain way. You look at people on Instagram but they don’t look like that in real life.”
Caroline began training with clients from her home gym, but when the first lockdown hit in March she wasn’t able to work.
In April she uploaded her first video to YouTube to help her family, friends and clients who were all stuck indoors.
“I decided to do a workout and I grabbed my phone and started filming it,” she remembers. “It was just a simple shoulder dumbbell workout.
I found Caroline on her Youtube channel one evening in 2020 when I was looking for a workout specifically for strengthening. When I did just ONE of her workouts, I was hooked! I immediately started into her Epic EndGame series and printed off her free program guide. After working through her program, it was time to move on to her other series – Iron Series, Epic Heat, and Epic III series.
She talks in her beautiful Irish dialect (smile!!) at the beginning of each workout to let you know what you will need and how to perform certain moves, but then for the remainder of the workout she is quiet and only music is played. She does place in the top right hand corner of the screen the next exercise that will follow after a 15 or 20 second rest. But the workouts are thorough and challenging, depending on the weights you use and depending on the speed of the movement.
Since I started working out 4-5 days a week with Caroline, I have seen and feel a HUGE difference in my overall health. Dropped a couple of sizes in my clothes (from a size 6 to a 2 or a 4), and my legs, hips, torso, arms, abs and back are much stronger. And when our muscles are toned and strong, we feel better. And we do not have the aches that under developed muscles can cause. My lab work came back this week and I was so pleased to see:
Blood Pressure: 112/76
Blood Count: Normal
Glucose: Normal
Thyroid (TSH): Normal
Cholesterol: Normal!!! Because in October 2022, my cholesterol had me in the 3.3% coronary risk ratio.
If you consider working out with Caroline, be sure to start slow (2-3 days a week), and start low in weights. Then as you get more familiar with her workouts and with your own body’s strength and abilities, make your way to 5-6 days a week (with one FULL rest day and one of those 6 days being a FULL cardio day – no weights – a brisk walk, jog, run, hike, or swim.) I started out using only 8 pound weights with many of her arm/shoulder/leg and full body workouts, and Rip just bought me last month some 12 pound weights and WOW! What a difference it has made! It was time to heavier weights and that one decision is paying off.
These are all the workout items I use with her YouTube workouts:
Floor Mat
But just remember …
No one can live your life of fitness and health for you. It’s a personal decision that must have deliberate actions toward a desired goal of optimal fitness and health that only you can make. And you make it because there is so many benefits to living strong and healthy.
Friend, … you can do this! It’s not a matter of finding “the” diet plan or “the only way” to eat or “the best way to exercise.” It’s a matter of doing what is best for you and what works for you. But some basic things we all need to be as healthy as possible are:
- sleep (7-8 hours)
- water
- nutritious food
- exercise – cardio and strength training (weight bearing)
You CAN take hold of a healthy life…it’s just one decision. A decision that will impact your life for the rest of your life as you simply do what you can to take care of your health.
You can do this!
lisa
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