Achieve your health and fitness goals.

Get Started »

Hometown: La Plata, MD

When and why did you come to Austin?
My husband, Keith and I moved to Austin in 2011. We came for the music scene (he’s a musician) and the endless summer!

What is your background? How did you get into personal training?
Even though I always “went to the gym,” I never considered myself “athletic” until I discovered running in 2008. I fell in love with how running made me feel, and it was all I ever wanted to do. 

While working an unsatisfying desk job, I trained for my first marathon by running the Town Lake Trail most mornings before dawn. I began to notice a small group of women working out in the park every morning — a trainer with her clients. It was suddenly so clear that this was the dream job I had never even considered. UT offers a 6-week WITS certification course, so I jumped right in. I completed my certification with an internship with Mark Rogers at ASF in 2013 and quickly joined the personal training team full-time. 

You are also on the PR and Marketing Team. Tell us about what you do in that role: 
I create our monthly newsletter, write content for our website, edit blogs written by our trainers, publicize our events, and work to get ASF’s name out into the community. It is satisfying to put my degrees in English to good use for a company I love.

Tell us about your current fitness goals and training:
I have competed in six powerlifting meets, and lifting heavy is one of my favorite things to do. I am always trying to get stronger! I also love to run, and it’s a goal of mine to be able to run 10 miles anytime I feel like it. For me, training goes in cycles. As long as I’m always training hard, I stay well-rounded by allowing my focus to change periodically. 

What is the most common fitness myth you work through with your clients?
Many people get bogged down by the details. We fixate on the number on the scale, feeling good when it goes down and devastated when it goes up. We assign good or bad values to the number of calories we’ve eaten or how many the elliptical says we’ve burned. We feel like there’s a formula to getting fit that we can somehow find. But a lot of the time we just end up feeling bad about failing. 

My life changed permanently when I stopped worrying about the specifics and got obsessed with feeling good. Most of us would start to feel a lot better simply by developing any regular fitness routine and cutting the obvious junk food. Get the ball rolling and you will want to keep making yourself feel even better. You can get as detailed about fitness and nutrition as you choose, but if you first make it a pleasurable part of your life, you will never want to miss out on it again.

What do you want your clients to take away from each training session with you?
I want my clients to feel better when they leave than they did when when they came in. Physically, this means I focus on form, looking for indications of imbalances and correcting movement patterns. Emotionally, I want you to feel refreshed or relieved or fired up or happily exhausted – whatever feeling you need that day. I want you to find the pleasure of experiencing your physicality in a variety of ways.  

What sets you apart from other fitness professionals? 
While I love working with all populations, over the past few years I have begun to specialize in pre- and postnatal fitness. As many of my clients began to expand their families, I knew I needed to expand my knowledge to provide them with the level of care they deserve. I became a Certified Pre- and Postnatal Coaching Specialist through Girls Gone StrongWith smart programming and the right approach, fitness during the pre-natal and postpartum period can be incredibly beneficial. My role is to help new mamas and mamas-to-be move well, get stronger, and most importantly, feel good!

What is your favorite thing about Austin Simply Fit?
I love our “back to basics” perspective. We focus on the foundations of fitness, making sure you can move well while progressively building your strength. We also focus on the basics of human connection. Just as much as we care about your physicality, we also truly care about you as a person outside the gym. I see this everyday not only from my coworkers, but also between our clients.

If you had a super power what would it be?
All I really want to know is if there is life anywhere else in the universe. The details are fuzzy, but I would love a super power that either gives me the ability to travel to other solar systems or is some kind of super-sensory life-detecting skill.

 

Click here to read Beckie’s take on myths about women in fitness.

This place is amazing. I’ve trained with Beckie Lough for several years and if I can do it, anyone can. I came in not knowing the first thing about weight training, form and she was the most patient and positive coach. She pushes me but without feeling pushy. Beckie always makes it fun and has very creative (and tough) workouts planned each week. I love being able to show up and the 30min workout will kick your butt.

Sam Needham

Beckie Lough and I are going on 10 years together and I could not be happier. She is so warm, funny and fun to train with - she is always coming up with new things for us to try, and knows how to push you in just the right way.

Marushka Bland