Training Effects

In "Training Effects,"Joanne Blackerby goes beyond the art of the memoir to reflect on how her career as a personal trainer helped her overcome her stormy youth and the trials of life as a multiracial immigrant, wife, mother and professional woman and find wisdom and fulfillment. What she learned in the process also leads her to call on her profession to more fully serve its clients by making fitness training truly personal in order to improve not just the bodies but the selves and lives of those they train.

As the author acknowledges in this engagingly revelatory and touching book, she may seem by her background to be an unlikely person to lead others to fitness and wellness. Growing up the daughter of an abusive father in a privileged family that fled the political turmoil of her native Jamaica for Canada and then America, in adulthood she was further beset by depression and ADHD. But her indomitable spirit and the lessons imbued by helping others led her to face and master the obstacles of her past, conditions, calling and everyday modern life.

Blackerby interweaves the principles of fitness with her own story and glimpses into the lives of those she has known and trained to offer an inspiring guide for everyone who contends with family dysfunction, emotional issues and life's many challenges plus the quest to be physically healthy and strong. She also urges the exercise industry to set aside "one-size-fits-all" regimens and perpetual program sales at the expense of genuine progress for those it serves, and recognize that training the body for fitness comes through acknowledging and working with each person's entire self as well enhancing their own skills and selves.

"Training Effects" is at times harrowing, poignant, informative, humorous and uplifting, and ultimately an eloquent and compelling journey towards becoming the best and strongest person in every way one can be.