My passion for health and fitness began at the age of two when my mom laced up my first pair of roller skates and taught me how to “march” on the kitchen floor! Following that day came years of zooming up and down the sidewalk, showing off to the entire neighborhood! When I wasn’t outside rollerskating, I could be found swimming on the neighborhood swim team, taking gymnastics classes, or riding my bike with friends. I also spent a lot of time skiing during the winter, my favorite season of the year! Even at a young age I loved sports and the spirit of competition. At the age of 7, I began my personal training career! For fun, I would lead my friends through mini-workouts of sprints, push-ups and bikeriding around the block for time. One day I made my friend Lisa cry by making her repeatedly kick a board in hopes of ‘making her tough.’ My mom quickly came outside and made me stop. Thankfully I still had friends growing up because I wasn’t allowed to train the neighborhood kids anymore without my mom’s supervision! Yes, I was quite the little tomboy, but still a ‘girly girl’ in many regards. I would drive my mother crazy because my hair had to be curled and pulled back into a pony tail just right before going outside to play! I remember several occasions crying because I had ‘lumps’ in my pony tail or my bangs weren’t curled the right way and would throw a fit until it was fixed to my liking! Ya, I’m pretty sure I was a big pain in the butt! I don’t have kids yet, but I know I’m destined to have a little girl and this will all come back to haunt me!

Thanks to my mom for involving me in sports, allowing me to express my ‘fashion sense’ and also teaching me the importance of nutrition. I grew up loving egg whites and salsa, oatmeal, fruits and veggies, steak, lobster, shrimp, chicken, peanut butter, drinking milk and taking vitamins. I was told McDonald’s didn’t serve ‘real food’, wasn’t allowed to drink sodas and was reminded to ‘not drown my food’ with too much salad dressing. Sundays however were spent at my Grandmother’s house with plates of homemade tortillas, beans, potatoes and green chile… hmmm, maybe that’s where the bootie came from? More on that later… Thankfully my mom didn’t bake much nor did she like sweets herself, so I have never had much of a sweet tooth. Oh… but she did occasionally like to splurge on potato chips, fries and of course good ol’ Mexican food and you know what they say about ‘turning into your mother.’ I too love to splurge on fatty, salty treats and Mexican food over sweets any day!

During jr. high school, I began playing soccer and basketball in addition to swimming competitively and running track. I asked for a health club membership for my 14th birthday, so I also spent countless hours taking aerobics classes and learning to lift weights. Now about the bootie… I think every woman recalls that certain time in her life when the realization of either having one or not, is brought to her attention. For me it came around this age after a boy in my class called me ‘pumpkin buns!’ I wasn’t quite sure if it was a compliment or an insult. Nevertheless, the bootie comment stayed with me and I’ve always paid particular attention to preventing the pumpkin from growing too out-of-control! Nowadays, thanks to physique photographers like Terry Goodlad, Robert Reiff and Arny Freytag, my ‘pumpkin buns’ have been appreciated in various fitness and physique magazines such as American Curves, FLEX and even Playboy!

In high school, I became a three-sport varsity athlete in swimming, soccer and basketball. My fond interest in nutrition really took shape in high school due in part to my swim coach, Kent Christy. He taught us the importance of protein, proper hydration and emphasized how destructive sugar and fast food were to reaching our training goals. I remember drinking protein shakes over the kitchen sink, holding my nose, trying my best to drink it down without spitting it back up! UGHH… I won’t even mention the brand name, but the taste was disgusting! I enjoyed learning about sports nutrition and supplementation and would spend weekends at the United States Olympic Training Center library reading and talking to the various athletes living and training there. My aunt worked at the training center and later while in college, I was given an opportunity to fulfill an internship with women’s field hockey. It was simply office work, but for me it was a great honor to just be a part of the program!

In college, I continued my love for the game of basketball and played at Colorado College. We were an NCAA division III collegiate team. It was fun to play and train at that level and also to travel to various Division II and III schools throughout the country. During the off-season I implemented an aerobics program at CC and developed a true fondness for weight training. I looked forward to basketball season ending, so I could focus on my own training which did not consist of running dozens of suicide line drills! My friends turned to me for exercise and nutrition advice, so I continued studying various training techniques and nutrition strategies that I would share with my friends. While attending CC, I took the opportunity to study in Mexico where I even continued teaching aerobics. Thank goodness I stayed active because there was an overabundance of delicious food, margaritas and even more delicious food! Remember, I love Mexican food! I graduated from Colorado College with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, a minor in North American studies and thankfully no excessive college weight gain!

Following graduation, my experience in the fitness industry expanded. I worked as an Aquatics Director, a Recreation Specialist for a handicapped development center, a Fitness Director and the Strength and Conditioning coach for Metro State College men’s basketball team in Denver, Colorado. During those years, I also continued teaching aerobics classes, became very involved in running, completed a physical therapy internship and began sports and fitness modeling.

In 1997, I competed in my first NPC fitness competition, placing second. A few months later I received IFBB professional status by placing second at the NPC USA National Championships. I was honored to receive my pro card, but truly didn’t know exactly what that meant! I just loved to compete and perform and was hoping to do my best! During that year I won the Colorado’s NPC Fitness Competitor of the Year award and also auditioned to become a Denver Broncos Cheerleader. Out of more than two hundred women, I became one of twenty-six women selected for the 1997-1998 season. The Broncos went on to win their first super bowl that year and all the cheerleaders received super bowl rings! I am a born and bred Denver Broncos fan, so cheering at the super bowl for my beloved Broncos was definitely one of the most exciting experiences of my life! Following the season as a cheerleader, I began to focus on training for my IFBB professional fitness debut for the summer of 1998.

And now for the beginning of a series of knee injuries that turned my very active and athletic life just a little upside down… I don’t want to bore you to death, so let’s just sum it up in few short sentences without too much drama and despair… I tore my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in my right knee three times from 1998 to 2002 and have had four surgeries to repair it, which have all failed. I had never experienced a serious injury in my life, so this was a new and unpleasant experience for me! Since I was focusing my efforts on competing as a professional fitness competitor, I had to modify my training program significantly and I also needed to practice a lot of mental training and preparation. There was physical pain to work through and also a little personal doubt on whether it was realistic to even continue competing at the pro level with the injuries I was constantly rehabilitating. I realized it really wasn’t all that bad compared to the many awful things that can happen to people, so I just trained and was thankful I had the opportunity to continue doing what I loved to do! So, despite the obstacles, I plugged away and since 1998 I have competed in over a dozen IFBB Pro Fitness competitions around the world, have been invited to compete in the prestigious Arnold Classic twice and have even won the 2-minute fitness routine round at the 2002 Pittsburgh Pro show. The 2005 Fitness International was my last pro fitness competition, but I look forward to continuing my competitive career in 2006 by competing in the IFBB pro figure division unless my husband and I get overly involved in the sport of babymaking first!

Today, I spend most of my time at The Point Athletic Club in Lakewood, Colorado where I run my own personal training business and coach my Performance Ready Fitness and Figure Team . I also keep busy writing for Real Solutions magazine, the NPC News, promoting my own fitness and figure show, hosting fitness and figure camps throughout the year, representing JavaFit as their fitness spokesmodel and also SupplementCoach.com.

Promoting the fitness lifestyle is truly my purpose and passion in life! If I’m not coaching, training, writing, or modeling… you can hear me on the Performance Nutrition Show with the ‘King of sports nutrition’ himself, Dr. Jose Antonio, the smartypants of science and sports supplementation! I’ve met several incredibly interesting and knowledgeable people in this industry and Dr. Antonio takes the cake! He knows his stuff, loves to share his knowledge and can be pretty darn witty when he’s not consumed in super important science stuff! I’ll do my best to keep him speaking in a language we can all understand, but that means his potty mouth may take over on occasion, so please don’t be too offended!

Enjoy the webcast and let us know what you think!