Why we need female fitness instructors in Nigeria —Olaronke Gbadebo

Olaronke Gbadebo, a health worker trained in the United Kingdom, with twenty years  experience in  health and fitness  is  the chief  Executive Officer of Healthy Living And You. In this interview by TAYO GESINDE, she speaks on how to live  a healthy life style and factors responsible for decline in life expectancy in Nigeria, now 54 years for men and 55 years for women which makes Nigeria one of the countries with lowest ratio in the world.

Foray into health and fitness

It all started in England in 1996, when I finished my training as a fitness instructor. I came back to Nigeria in 1997, got married and started my career as an aerobics instructor. When I started then, the consciousness of healthy living in Nigeria wasn’t as much as it is now. It was like an unfamiliar territory, so there was no encouragement and people did not freely embrace the profession. However, I have always been passionate about fitness and exercise. When I started my career then, I was doing it five times a week and along the line, I started doing private lessons and I have worked in quite a number of places. Then there were not a lot of women around so it was easier getting male instructors than female ones. Also, where I was working, we had more expatriates than Nigerians, but things have changed now there is more consciousness for the need to exercise and to take care of oneself. Along the line, I started running a TV programme for MINAJ Television. It was a 15 minutes programme on health and fitness. It aired from Monday to Friday. The programme was to create awareness, and some UI students then did back me up. It was an interesting job because we did it for a couples of years but we had to stop due to lack of sponsorship. I later went into radio production and started my own programme called Healthy Living and You, to create awareness for people to live a healthy life. Though it was a lonely path at first because it was not a job that meets with societal approval but things are changing now.

Motivation for choosing a career in health and fitness

As far back as I could remember, I think I had interest in anything that had to do with athletics right from my primary to secondary school days. When I got into the university, I was involved in Nigeria University Games (NUGA) throughout. I was even the first female sport secretary of the student union of  the Ogun State University, so I have always been a sport inclined person but I never thought I would make a career out of it. I have always wanted to be a lecturer, which has always been my passion. If you asked me then what I wanted to become, I will tell you a lecturer. I was looking forward to going back to the university after my first degree to lecture. I read Agricultural Sciences; Animal Productions to be precise.  My lecturers were also looking forward to my coming back after NYSC to start my lecturing career as a graduate assistant but immediately after my NYSC I relocated to England. I wanted to do my Masters but when I heard the fee, I slowed down because I couldn’t afford it and decided to work for some time. Later, I learnt there was an institute that trains people to be fitness instructor, so I went for the training. At the time, I did it out of interest, I never thought I would make a career out of it. When I finished, I started doing aerobic classes after church on Sunday. When I came back to Nigeria, I did two Curriculum Vitae because in England, I was working as a school administrator. So I did one CV for administrative or secretary job and another one for fitness instructor. Somebody told me about a fitness centre in Victoria Island called Proflex and said they might need instructors. I went to the place but was told there was no vacancy so I gave them my CV. When they saw it in my CV that I was  trained in England, I was asked to hold on. Fortunately one of their instructors, a British lady was going back to Britain that week, so it was her slot I was given. That was how my career in fitness started. It was just God that orchestrated it and really, I have no regrets.

My driving force

It was passion. I am passionate about it. Moreover, I always see it that people are paying me for my hobby. It is a service because if I serve you with my skills and you live long, I am serving my community. Because if you are living a healthy life; you will be able to perform better at work, your visit to the hospital will be reduced and you will live a qualitative life. One way or the other, I am contributing to the development of quality life in my community and in my nation. So I have always seen it as a service to the people I deal with but the most important thing is that it is a God-given gift. I just love it. If you want to buy me gifts, buy me books, video tapes or magazines that have to do with health and fitness not gold or clothes. So, the passion and the God factor are two things that kept me going.

Role models

There is a woman in England that I have always admired. Her name is Rosemary Conley; she should be in her sixties. She is an aerobics instructor and has been at it for many years and I have always admired her holistic approach to it. Another person that I admire is Stormie Omartian, she is a Bible teacher and popular writer, she wrote the Power of a Praying Wife and so on. She is actually a nurse and an aerobics instructor. Before I went for the training and wanted to be exercising at home, I bought exercise videos and Stormie Omartin’s videos was the first one that I bought and it actually motivated me for my own personal work-out. Also Kathy Smith, she is passionate about it and not just in it for the money. Those were the people I looked up to. On getting to Nigeria, it was difficult finding anyone you can latch on to in the fitness industry. That was when I discovered that there was a need to for us to have a training people to become aerobics instructors.

Why I am starting a fitness school

The school is a vocational fitness training school. The course is registered with the Ministry of Education, Lagos State. The reason behind the school is because over the years, I have seen that lack of training is affecting the quality of fitness instructors we have in Nigeria. Apart from that, it is a new area where there are plenty of job opportunities. It is a career path that has been overlooked. Many people are not aware of it despite the fact that there are many people out there looking for things to do. It is a skill that once you have it, you have it for life and you just need to continue to develop that skill. So I feel that it is an area that has been neglected for so long and the time has come for us to have a place in Nigeria where our youths can be trained as fitness instructors. That is the motivation for starting the school. At the school, we are going to have five weeks basic certificate course Saturday only, in fitness and health. After that, you can come for another module, which is more intense than the first one; it is called the group instructor module. After that you become a certified instructor. Once you are certified, you can set up a class by yourself in your area and let people know what you do, you can apply to fitness centres as aerobics instructor or you can do home service. The job opportunities are there, you can never be unemployed. I can never be unemployed because I have more jobs than I can meet up with. People call me all the time asking for instructors but I don’t have instructors to give. In fact there is shortage of female instructors in the industry. There is a huge need for female instructors because some men will not allow male instructors to touch them. So people should empower themselves by going into health and fitness. It is an extremely technical job that you need training for.

Combining my career with the home front

From the onset, I did not do it full time. Initially when I started I was running morning and evening classes but when a child got involved, I started running morning classes; no evening or weekend classes and I always close by 1.00p.m. Yes, that affects my income but it is a price to pay for motherhood. If I was doing weekend and evening classes, I will be making a whole lot of money but at what expense? The window of opportunity to influence the life of a child is very short and no amount of money you can pay can replace that period once you miss it. That is the limitation I experienced as a married woman and mother in my career path. I know a lot of guys who have made a whole lot of money from this business.

Tips on healthy living

The World Health Organisation (WHO) in May this year gave the life expectancy for Nigerian women as 55 years while for Nigerian men, it was said to be 54 years. Experts believe that unhealthy lifestyle, unbalanced diet, tobacco use, harmful alcohol intake and physical inactivity are the major causes of development of cardio vascular and other non communicable diseases in Nigeria. In Nigeria, we don’t eat well, we don’t exercise and we don’t manage our stress level. Those are the things that predispose us to risk factor like hypertension, diabetes, obesity. To live a healthy life, you have to watch your food intake, we eat too much oil, sugar and we consume large food portion. Apart from the fact that we eat wrongly, we don’t take care of ourselves. We live in a society that is so materialistic; it is easier for people to spend money on aso-ebi than to buy proper food. We are so consumed with the externals; we focus more on how we look and forget the fact that if you don’t take good care of your body, the day it collapses that is the end of your existence here on earth. The rate at which young people are dying of high blood pressure, heart issues that are avoidable is sad. And some of these things are as a result of unhealthy lifestyle. So, start eating healthily, you should not only eat salad when you go to parties, fruits and vegetable and drinking lots of water should be part of our everyday lives. We should reduce oil and sugar intake and exercise. I cannot overemphasise the importance of exercise. The benefit of exercise is not just physiological. It is also psychological. It helps to manage stress. We are living in a society where sedentary lifestyle is on the increase. Day in day out, we are sitting down, at home, at work and in our cars; we are living sedentary lifestyles. Our children too are picking up this lifestyle, instead of exercising, they are playing games. It is never going to be convenient to do exercise. We have to make personal decisions to take good and proper care of our bodies.