It is quick to get stuck in a health rut, or set off exercising indefinitely. But when there is a charismatic, encouraging, no-judgment mentor or coach in your corner, being fit is not so considerably a chore as it is a reward you give to your self.
That’s how Bangor-centered trainer and conditioning class trainer Skye Washington sees it. From the ethereal, sunny environment of her 2nd-floor fitness studio on Park Road in Bangor, she prospects lessons that she attempts to make equal pieces fun and a fantastic exercise.
“I get so a great deal out of serving to people today feel superior about themselves, the two mentally and bodily,” Washington mentioned. “If you arrive out of my course smiling and emotion like you can take on the world, then I have performed my career.”
Washington grew up in Bangor and graduated from Bangor Higher School in the late 1990s. Constantly an lively human being, she has been performing as a health and fitness teacher and own coach for much more than 20 a long time, both in Connecticut and all all-around the Bangor region. Most a short while ago, she supplied weekly dance health and fitness lessons at the Noh Way University, a dance studio previously positioned at 170 Park St., owned by tango teacher Shiwa Noh.
Courses there were being suspended when the pandemic struck in March 2020. So Washington commenced presenting training classes and lessons just about, patiently waiting around for the entire world to get back to regular. But ordinary is a going focus on — and when protests from law enforcement brutality and racism erupted about the planet in the wake of the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, ordinary abruptly didn’t seem like something Washington preferred to participate in any more.
For Washington, it was a everyday living-altering moment that influenced her to take the plunge and start her own physical fitness studio.
“It’s like all the stress and anxiety I’d had in my existence began to soften absent. I determined that I desired to halt hiding, and start out putting myself out there,” Washington explained. “I desired to let persons know who I am, and to stand up for Black persons in Maine. We are below. And we require to be very pleased of it.”
Not extended immediately after that, Noh decided to go on from her dance studio, and Washington decided to get about the lease at 170 Park St.
Skyefitness opened in January 2021, and in the ensuing yr, Washington has captivated a selection of new personal coaching clients as properly as regular attendees of her exercise courses. She teaches barre, a workout fashion that borrows from ballet, pilates and yoga higher-depth interval coaching, or HIIT and dance fitness, a large-vitality choreographed dance exercise session.
Washington claimed a single of her biggest supporters from working day a single has been Black Owned Maine, the Portland-based mostly nonprofit that supports Black-owned organizations in Maine.
“They set me on their website. They place my identify out there. I obtained so lots of clients because of that,” she explained. “I did my ancestors happy.”
For a total record of Skyefitness’ courses and other offerings, stop by skyesfitness.com.