Personal Trainer of the Month: Sakura’s Fitness Pal

We love sharing about our awesome team of personal trainers. This month we have a unique duo helping change lives. Matthew Griffith and his husky Sakura have a unique origin story and now run their personal training business called Sakura’s Fitness Pal. For their clients, they provide fitness and nutritional coaching and a helping hand for every step of the process to live healthier and more active lives. The duo is based out of Macon, Georgia.

Matthew Meets His Fitness Pal

Matthew and his fiance came across Sakura when they decided to visit their local animal shelter to play with the dogs for the day. They absolutely did not intend on adopting a dog. However, the woman running the shelter told them about Sakura’s predicament.

Sakura had been in a kill shelter. The adoption clinic couldn’t take her in because they were at their state limit. She was hours away from being euthanized. The woman at the shelter was torn about not being able to save her, so she informed Matthew and his fiance of her situation and they jumped on the opportunity.

As most people know, huskies are extremely active animals, so Matthew had to find a way to keep her energy at bay. He figured he needed to step up his own fitness game and running with Sakura would be a great way to get started.

As they continued to run together every day, they ran into a woman who owned a local gym. She invited both of them in to try out her training classes. After that, she took Matthew under her wing and guided him on how to live a healthier life. She also embraced Sakura into her gym with open arms!

The Duo Start Their Own Business

Matthew was already on his own path to eating healthier. A year before, he had made the change to a plant-based diet. His and Sakura’s journey complemented that nutritional challenge with a focus on physical fitness.

They started attending regular 30-minute classes at the gym for full-body workouts. Eventually, the gym owner offered Mattew a job as an instructor. He quickly fell in love with it and eventually became fully certified to start his own personal training business.

Matthew named his business Sakura’s Fitness Pal. His goals for his business are not just to provide some guidance and send clients on their way. He works on the value of being a pal to his clients and helping them stay on track if they fall off or have days where motivation is hard to conjure.

Both he and Sakura are sources of guidance and continued support.

“I love meeting people exactly where they’re at on their journey,” he says, “We’re all at different places and love learning how I can, as a personal trainer, teach them long term changes they can make to live more active and healthier lives.”

To manage his growing client base, Matthew started using FitSW after trying out a few different apps. A feature that benefits him the most is the ability to stay in consistent contact with his clients. He can assign tasks as a medium for his habit coaching and stay in touch with how his clients are doing with automated emails and updates about the completion of tasks.

Overall

Their story is just a reminder of how awesome our team of FitSW trainers and coaches are. Thank you, Matthew and Sakura, for what you guys do to help people in your community live healthier and happier lives. Follow him on his Facebook and don’t forget to check out his webpage while you’re at it!

Seeing as it’s the holiday season, we would also like to give thanks to the rest of our growing team for educating people on how to live healthier lives. In such troubling times, more and more people are requiring the kind of support you all provide. We want to support you in reaching those people by giving you guys the tools you need to run your business and run it well.