A kinesiology graduate, Hannah Carabagiale does more than just personal training, she works on helping the body as a whole with personalized workouts designed to help clients achieve their fitness goals and live an active life.
Carabagiale is the head coach and director of ALFA Lifestyle in Calgary.
ALFA stands for Athletes Learning From Athletes. They work with both CFL players and university level athletes, allowing for a range of experiences with athletes at a variety of stages in their career.
Olivia Whissell: How did you get started in your work?
Hannah Carabagiale: I got started in my work 12 or 13 years ago now. I started doing this right out of school. My first job was working with athletes at the Winsport Performance Training Centre. I was pretty lucky in the sense that I always just knew what I wanted to do. I remember when I was 16 telling my dad, ‘Dad, I’m going to own a gym’. So yeah, I’ve just kind of always known. I got started by shadowing as many people as I could and having as many mentors as I possibly could, so I could get my feet in all different areas of fitness.
Who are your mentors?
The people that come to mind for me, are the people in my first job at the WinSport Performance Training Center, I was lucky that I got to work in an admin role, but I also got to work alongside all of the coaches of the Winter Olympic athletes. When I think back, the name mentor makes me think of someone willing to put their time into helping you learn, and testing you. When I think of mentors, I can still call on them to this day if I have a question.
Why do you feel your work is important?
We have bodies that we need to move, right? Our bodies are made for movement. Unfortunately, we live in a society where most people don’tget the amount of daily activity that they need to stay healthy and strong. I really can’t think of a more important thing than that, honestly, in terms of, like, reducing the risk of disease, and just taking good care of ourselves, and be able being able to do things and live a long life.
So tell me more about what you do now.
What I do now? So now I oversee a team. I’m not a one-woman show anymore. I have coaches underneath me that I’m like really managing, and that’s a great test for me to move into. But I’m also coaching a lot throughout the day. The people that I work with now and what I do now I would say are people that are looking to train with a little bit more of a holistic perspective. They want to train with someone who understands all of the body’s systems, not just, you know, how to get strong.
What’s your vision for the future?
My vision for the future is to see personal training eventually be covered by health benefits. I think that movement and exercise, lifting weights is such an important thing, and I don’t think it’s seen that way right now in our healthcare system. So I’d love to see that. I’ve seen little glimpses of it throughout the last 13 years, but I would love to see that. I would love to see just more people coming into this gym and getting what they need and feeling empowered and strong.
“Your body is always accessible to you. And it is the most accessible free, worthy investment of your time that you could ever make for your mental health.”
Hannah Carabagiale
What’s the most important thing you’ve learned while doing this?
Kindness? Yeah, I think the biggest the most important thing in this world is kindness. If you think about, like, your worst experience ever with a practitioner or someone in wellness and health, it’s probably due to a lack of care or a lack of kindness. If somebody is kind and cares, it’s going to be a whole other experience and it’s an important core value.
What are the greatest challenges you faced while doing this?
I had to step back from training for about a year and a half in 2021 to go through some deep healing in my body. There were some things that I was experiencing in my body, which were like essential trauma. I was getting like really bad skin issues and autoimmune issues and basically, my body was screaming at me and I burnt myself out. So that for me was challenging because I had to like trust, you know, trust that I would be able to come back and trust that my body would heal. I’m such a doer. I’m always doing,I have a busy schedule. I’m very active. I push my body every day. And so that was challenging for me to have to like, really rest and just trust my body and that it would do what it was going to do.
What do you think the active community in Calgary needs to thrive?
I would like to see high-quality programs, even starting from kids aged 10 to 14, learning how to lift and learning body awareness, up to middle-aged women or people over 65. I think it’s important that we have more programs in Calgary for those things, that are very high quality, but also not going to break the bank for people. What’s important to me is that we have a range of prices and programs so that everyone.
And what age group do you think the city should be focusing on to create these active lifestyles?
Oh, I always say teens to young adults. Anyone from age 10 to 25. You’re still in that stage where your brain is still developing, and your frontal lobe is still developing up until 25. So that’s a great time where we can continue to set great habits and like stories around movement and belief systems, around movement. I think, if anything, targeting the younger ages is super important.
And is there anything you would like to add?
Even though what I do is very science-based and what we do here is very science-based, there is this kind of another side of exercise that thankfully is now being talked about a lot, which is your mental health. Exercise is one of the easiest, most easily accessible things that you can do. It’s free. You can just stand where you are and move your body and do some squats or, you know, breathe or jump up and down or go on a run.
Your body is always accessible to you. And it is the most accessible free, worthy investment of your time that you could ever make for your mental health.