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Local trainer and chef packs a heavy punch Trainer, also a certified chef, adds muscle to your menu
Date published: 1/6/2009
BY HUGH MUIR
Erin Reilly was raised in Boonsboro, Md., where she began weight lifting in high school. She took up cooking in a German restaurant at age 13. After high school, she went to the CIA. That would be the Culinary Institute of America, one of the nation's best-known schools for chefs, located just up the Hudson River from Hyde Park, N.Y. Having begun with that combination, she now runs her own fitness gym out of a converted garage in southern Stafford County, and also is a private chef. She tells clients both what to eat and how to exercise, and if they complain, she tells them to do push-ups. Reilly's boot-camp approach has elicited testimonial statements such as this one: "I have never been as motivated as I am now. I have lost 20 pounds and I owe it all to her." Said another woman: "I was a size 12 and just wanted to lose 15 pounds. Four months later I was a size 6 and had lost 20." One of her male clients said: "When I first met Erin, my initial thought was, 'Here's a really cute, really ripped woman who seems pretty shy.' She told me to drop and give her 20 push-ups for being late for class. When I complained, she told me to add 10 more for whining. OK, strike the 'shy' part off the list." When Reilly graduated from the CIA in 1995, she "knew an inordinate amount about fish" and felt "squishy" from eating all that good food. Students at the culinary-arts school not only help run four restaurants for the public at the institute, they also eat what they cook in class. She needed action. Action followed quickly in Hollywood, where she got her first chef job feeding casts and crews on movie sets. She got her professional trainer's certificate in 1998. She also learned how to teach. "There's a difference. You teach a class. You train an individual," Reilly said. She taught in a series of gyms, working her way down the East Coast, through New Jersey to Baltimore, to Washington, to Woodbridge in 2005. She qualified to teach 10 different exercise regimens. She also learned gym management.
Read more stories about Stafford Date published: 1/6/2009
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