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Michelle Bridges has opened up about the positive reaction she received after admitting to having fitness struggles in a post shared on social media last month.
The 45-year-old trainer, who gave birth to her first first child, son, Axel, in December 2015, told The Morning Show on July 8 that she cried following one difficult moment.
“I wanted to stop this training session a couple of hundred times and then in the end I cried half way through it,” she said. “I could hear myself self doubting, and this is the kind of stuff I talk about with people all the time.”
Bridges, who is juggling the life of a new mother with her career as a fitness trainer, said she had negative thoughts such as, “Am I going to be strong enough? Can I get through this workout? Will I get my fitness back? Will I get back to where I was before I had Axel?”
Rigorous workouts were something she had been able to do with ease, but said she accepted she had to set a “new best” for herself.
“I’m confident and comfortable in who I am, that I’ll get to where I need to be on my own time and I’m not going to be pushed into it by anyone other than myself,” she said.
In a candid post on June 28, Bridges said she had “moments of struggle” and “doubt,” before thanking her partner, Steve “The Commando” Willis, for “picking up the pieces.”
The Biggest Loser trainer shared one of her usual workout videos, but on closer inspection the caption painted a different picture: “Today I hurt. Today my head almost got to me. Today I started doubting myself. Doubting my fitness. Doubting whether I can pull myself back.”
She explained that although she was not at the fitness level she had been at in the past, it was “OK.”
“My fitness and strength is exactly where it should be, given what I have and haven’t been doing,” she said. “My training has been inconsistent. Period. And that’s OK. I’m here. I’m pushing. It might not be pretty, but that’s OK, too!”
“I wanted to share this to let you know that all of us have these moments. And they are beautiful, because they remind us that it’s in the struggle that we grow, we become humble, we build and we must be gentle to ourselves,” she wrote.
Bridges gave birth to son Axel on Dec. 19, 2015. The baby is her first child, and Willis’s fourth. He has three children—Brianna, 17, Ella, 6, and Jack, 3—from a previous relationship.
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