When Rhiannon Cooper turned 30, she realised she had spent most of her life avoiding exercise.
At the time, she was around a size 26 and says years of bullying at school had left her feeling deeply uncomfortable with fitness environments.
Now, four years later, the 34-year-old trains five times a week, competes in strongwoman competitions and runs her own business as a personal trainer helping people who feel intimidated by gym culture.
But her transformation has also placed her at the centre of an increasingly heated debate around obesity, fitness and health.
‘The goal was never about losing weight for me – it was about building strength, being healthier and getting my heart and lungs working,’ she says.
Looking back, Rhiannon, who runs the business Not So Typical Fitness, says her relationship with exercise was shaped by her experiences growing up overweight.
‘When you’re the big kid at school, you get called names and teased,’ she says.
‘I would try and skip school so I didn’t have to do cross country and I was always picked last in PE because nobody wanted me slowing them down on their team.’
Rhiannon Cooper, 34, is a Wolverhampton-based personal trainer and strongwoman competitor, originally from Malvern in Worcestershire
Determined to improve her fitness, Rhiannon joined a gym in 2022. She is now preparing to give a TEDx talk on why everyone deserves to feel they belong in the gym
As an adult, she continued avoiding exercise because she feared becoming visibly out of breath or sweaty in public.
Determined to improve her fitness, Rhiannon joined a gym in 2022 and began trying to lose weight after searching online for advice about getting healthy.
But adjusting to gym life was difficult.
‘I felt very self-conscious of the fact I was the biggest person in the gym,’ she says.
At first, she stuck largely to incline walks on the treadmill because she was too anxious to push herself harder.
‘After a cardio session, people would say to me: “Don’t you feel good now that you’ve done it?” she says.
‘I would reply: “No, I feel disgusting”.”
Around the same time, Rhiannon was diagnosed with autism and ADHD. She later realised she hadn’t been ‘lazy’ at all – the breathlessness, heat and sweat triggered sensory overload, which is why she had spent so long avoiding exercise.
Over time, however, she began weight training with the help of a personal trainer and says she eventually discovered a love for lifting weights.
Over an 18-month period, she lost around seven stone while improving her strength and fitness in the gym.
But she says her mindset shifted when discussions around her progress became increasingly focused on weight loss rather than overall health.
‘That was the moment that I decided the fitness industry needs to change,’ she says.
‘I was very close to throwing it all in and then not wanting to even go back to the gym.’
Instead of continuing to focus primarily on the scales, Rhiannon says she began concentrating on consistency, strength and enjoyment.
In December 2024, she qualified as a personal trainer herself and began working with clients who often felt excluded from traditional fitness spaces.
Many first contact her through social media, where she discusses gym anxiety, body image and neurodivergence.
‘The goal was never about losing weight for me – it was about getting stronger and healthier,’ says Rhiannon, pictured during a training session
Rhiannon says she ‘truly believes you can be fat and fit’ – and that’s the hill she’s prepared to die on
‘The people who come to me are usually people who have tried gyms before and felt uncomfortable or unwelcome,’ she says.
She says some clients had previously worked with trainers who made them feel ashamed of their bodies.
‘Around half of them have had a personal trainer before and were made to feel like their body was something that needed to be fixed,’ she says.
‘It was like punishment for them.’
Building her business initially proved slow, partly because many of the people she wanted to help were not already gym-goers.
‘I probably gained maybe two clients a month on average,’ she says.
‘It took around eight months to make a profit.’
Now, she says her client list is full, with both in-person and online sessions focused on helping beginners feel more comfortable exercising.
Rhiannon says many are drawn to her precisely because she doesn’t look like a stereotypical trainer and talks openly about anxiety and neurodivergence. ‘The biggest thing people say is that they feel safe with me,’ she explains.
Her favourite moments, she says, are when formerly terrified clients walk into the weights area on their own and quietly follow a programme they once thought was ‘not for people like them’.
But her growing online presence has also attracted criticism.
‘People will say things like: ‘How can you teach people about fitness when you look like that?’ she says.
‘People have accused me of faking my qualification, I’ve been called a scam artist, a fraud, and that I’m there to tick the diversity box.’
Earlier this year, Rhiannon featured in a viral YouTube video by fitness creator Joe Fazer titled ‘I Hired A Fat Personal Trainer’, which sparked debate online about whether a trainer’s appearance affects their credibility.
Earlier this year, Rhiannon featured in a viral YouTube video by fitness creator Joe Fazer (pictured)
Some viewers praised her for helping people who might otherwise avoid exercise altogether, while others questioned whether someone visibly overweight could represent health and fitness.
Her story comes amid ongoing debate among researchers about obesity, fitness and long-term health outcomes.
Research has shown that regular exercise and improved cardiovascular fitness can benefit health regardless of weight loss. However, obesity itself remains associated with increased long-term risks of conditions including heart disease, fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes.
A recent study led by researchers at Imperial College London found that obese adults without obvious metabolic problems still faced significantly higher risks of heart, liver and kidney disease compared with people of a healthy weight.
At the same time, some researchers argue that body mass index (BMI) may not fully reflect individual health because it does not account for factors such as muscle mass or fat distribution.
For Rhiannon, however, the biggest change has been how she feels physically and mentally.
‘For the first time ever, I love my body,’ she says.
‘It’s not because of my weight, but from my strength – literally, the strength I have to lift weights in the gym. That makes me feel so powerful and strong.’
‘For the first time ever, I love my body,’ Rhiannon, who is training for her next weight lifting competition, says
Earlier this year, she entered her first strongwoman competition, deadlifting 100kg for 14 repetitions in 60 seconds and completing Atlas stone lifts in under 22 seconds.
She is now preparing for a TEDx talk in Wolverhampton about what she describes as ‘stopping shrinking’ – physically and emotionally.
‘So many people don’t come to a gym or move their body because they don’t feel welcome in a space like a gym,’ she says.
‘I want people to realise they deserve to be there too.’
Rhiannon says the key for nervous beginners is to make the first few gym visits feel ‘fail-safe’, so they leave feeling they’ve succeeded rather than failed.
‘However the first few visits need to look, you need to make them a success,’ she says. ‘You could just go in, go to the toilet and then come out. The main thing is that you make each opportunity to go a good thing.’
She recommends starting small – even just five or ten minutes on a treadmill – and gradually building confidence over time, rather than jumping into intense programmes that risk putting people off.
‘People go in and absolutely destroy their muscles, then get so sore they never want to go back,’ she says. ‘Slow and steady is the best way.’
Four years after first stepping into a gym feeling anxious and out of place, Rhiannon now spends most weeks training for strongwoman competitions while working with beginners who share the same fears she once had.
‘I know what it feels like to think you don’t belong there,’ she says. ‘If I can help even one person feel comfortable enough to walk into a gym without fear or shame, that means everything to me.’
