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Hannah Brook Smith, RKC Certified Kettlebell Instructor, Certified Health Coach
Hannah is a Rochester native, hailing from Brighton, New York. Her first taste of strength training came while she played lacrosse from ’05 - ‘09. During her time on the team, she found herself joining the men’s lacrosse team in the pre-season to participate in their strength and conditioning. Reminiscing on this, Hannah laughs and says, “I remember bench pressing 100lbs as an 8th grader and absolutely falling in love with that feeling of strength and power!” As she approached her junior year of high school, Hannah decided she wanted to run the 2010 Rochester MVP Marathon, and left the lacrosse team. She joined the track and field team that Spring instead, to help her prepare for her new goal.
Strength training aside for a moment, it’s impossible to understand Hannah’s core values without discussing her near-lifelong passion: Horses. Hannah has been horseback riding and training horses since 1999. After a decade's worth of hunter-jumper circuits, too many horse-related injuries, and training with horses that were overworked, under-stimulated, and in pain...Hannah began to ask herself, “Isn’t there more to all ‘this’ than blue ribbons and forcing your animal to perform...?”
In 2008, Hannah found Renegade Wind, a horse boarding and training facility in Honeoye Falls, New York. At Renegade Wind, the horses are metal-free (no bits or shoes) and a non-dominant approach to training is the norm. The core agenda is to build relationships with horses through trust, and to facilitate a learning space free from ‘human’ timelines. Kim Strauss, the owner of Renegade Wind, maintains that true learning and progress happen when animals (and people) are encouraged to learn at their own pace. This has become a core value for Hannah, and influences her approach to life, lifting, and training others.
Speaking of pace, after breaking her foot while training a month before her marathon, Hannah’s first race was off the table. She then broke her middle finger shortly thereafter. Her senior year of high school started with a broken foot and a broken finger… a finger that became infected with E.Coli and Streptococcus after a botched surgery to reattach the tendon to the bone. In the wake of this life-threatening infection that almost went systemic, as well as the massive doses of antibiotics needed to keep her alive for months on end, Hannah became chronically unwell.
During this season of intense illness and myriad health challenges, a classmate of Hannah’s, a Penfield wrestler, coached her in barbell training, functional fitness, and nutrition for hardworking/healing bodies. Despite the setbacks she’d faced, Hannah was determined to achieve her goal and run the Rochester marathon. After training with her classmate for all of her senior year, Hannah was finally able to run her race, and came in 5th place for her age group in the 2011 Rochester Marathon that fall.
Fast forward to 2014, in the summer before her final year of undergrad at St. Lawrence University, Hannah joined Wolf Brigade, a strength and conditioning gym in Rochester, New York. Hannah trained at Wolf Brigade from 2014-2018. In 2018 Hannah felt that learning at the right pace needed to happen elsewhere, and through a search for her best fit she found and joined East Ave. Barbell. In 2019, she also joined Monroe County CrossFit.
In 2020, Hannah earned her Health Coaching Certificate in all three life stages, Families, Pregnancy, and Adults & Seniors, from the Dr. Sears Wellness Institute. She also became a 2020 RKC Certified Kettlebell Instructor. She is currently teaching kettlebell classes, health coaching on nutrition and lifestyle, and working on her NASM Personal Training Certification. Hannah brings a unique perspective to East Ave. Barbell, focusing on holistic wellness, individualized coaching, and training others to build mental fortitude.
Chronic health concerns/injuries have plagued Hannah throughout the last decade. Reflecting on all she’s been through, she says this: “My physical practice has allowed me to, mentally, endure the most brutal moments of illness. Times when the challenge of just going a single step further felt unbearable were often mirrored in how my training sessions felt in the gym. I have realized if it’s like that for me, odds are, it’s like that for someone else. One thing has held true in my life: The greater the need, the greater the result. The greater the need to overcome, the greater the result in learning and awareness. Because of this, I can assure you that for every sharp cut of misfortune, a gift awaits you on the opposing side of that blade.”
When Hannah isn’t coaching, researching something, or lifting all the kettlebells she can find, she is often hiking, playing with horses, or drinking coffee in a quiet place.