By BEN KLEINE

Staff writer

Anna Woods was working out too much; she was exercising twice a day, constantly in training for her next event — a triathlon or marathon always around the corner.

She was trying to conceive but was taxing her body too much. Her pituitary gland was rendered unable to produce the necessary hormones.

It was at this time more than four years ago that Woods discovered there was more to health than being physically fit.

“I needed to cut back,” she said. “It was really hard to give up training.”

Physical activity is Woods’ job; she has been a personal trainer for eight years. She has operated Woods Wellness in Hillsboro since January 2007. At first, she trained and taught classes out of her home, but on June 1 she opened a gym on Main Street in Hillsboro.

Before moving to Hillsboro, when her husband took a job as a lineman, she was a physical trainer in northwest Oklahoma.

Woods played softball in college at Pratt Community College and has run triathlons with her mother and sister.

“People knew me as that crazy girl that was out exercising,” Woods said. “I had to uphold that image.”

Woods’ image of herself was what she needed to correct. Her job became the most important thing in her life. Exercise was her stress relief, and physical fitness and strength were a necessity.

For Woods to cut back, she tapped into the spiritual side of health.

“The first thing I had to get back to being was a child of God,” Woods said.

Woods molded her new self-image using scripture and encouragement of friends and family. Woods no longer needed constant exercise and shortly thereafter became pregnant with her first child, who is four years old.

Since then, Woods’ personal training mission has been to combine physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual fitness. She works with her personal training clients in each of these areas and finds that her clients open up while they are under the duress of cardiovascular and strength training.

“Most of my clients are becoming family,” she said.

In addition to her regular personal training, Woods is teaching the Spiritual Side of Health Sundays at Parkview Mennonite Church in Hillsboro.

Woods’ goal is to have the women in the class — thus far, the class is only for women — shed the superficial reasons for physical fitness and focus on the idea that God wants them to be healthy, a desire backed up with passages from the Bible.

“Our idea is not based on outward appearance; it’s a heart issue,” she said. “I hit on top of an issue for a lot of women.”