👋 Hi! Tell us about yourself and your training
I’m Ines Schubi and I’m a plant-based fitness coach for traveling women. I am a digital nomad, so that means I don’t really live in one country.
I have been traveling through South America during the first 6 months of 2019 and then stayed in Europe but mainly in France where I came from and I’m about to move to Australia at the end of the year.
I’ve always been into sports, I actually tried them all (well almost) but the thing is that I never stuck to one. So in the past I could train really hard for a specific goal or race and then do absolutely nothing for several months.
After my studies, when I started to work and have a regular schedule, I realized I was not feeling confident and that was the moment when I decided I had to do something about it. I started training with an at home program and that’s when I really started my consistent fitness journey.
After a year, I moved to Canada and decided that I wanted to push myself further so I started weightlifting and I loved it, and I haven’t stopped ever since.
Since I travel a lot, I have developed a fitness routine with resistance bands and other objects to keep on doing resistance workouts. It is what truly transformed my body and makes me happy.
That’s why I’m on a mission to help as many women as possible to include this type of training into their life.
If you would like to know more about my own transformation story check out this article I made.
⏱ Describe a typical day of training
I usually workout 6 days a week for 1 hour. I do 2 lower body workouts, 2 upper body workouts, 1 HIIT session and 1 cardio session.
The things I bring to the gym or with me when I travel is my water bottle, my TomTom Sport watch to track my heartbeat, and big and small resistance bands. The big ones are used to assist me for pull ups, do resistance squats, or work my upper body strength. While the small ones, I place them on a different part of my legs to work my lower body.
👊 How do you keep going and push harder?
It’s important to plan in advance the when, where and what of your workout
I always visualize how good I’m going to feel afterwards. Sometimes I’m tired and I don’t want to get out of bed, but I never regret hitting the gym, no one does. So I stopped the chatter in my mind and turn on the autopilot, put my workout clothes and hit the gym.
Another thing that has helped me stick to my routine is to book myself a specific time in my agenda for when I want to be at the gym, this way there is no more hesitation and I just need to follow the plan.
It’s important to plan in advance the when, where and what of your workout to set yourself for success.
But the most important thing to keep working out is not all those techniques, it all boils down to loving it. Finding something that you’re truly excited to do. Don’t force yourself to run if you hate running, you know you’re not going to stick to it.
For me, I need workouts that are varied and use technical skills, that is when I’m most excited to hit the gym so I create workouts like that for myself.
🏆 How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
I’m doing good today, I’m building a stronger body everyday and I’ve been able to do non-assisted pull ups now which is a big victory for me. Now, my goal is to be able to do 10 in a row.
I’m also wanting to do my first triathlon so I’m training for that as well. I’m not a good swimmer, so I’ll have to train really hard. But that’s the exciting part in a journey, improving oneself in a specific area where we are struggling and to eventually thrive in it.
Next year I would also love to start gymnastics and learn how to do back and front flip, and I’m so excited about this. As I plan to settle in one city and travel back and forth from there, I’ll probably get a membership in a gymnastic club and improve my skills this way.
🤕 How do you recover, rest and handle injuries?
The most important thing is to always listen to your body.
The most important thing is to always listen to your body.
While preparing for my first triathlon I started having some knee pain so I decided to stop the training as it was not going away. I’m now running some tests to figure out the cause and to know what to do in order to heal myself.
So in the meantime, I’m focusing on eating healthy and mostly vegan because I know this is going to be the best cure for my injury. Fueling my body with the right food, will accelerate the recovery process.
Right now, I only run once a week and focused on weight training on the other days as I know this type of training doesn’t hurt my knee.
I also make sure to get in between 6 to 8 hours of sleep every night for it is when the body repairs itself. I know I need 8 hours to be fully rested but sometimes, life happens and it’s just not possible to fit in those 8 hours that’s why I have set a minimum limit of 6 hours of sleep and will arrange my schedule in order to make sure to always get it.
When I travel, I make to not set the same expectation as when I live in one set place. Usually, traveling implies a lot more movement and walking so I tend to reduce the number of workouts but focus on making every single one I do count by giving my 100%.
🍎 How is your diet and what supplements do you use?
I’ve been eating mostly vegan for 3 years now. That is to say that 90% of the time I’m vegan and 10% I’m vegetarian.
I’ve decided to start eating this way because of health reasons, to cure my eczema.
At first, I was really afraid to change my diet as I am passionate about food (after all I’m French) and I thought that eating vegetarian or vegan would not enable me to keep eating delicious food. But as I went on this journey, I discovered so many new tastes and foods. That’s the complete opposite of what I am afraid of happening.
Instead of being restricted, this way of eating has opened up a whole new world of tasteful possibilities. Anything can be made vegan, really ANYTHING. And not just vegan, but tasty as well. I’ve never been this healthier and I’ve never felt this good and strong.
Now, most of the days I’ll cook for myself and eat healthy. But when I’m invited or when there is a special occasion, I’m totally flexible and eat whatever I want (whether it’s vegan or vegetarian). I don’t set myself any rules or restrictions as I don’t believe that having them enables creating a healthy relationship with food. It’s all about balance.
After a big “not so healthy” meal, I know that the next day I’ll get back on track and eat something healthy and delicious again.
That’s why I don’t take any supplements either. Because if we eat a variety of whole foods, we can get everything that our body needs to thrive.
If you’re 100% vegan, the only supplement you should take is B12 but that’s it and the rest can be found in the plant world. I personally don’t take it at the moment as I’m not 100% vegan and I eat foods enriched in B12, such as soy milk and nutritional yeasts.
👍 What has inspired and motivated you?
Whatever you believe will become your reality.
The first book that I read on vegan sport nutrition was “The Thrive Diet” and I highly recommend it if you’re looking on how to improve your performance on a plant-based diet.
I think, what inspired me and motivated me when I first started my journey was to see all those transformation pictures on Instagram of girls doing the same program as mine. I would see women starting at a heavier weight than I was, being leaner than I was and think “Damn, if that girl did it, I can do it too”.
It all starts there, in your mind, with your own belief. Whatever you believe will become your reality. If you’re not 100% convinced that you can achieve your goal, you will not reach it. But if you do believe in yourself than no one, then nothing will stop you until you get to your goal.
It doesn’t mean it’s going to be a straight line to success but it’s that you’ll find the drive to keep on going, getting back on track and keep pushing until you get what you want.
✏️ Advice for other people who want to improve themselves?
Seek discomfort. In order to grow personally or your muscles, you need to step outside your comfort zone, you need to do hard things and you need to push yourself.
I often see people at the gym doing 1 million repetitions of the same exercise with a very small weight. But the thing is that if you want to gain more strength or grow your muscles, you need to put them under a stress otherwise they’ll have no reason to evolve. At the gym, you do that by lifting heavier.
You can follow a general rule of doing 3 sets of 6 to 8 repetitions for one specific exercise and make sure that the last repetitions of each set, you will reach or almost reach failure. If you finished a set and you’re feeling like you could keep doing more, it means that your weight is too light.
🤝 Are you taking on clients right now?
Right now, I’m creating a new 3-month program solely focus on plant-based nutrition for traveling women that I will start on January 2020 but in the meantime I’m taking 1:1 online clients and I have a couple of spots available.
I solely work online as I am a digital nomad, but I try to do live events in the cities where I am at.
📝 Where can we learn more about you?
My main platform is Instagram @ines_schubi where you can find body-weight workouts, plant-based tips and recipes, and daily stories packed with positive energy and motivation to boost you and inspire you to move your body and eat intuitively.
If you want to try my favorite post workout snack, you can get my vegan energy ball recipe here.
