WINNING STRATEGY: Angela Gargano helps women move to higher levels

WINNING STRATEGY: Angela Gargano helps women move to higher levels

Angela Gargano is a fitness trainer determined to help all women successfully complete their first pull-up - then another - and keep improving until every small victory leads to long-term improvements in wellness and lifestyle.

Gargano, a four-time contestant on NBC's hit "American Ninja Warrior," teaches from experience that she has to start from the ground up. The athlete, model and motivational speaker once had to pull herself up from the "Ninja Warrior" mats - on national television - after blowing out her knee during the event.

The injury, which was seen by millions of viewers in 2018, temporarily set her back physically and mentally. But during the rehab process, Gargano was able to discover a new, larger purpose for which she could use her athletic gifts - helping others achieve their fitness goals.

In addition to helping over 500 women master their pull-ups with her online program Pull-up Revolution, the former 2016 Miss Fitness America also runs Strong Feels Good, a wellness platform aimed at encouraging women to ditch the scales and focus on a strength tool to measure their physical progress.

Gargano is also currently training for her fifth “ANW”. Although she never won the event, it will be a victory if she makes it back to the platform after a torn ACL (her second ACL injury) following a climb off an obstacle in 2018.

“It was an accident making it onto the show, but coming back was definitely the most fulfilling thing ever,” she says. At that point I didn’t care how I did it.”

Gargano now calls herself the “Oprah of pull-ups,” which stems in part from her gymnastics days as a 5-year-old. Her advice is sought by thousands today, but back when she grew up as a woman with an athletic build, she became a target for bullies, which forced her to hide her young and athletic figure at the time. She turned the experience into a positive one: Her pull-up challenge encourages women of all walks of life and body types to work on self-improvement. And according to Gargano, it all starts with a slope, just one element of Gargano's strategy for success.

“For those who say they can’t, this is a belief you need to change,” Gargano says. "If you believe you can do it, you can do it. So I think that's just a reframing of the beliefs that you have. And that's everything, not just in 'Ninja'."

1. FINDING YOUR WHY CAN TAKE TIME

I was in a social studies class in high school and I think we were watching some sort of action movie. This guy comes out really strong and some guys shout it out. Oh, well, this is Angela. And I remember just crying. After that I covered my body every day, I wouldn't let anyone see my arms even if it was 100 degrees outside

I was a gymnast - my mom put me in gymnastics classes, and I guess my body just changed like that. That's how my body was built. I was more built than most people at school, but it was very different. Part of me just wanted to be normal. But I just hid from everyone instead of giving up gymnastics - that was my happy place where I could go and be myself.

I thought it would be better if I went to college because I assumed I would be around people who were all like me, but that really didn't happen - I was still the most muscular on the team.

Finally, I really believe the change happened when I started competing in fitness competitions outside of college - where now you get on stage and show off your body. And it was beautiful. For the first time, I saw more people around me saying, Oh my God, we love your body. We love your arms. I think the confidence to go on stage in high heels and show off my muscles really helped transform me for good. So it wasn't until after college that I really started to embrace my body.

2. FOR ANGELA GARGANO, AN UNEXPECTED MOMENT CAN CHANGE A LIFE

I tore my left ACL my junior year of college gymnastics, so I wasn't really able to do exactly what I wanted to do. I was a biochemist at Brown University and always felt while I was there that I wanted something more but wasn't sure what I could do.

So I started looking at what was available to me and eventually met a woman named Dawn Butterfield. She was a huge fan of Fitness America competitions and I saw her doing all these cool flips on stage and thought, I want to do that! D met with me and she told me all about these whole other worlds where you can do fitness competitions again, a whole routine, but then you go on stage and pose, which was way out in my comfort zone at first.

She introduced me to Cathy Savage, who was then starring on MTV's I Want the Perfect Body. They had a whole segment about fitness competitions. So Dawn introduced me to her, and then as I sat in her office she said to me, “I'm sponsoring you and I think you'll do this.

I thought, “What?” And in a few weeks I was competing in high heels.

This person, Cathy Savage, really believed in me, and then all of a sudden it was like it literally took off from there because this one person believed in me so much that I actually started to believe that I should do this. I finally had people encouraging me and that was very uplifting.

3. THE RIGHT ADVICE CAN LAST A LIFETIME

I think it's important to know that you will have really bad moments in life.

One time I remember a mentor just looking at me and I was fighting it so hard. I was down, not looking strong, and she said, It's okay to feel that way and cry about it, but you can't stay stuck there.

I think what's important is that when you're going through the journey and you're really down, just remember that it's okay to be down for a second, that it's okay for you to have that moment and not instead try to fight it and resist it or lean into it more and learn from it. And then make sure you come out okay.

I tore my ACL in college and then onAmerican ninja warrior.I opened a gym and had to close it. I just think you see it over and over again. But seeing it now, I have the tools to understand it. Like I almost hug it more now. Once you get comfortable with it, you'll get pretty good at it. And then you're able to come out of it quicker and learn from it instead of thinking of it as this horrible thing that's holding you down.

I'm leaning into it now, but I've had to go through these other moments and it keeps coming back and I know it will keep coming, that's okay. Tearing my ACL on national television taught me that it's okay to be down, but you can also have a solid comeback and come back from it, and you can really learn from that moment and use it as an opportunity.

4. STAY – FOR A MOMENT – THEN BACK TO YOUR WORK MENTALITY

When I decided to post myself on Instagram in recovery, I was literally like poking around the office trying to make it funny - even though inside I was like I was falling apart.

Suddenly people started replying to me and they said, Wow, because you posted what you were going through, I decided to get up today even though I was going through something - be it a breakup, a job loss, or something like that. When I took a moment and stepped back and looked at it, I realized that here was a huge opportunity to really help others. It's actually not just about me - I have the opportunity to show people that I can break away. So I feel like the snapback moment was again this one month on an Instagram from a person who messaged me and suddenly I was like, you know what, here we go. Let's do it.

Social media is definitely a great tool – if you use it correctly, you can really benefit from it. If you don't use it properly. And you set it up instead and look at it to compare yourself, which is difficult because you see a lot of people's highlight reels and stuff like that, right? And you get sucked into it and you consume more than you create and you do, then I can feel like it can be a bad thing. So I think it's just how you use it. I think it's amazing because I've been able to connect with now thousands of people who have done my program, which is pretty incredible. So I think it can be used in a great way – if you use it right.

5. ANGELA GARGANO USES HER GIFT TO RAISE OTHERS UP

Throughout this whole process, a lot of women kept coming up to me and saying cool, you were on American Ninja Warrior, I just wanted to do a pull-up. Many women say that. I'm like, Why can't you do it? And they said it's impossible - I'll never be able to do it. And I say, no, it's not like it's impossible. Let's try it.

So I started working with people in person when I owned my gym. I saw when they worked at it consistently, they got it done, and everything lit up - impossible goals suddenly became possible.

So it's like there's an opportunity here. I looked at all the other programs they had online for pull-ups and there was nothing that was very inviting, especially for women. It was all these intimidating guys with jacked pull-ups like you might see in some articles. When you look it up, it's just kind of intimidating and doesn't really like what's going to help you get your pull-ups.

That’s when I decided that this would be my mission. I feel like I've seen a bigger picture of this, not just about the pull-up, but about the fact that if someone can accomplish this impossible task, what else can they do? I saw my one client do her first pull-up and now she's running Spartan Races, all because she saw that something impossible is possible forever.

It's the whole process - you start at the bottom, as we actually call it in my program. Now we are here to get to the top. And what I like to do in my program is break it down into small steps. So instead of thinking I have to get to the top of the bar, break it down into Can I just hang on the bar? Well, you can take the next step. You try to bend the elbow slightly, you don't try to go all the way up.

So if you can break down your pull-up like I do in my program, you can break down anything in life that way and do it in baby steps and baby wins and celebrate every little step.