#instagraminfluencer
Nicci Petraschuk | @NicciLeefit
291 Posts
44.2k followers
2449 following
Nicci Lee Petraschuk is the owner of Iron Empire Fitness, Miss Calgary 2017, published fitness model, and mother of two young girls. With over 44,000 Instagram followers, she's considered an influencer in the platform's fitness community. Instagram is great for connecting with her followers, but she's concerned the app isn't a positive influence for young people.
Instagram fitness influencer says the app is a mixed bag of good and bad
By Deanna Tucker
Nicci Petraschuk sits back in a lounge chair at the gym she owns in Calgary’s southeast, adjusts her position and pulls her long dark hair to one side without covering the logo on her branded hoodie, which reads, “Iron Empire.”
Petraschuk is only 30 but already has a long list of accolades to her name. She is Miss Calgary 2017, a published fitness model, fitness gym owner, personal trainer, co-owner of a luxury bikini line, and most importantly, mom of two young girls.
“I am mom and dad to my two daughters. They are going to be nine and 11 this year. I’m extremely proud of them,” she beams.
As a mom and fitness inspiration, the gym owner reflects on social media, and the impact it can have on its viewers. With over 44,000 followers on Instagram she says the platform is great, but she’s concerned about the app’s impact on younger users.
“I don’t feel like it influences our perception in a good way, to be honest,” she says. “I don’t feel like it’s done a lot of good for a lot of self-confidence.”
The trainer says she all too often sees drastically edited photos or surgically enhanced bodies on Instagram, and she is concerned that younger women are being given a false hope. “These girls are like ‘why the hell can’t I get my body there.’”
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Virtual fitness versus reality
Petraschuk believes everyone has their own body ideal, but says there is an obvious trend for women to have a more athletic, toned body, a big bum and small waist.
For her, the problem is that men and women scrolling through these images on Instagram are unaware of how much it actually takes to attain these ideals.
“They just think they can go from never lifting weights to jumping right in and they’re going to look like that – not knowing most of these girls have been training for seven to 10 years,” she says. And if the results aren’t from hard and consistent work, she believes the idealistic curves are more likely to be surgically enhanced.
Petraschuk says lot of young women will come into her gym for aesthetic purposes, but that she encourages them to dig deeper. After having a positive experience with her first personal trainer, Bree Lind, Petraschuk is as excited for her clients inner transformation as she is their physical transformation.
“A lot of women, they come in here broken. They’re trying to take control of something in their life, and that’s 95 per cent of clients that come in here,” she says.
Here's what it takes to train like a fitness competitor
But Petraschuk is no stranger to brokenness. In fact, it is the very reason she became serious about getting into the gym. By the time she was 18, Petraschuk was expecting her first daughter. Only three years later, she had two daughters, and a failing relationship with their father.
“I just needed time because I felt like my mental state was deteriorating,” she says after beginning the journey of raising her daughters on her own.
What started as home workouts and personal training three days a week evolved into the beginning of her fitness competitions, winning her first show at 22.
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Business, not as usual
Now as a personal trainer using her Instagram account to showcase her business and training, Petraschuk says the online competition has changed how business works for her and other gym owners she know.
“It is extremely hard for all of us real people, it really is,” she says of standing out from other online accounts that look great, but may not be properly educated to train others. Before Instagram, Petraschuk says it was easier because knowing who was a trained expert was easy to tell. Since Instagram doesn’t regulate claims of professional expertise, it’s become more difficult.
“We didn’t have Instagram where anybody looked good so now all of a sudden you could buy their $30 program – or their one dollar, I’ve seen, guide to nutrition when they’ve never trained a person or the never took any courses or anything for it. They just look good and all of a sudden they’re a trainer and a nutritionist.”
That’s why she encourages young people to choose who they follow carefully. She also warns people to do their research when considering whether or not an online fitness or nutrition program is actually helpful.
“I don’t think they’re looking at the value of what they’re getting, they just look at the price,” she says.