A DailyOM course creator is a role model for older women by keeping it 'strong and fierce and real.'
If there was ever a rock star yogini, it would be Sadie Nardini. No wonder her workshop for yoga teachers is called Sadie Nardini’s Rockstar Yoga Teacher Academy. She’s also the lead singer for a rock band, Sadie & the Tribe.
Nardini grew up in Cedar Falls, Iowa, went to college at the University of Washington in Seattle, and eventually landed in New York City, where she mostly taught at boutique fitness studios. She founded her own yoga studio, The Fierce Club, in 2010.
She quickly achieved cult status — people loved her energy and inspiration. In 2013, she published The 21 Day Yoga Body. Not long after, she received an email from holistic wellness website DailyOM, wondering if she might want to create a written course for them on the same subject.
Nardini had a different idea: Why not do a course with video?
“I was right at the turning point between the idea of reading online e-books and written material into wanting and having the technology at home to be able to practice videowise — on your phone, your computer,” says Nardini, who is an E-RYT 500 (the highest international standard for yoga teachers after 500 hours of teaching training), and Harvard- and Stanford-certified in musculoskeletal anatomy and exercise physiology.
The ideas kept flowing, along with the courses like “Tabata Yoga,” “Chair Yoga for Strength,” “21 Day Yoga Shred,” “Yoga For Empaths,” and “Fit and Fierce over 40” — one of her best-selling courses and one, ironically, that she was most scared to launch.
“A lot of females in our society have the mindset and are taught and ingrained that we’re not valuable after 30,” says Nardini, who turned 43 on November 23 and lives in Santa Barbara, California. “Especially in the fitness world, we think everyone wants to see a 20-year-old hard body teaching us movement. I was afraid to trumpet my age all over the interweb.”
She eventually decided that if she wanted to be a role model for other women, then she had to be entirely herself, age be damned.
“A big part of that is being a woman over 40 who is strong and fierce and real,” she says. She recalled a conversation she had with her husband, James St. Vincent, who asked her what kind of fitness teachers she admired: A twentysomething with little flab and even less life experience, or someone older who has logged some time on this earth?
“I said, ‘I want someone who has seen Star Wars on the big screen!'” she recalls. “Someone who likes classic rock because we lived it. That’s who I want to learn from. I realized that I needed to get over myself because the world needs more role models over the age of 40.”
And that is exactly what she has done, with great success. Not that it was easy: “I thought, no one’s going to want to study with me,” she said, adding that she had “many” glasses of pinot grigio throughout the week of the release. “I was so vulnerable.”
It turned out to be one of DailyOM’s best-selling courses of all time.
During lockdown, Nardini quicky recognized how unmoored most people felt, how lonely and in need of motivation, and revamped her online teachings. The virtual arrangement worked for her, too. Because the older she gets, the more she wants to stay put rather than running all over the place.
“I like to be at home creating things,” she says. “I don’t want to have to step into reality physically. I don’t want to always have to be beholden to a physical schedule, especially as I’m getting older. I don’t want to have to fly all over the world if I don’t have to.”
She offered nine free weeks at her online yoga-HIIT studio, www.FitFierceClub.com. She also offers personal development, teacher training, and yoga and fitness classes, starting at $29 a class.
The pandemic, not surprisingly, has had a great impact on her thinking about everything, including aging. “I’ve stopped bitching about getting older and started being really happy that I’m able to,” she said.
Sadie Nardini is an E-RYT 500, and is Harvard- and Stanford-certified in musculoskeletal anatomy and exercise physiology. She is the founder of Core Strength Vinyasa Yoga, an anatomy-enhanced yoga style, and The Yoga Shred, a joint-safe HIIT + Yoga fitness style. Due to a severe spinal injury in her teens, Sadie now uses her expertise to create fresh and engaging online yoga and fitness programs with a focus on joint safety so we can move strongly, but with fierce compassion. Sadie translates her years of technical body knowledge into efficient, effective, and empowering yoga, fitness, and lifestyle transformations that are easy to understand and implement. She is also the lead singer of Sadie & The Tribe, and she currently lives and creates in Santa Barbara, California.
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