Fitting Fitness into Life: Amber Kay Papi

HEY fitness friends! My name is Amber, and I’m a 26 year-old former Division 1 athlete and my husband is a professional baseball player. I just recently started my own personal training and online coaching business because I never wanted to work for a public gym, and thanks to PRx, I don’t have to! No need to worry about commuting, public gym limitations, restrictions, rules, or membership fees because I have my OWN professional gym in our garage. I get to workout and train clients in a space that isn’t cluttered with people and thousands of machines, and I also get to produce content for my social media platforms and online clients! Not to mention it’s a great place for my husband to lift in his off-season! IT’S LEGIT! Now let me tell you how I got to this point…

I have been an athlete all my life. I started playing soccer at the ripe age of 3. I played for the Olympic Development Program all the way through high school before being recruited by the University of Virginia to play soccer on a scholarship there. My husband played baseball at UVA, which is where we met. He was then selected in the 2014 MLB Draft the same year I graduated.

Although my soccer career came to an end, health and fitness still came naturally to me because it had essentially been my “job” as a full-time athlete most of my life. After college, my routine was thrown off because I was no longer going to training 3-4 hours a day with my team, I had to go to work in the “real world” and find time for workouts around my schedule. I worked multiple jobs right out of college (Photographer for the Chicago Blackhawks…Production Artist…Insurance Case Manager…and Graphic Designer), and it quickly became clear to me that I was not a ‘sit-in-a-cubicle-from-9-to-5’ kind of person. I thrive on activity and I wanted to make a career out of it.

It all started when my husband and I moved from Chicago to Charlotte and I began studying for my personal training certification exam. We joined the YMCA, and besides the 20-minute drive to the gym and how crowded it always was, we made it work. But when I decided to start filming my workouts and promoting myself on social media as a fitness influencer, it became increasingly difficult to do that at a packed gym (especially one that put signs up saying “no photos or videos”…oops!)

At that point, I had to start filming workouts in our garage with the minimal equipment we had (dumbbells and resistance bands), and I wanted MORE! When I finally got my certification, I kept dreaming about having my own personal gym. Soon after that, my husband came across the PRx advertisement…

Before we knew it, we were prepping our garage for our massive PRx delivery! We added rubber stall mats for the platform and filled out the rest of the flooring with foam gym tiles. We added mirrors to the walls and covered the far side of the garage with a sheet barrier. It was crazy to see it transform from just a place for our cars, to a place that held our “stuff” and junk, to a lonely dumbbell rack, then into a FULLY FUNCTIONING GYM! There is nothing better than being in our house and saying, “want to go workout?” then simply just walking into our garage. We are not only saving money by having the PRx system, we are actually MAKING money using it!

As a personal trainer and online coach, I love being in the business of changing lives, promoting health and fitness, and making people feel good about themselves. And with this impressive home gym, I actually feel like a professional.

If you are contemplating buying a PRx system for your garage, let me tell you with absolute certainty that you will NOT regret it! It’s an investment, but one that will improve your health and fitness while increasing your time spent with family. We can’t wait to continue adding more equipment to our constantly evolving, ever-growing home gym.

-Amber

Instagram: @papi.training

Facebook: Papi Health & Fitness

Check out my instagram for daily workout videos and fitness inspiration!

This page has been updated to reflect current product options in August 2023.