tampabay.com:
It’s not uncommon for Stephanie Fraze and her clients to brush aside early morning cobwebs, swat deerflies or check out alligators and nesting birds as the women make their way across the sweeping acres of Sawgrass Lake Park. This is Fraze’s primary place of business.
She recently launched Get Up Girl, a personal fitness program for women, and can be spotted Monday through Saturday taking clients through their paces. They run up and down little hills for interval training, squat against poles to strengthen quads and buttocks and build stomach muscles, hop on benches and perform walking lunges along winding paths.
“I could work out the whole body in this park,” Fraze said last week.
It was her second session that morning. The first, at 5:15 a.m., was a cardio workout with a client on Coffee Pot Boulevard on St. Petersburg’s waterfront.
Fraze, 39, a proud stay-at-home mom whose Christian faith plays an important role in her life, began her personal training business by chance. She had been helping friends with their exercise programs when she decided it was something she could do to earn a little money while her children are in school. Friend and workout partner Lori Canfield provided encouragement.
“We just started out as friends to get in shape, and that’s how it started and snowballed from there,” said Canfield, a 45-year-old mother of four who works out with Fraze five mornings a week.
“This was a risk for me to step out and say, this is what I’m doing and take on clients,” said Fraze, who will soon complete an online personal training certification course through the International Sports Sciences Association.