Who would ever know that once totally depressed Massy Arias locked herself indoors for eight months. Time went by, and now she boasts her ripped physique over 2,5 million online fans.
“When I say fitness saved me, I don’t mean just the exercise,” says Arias.
Having almostly destroyed mental health 29-year-old, formerly known as MankoFit, could barely do three push-ups when she started working out as a way to overcome depression in 2012.
“With no school, no boyfriend, and no job, I isolated myself in my room. I didn’t have an appetite, started losing my hair, and refused to shower. Despite all of that, I didn’t want to go on medication for my depression because I didn’t want to depend on it. Instead, I tried a bunch of homeopathic remedies, like St. John’s wort and hypnotherapy, which didn’t work,” she told Cosmopolitan.
Originally from the Dominican Republic, this tattooed beauty has the body of a Goddess, which she admits to having built herself, literally from scratch.
Massiel “Massy” Indhira Arias’ whole fitness journey and techniques are self-taught. Since she has never been affluent enough to be able to hire a personal trainer or to enroll into excellent courses, she ended up in the library looking up books to learn the correct way to train and the right way to eat.
She is candidly open about her lack of formal training background but claims that her knowledge is sound enough to be modeled according to the different individual needs of her clients.
“Every time I stepped into the gym, I stepped outside of my comfort zone. It was a mental release. My workouts would sometimes be as long as two hours because I wanted to feel good, and what made me feel good was pushing myself at the gym. Now, I realize that was overtraining, but at the time, I didn’t know what I was doing.”
After creating her own page on Instagram, she soon started receiving messages from strangers asking to train them.
“I told them I wasn’t a certified personal trainer, but they didn’t care, and I did enough research about fitness to feel confident that I could show them proper form. So I brought them to my gym and led them through my typical workout, we’d do basic things like squats, deadlifts, and bicep curls.”
“This probably sounds controversial, but I wasn’t worried people would get hurt because we weren’t doing any moves that thought were super strenuous or complicated. It was more like we were working out together than me actually training them, but I charged $400 for 12 sessions with me,” she said.
According to her official website, Massy’s training style incorporates various techniques including resistance training, calisthenics, yoga, high-intensity interval training, and sprinting. She avoids sticking to a specific manner in order to keep workouts exciting, fun and fresh.
Clients learn how to adopt health and fitness as a lifestyle beyond just losing weight. Her perspective on achieving the healthy balance between the mind and body surpasses attain desirable aesthetics.
“I one day hope to influence a new generation of trainers to teach people a lifestyle instead of a quick fix to get a bikini body. I want to teach people to fully believe that being healthy really is being happy.”