Biography

Catriona Fitchett

OWNER

At a glance:


I started ballet at 2 and a half. I started ice skating at 5. I started high jumping at around 9. I competed nationally and internationally in ice skating and high jump. I won the British Novice Solo Ice Dancing Championships when I was 9 and was ranked no 1 in the UK at high jump when I was 14. 


You could say from around the age of 7/8 my training schedule was full on. I almost knew no different than training. 


At 18 I became a professional dancer. By the time I was 25 I had had numerous operations on wrists and mainly ankles due to injuries, and I had consistent back and neck issues.  Ultimately I had done too much, and pushed my body too far when I was younger. 


I found reformer Pilates through a close friend, who's sister had a studio. So in between jobs I worked at the studio and took to Reformer Pilates like a duck to water. It sounds crazy but I almost did not have to learn anything (I know we are consistently learning), but the Pilates principles were just intuitive to me. Everything just made sense. How to move my body in this way for me was the most natural thing in the world. Qualifying was something that happened rather than something that I trained for. It was the most natural progression.


Through my early 20's whilst dancing professionally and teaching Pilates at the studio I turned more to sports modelling and then laterally stunts. This was my dream job. I was doing well with my stunts and training hard for the British Stunt Register. Then one day disaster struck. I was doing a full twisting back somersault on a trampoline and quite literally my leg snapped off at the knee. Fundamentally in that split second I knew life was never going to be the same.


Fast forward 4 years and I had to start to rebuild my life. I knew that I had a wealth of experience in both elite sport and acute injuries. Balance Pro was born. Sharing my knowledge through Pilates based movements incorporating all the good from my previous training. 


I also trained in exercise therapy which again, was a qualification that just made such sense to me. Enabling me to assist in rehabilitation and  movement dysfunctions. 


Here I am today, just buzzing with meeting new clients, taking referrals, helping people in many ways and always learning more.


My life has been interesting and varied, it has had extreme highs and extreme lows. I now have a channel to share all my knowledge and help others. Balance Pro is a culmination of so many experiences and I am delighted to be on this new journey.


My full Bio is below. It is fairly long, but shows further insight into how I got to this point.



Full Bio

I was born on the 26th April 1985 in Ascot and life began! From the age of 2 ½ I started dancing and the sports kept coming from there. I started ice skating shortly after and become British Novice Solo Ice Dance Champion when I was 9. Training was always before school, and we would be on the ice at 6:30 for an hour and a half practice before a second breakfast, a quick change and off to school. My parents were incredible for funding this and getting up every morning to sit at a freezing cold ice rink!!

I started also at the local athletics club, Windsor Slough, Eton and Hounslow, because my brother went there. I started doing middle distance running as that is what he did. One day in a competition the team did not have a high jumper, so they asked me to pop over a bar just to get some points. I did and won, so I decided to have a bit more of a go at this high jump thing. I won English Schools when I was 14 and went on to become ranked number one in the country for my age. I gained my national vest and went on to win gold representing my country. Later I switched countries from England to Scotland and was invited to train in Scotland with the squad. On the weekends I would fly to Scotland to train and fly home again, along with all my mid-week training. 


From 2 ½ to about 18, my focus was ice skating, high jump and dancing. This took its toll on my body, and also my development as a child/young person. I did not have any spare time, I was competing in one of my sports every weekend, and I was training 2-3 times a day in order to fulfil all of the training that was expected of me in each discipline. I had pressures from each sport wanting me to quit the others, to focus solely on that sport. Who knows if it was the right decision or not, but I kept doing all three. On top of all my studies, I was a busy girl, which taught me great time management and a determination to succeed.

When I was 17, I auditioned for BBC Born to Win. It was a huge show on BBC 1 where they were trying to find Britain’s new young sporting talent. They physically and mentally tested thousands of young sports men and women from all different sports and chose just 10 girls and 10 boys to fly to Austria for three grueling weeks of tests, eliminating 1 boy and 1 girl after each three events. It was hosted by Dermott O Leary and over seen by Sally Gunnel and Colin Jackson. This was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I had to push myself well out of my comfort zone and compete in areas which I was less than comfortable with, including open water swimming. I came 5th overall and whilst was disappointed at the time, I am hugely proud looking back.

Once leaving school, I decided to focus more on becoming a professional dancer and pursuing modelling. I was struggling on the ice at 5ft 11 and, at the time my high jump was not going well. Retrospectively this was the worst time to end my high jump career. I went through puberty late, and exactly at this time my body started to get naturally heavier, I had lost the natural ability that I had as a child and I was not “flying” so easily anymore. Naively I did not understand that if I had continued, my body would have come through that developmental stage and I would have come out stronger. The decision was made however to start in London gaining an agent and stepping into the spotlight dancing and modelling.

I started dancing commercially in music videos, commercials and did some overseas work as a show girl. I was also modelling and was lucking enough to appear in London Fashion Week amongst walking in some other shows including L’Oréal. I soon realized I did not have a high fashion look and started marketing myself more towards the commercial side. Through my high jumping days, I got approached by a sports modelling agent which was my dream. Combining all my previous skills with my passion of modelling meant that doors were opening. I skated in commercials for Marks and Spencer’s, Morrisons, I was in the 2012 Olympic Campaign and featured in Woman’s Fitness magazine.

At this time, injuries started to appear from all my previous training from such a young age. I was plagued by back problems and ankle problems. I remember strapping my ankle after an operation and slipping on my New Yorkers for an audition and grimacing my way through it. I remember waking up from another ankle op with the surgeon saying they had had to do more than they had intended resulting in me being in a cast. All I said was “but I have to be on set filming tomorrow!”  

A friend of mine had a sister who had a Pilates studio, and said I should go and meet her. I popped down one day to see what Reformer Pilates was all about and…well…I was addicted! This way of moving my body felt glorious! I took to it like a duck to water and started using this training to help with my injuries and strengthen my body. I also started to qualify as a teacher immediately and teach people. It was like I had seen the light. If I had known about Reformer Pilates when I was younger, I am convinced my body would never had sustained so many injuries. A love affair had started.

Along with teaching Pilates I was always doing random jobs in the film and tv industry to pay the bills, and one day I ended up on the set of a movie doing some stand in work for the leading actress as my measurements were identical to hers. I got chatting to the crew during one of the many delays that there are on set and we got chatting about what I did. I went home and that was that. A few days later I got a call from the stunt Co Ordinator on the movie asking if I could go and meet him. They didn’t have a stunt double for their leading actress and with my background and the fact there weren’t any massively technical stunts required I could be perfect. It is usual to use a stunt person who is not from the British Stunt Register, but occasionally if they are struggling to find a physical match (height and measurements etc.) then they can. So I had a chat with the Co Ordinator and got the job. A few days later I was in rehearsal for a small fight scene, and a few days later I was on set shooting my first day. I was stunt doubling for the amazing Nicole Kidman and my first scene was with Colin Firth. Not daunting at all!!!!!!
After filming this incredible movie, I was encouraged by the stunt Co Ordinator and Colin Firth’s stunt double whom I greatly admired to train to become part of the British Stunt Register. This is probably one of the biggest challenges any one can face. To become part of the Register (at that time) you had to qualify in 6 disciplines from a list dictated by the register. I chose High Diving, Trampolining, Horse Riding, Kick Boxing, Rock Climbing and a miscellaneous category which can be another sport that has been achieved to an international level (at the discretion of the Register). This is not a quick process and is grueling. You have to fund it all, find the training locations and self-motivate your way through this. There are no courses, no clubs, just you, your body, your mind, your determination and a whole lot of training. Naturally along the way you come across other people training for the register and you start building your own training partners. There are few processes like it. To put it in perspective, in Kick boxing you have to be Brown Belt. That is one below black belt. You have to be that level in 6 disciplines. For me I had finally found purpose. The more I worked with fellow “stunties” the more inspiration I found. These humans are not humans, they are superheroes. Beyond talented. Intelligent, inspirational beings all likeminded to achieve the impossible. I started to learn the craft including high falls, air ram, fire burns. I started to push my boundaries and started jousting to improve my horsemanship. I was progressing well within my training, constantly finding the balance between work to fund the training, pushing myself hard in training and yet getting enough rest to enable me to continue on and on. I had a team of chiro’s, massage therapists, physios to keep me strong. I was in the best shape of my life. Then one day close to taking my trampoline test I was practicing a full twisting back somersault and disaster struck. To this day no one knows what happened. I did not bail out of the move, the move did not go wrong, but on landing, my lower leg effectively came away from my thigh at the knee. I snapped my ACL, PCL, MCL, and ripped off both menisci. My lower leg was attached to my upper leg pretty much by skin, muscle and my LCL. My leg could be bent forward, backwards and sideways. I knew everything was over.
I was blue lighted to Frimley and stabilized. Then I was transferred to the care of Henry Bourke, an amazing leading surgeon in multi ligament reconstruction. I don’t remember much around the time between drugs and disbelief. After a 6-hour operation with three surgeons, they had managed to harvest parts from my left leg to start reconstruction of my right knee. They used metal, nuts and bolts and some LARS ligament (effectively plastic rope) to reconstruct my knee. When I woke up the pain was unimaginable. I was in hospital for a week whilst we tried to control the pain. I was unable to walk on either leg.  

Without going into all the details for the next 4 years I was having surgery and rehabilitating, culminating in my last surgery which was where I had a transplant from a cadaver. After my first surgery I got a reformer put in my house and created a rehab room, as I could not drive or walk. I would get out of my wheelchair and bottom shuffle over to the reformer and pull myself up onto it. These were the 4 hardest years of my life. My prognosis after the first operation was not good. Things like “you will never walk without a limp” were muttered, and “you won’t be able to run”, you get the idea. I decided that was not going to be my life. That was not going to be me. I can safely say, if it had not been for my reformer, then that probably would have been my life. I spent hours and hours learning to bend my leg and build up strength safely lying on my back. My whole body was unrecognizable. I had lost weight, by back and pelvis were in a mess from being in a wheelchair and on crutches, and wearing leg braces. I literally had to rebuild my entire body. 

Jumping forward, I got married and held off having a baby until after the transplant, the thought of dealing with a small child whilst rehabbing from the transplant was not an option. So I had the surgery, got as strong as I was happy with to enable me to carry a baby and had my beautiful son. This brought a whole load of physical issues in itself. Carrying him, the physical labour and then postnatally. Again, I turned to Pilates throughout to maintain myself.

Now I want to give back. I want to turn every single one of my life experiences into a positive. I have finally realized that my brain harnesses knowledge from such a wide spectrum of sports and I finally have confidence in myself and my abilities. I have gone through injuries that I should never have recovered from. To date I have had 10 surgeries and am fascinated in rehabilitation and the barriers that people face. After my knee surgeries I volunteered for a year once a week on the orthopedic ward at Heatherwood Hospital. I was just chatting to patients and making them tea etc. It gave me a real insight to “normal humans” (and by that I mean nonprofessional sports men and women that generally have a totally different mental approach and understanding to injury and rehabilitation) to see what they felt after surgery. How they were going to approach getting better, what their mind set was, what barriers they faced. This was a crucial part of my development in my journey to working with people and their bodies, I have grown up working in and around highly motivated sports people. If they have an injury, they want to get better ASAP, they want to see the best people and do the best they can. “Normal” people sometimes do not understand what processes need to occur. Some have no desire. Some have desire but do not know how/where to go. Some do not have the funds. There are so many different barriers. I want to try and help with all. I want to help sports people rehab and get back to what they love. I want to help normal people that feel that they will just simply have to give up something they love due to an injury. I want to help and educate. 

A lot of my rehabilitative knowledge has come from my own personal injuries along the way and the methods I created to rehab myself. No one understands what you are going through more than someone that has gone through it!! However, to pursue my passion of rehabilitation professionally I studied Exercise Therapy with the fabulous team at Drummond Education under the tutelage of Gill Cummings-Bell BA (Hons) MSc PGCE MBA. She is a walking human font of knowledge on all things exercise, anatomical, biomechanical and dietary. What this woman does not know, is probably not worth knowing!

As with all my qualifications however, I use them as a cornerstone for my method and I combine that knowledge with my own knowledge and create techniques and exercises that I feel best suit each individual.

Whilst I want to help people from all sporting back grounds, I am most interested in working with clients to create a balanced approach to health and fitness and rehabilitation. I want to use all my experiences and knowledge to create the most balanced method, drawing on the best techniques I have learnt along the way. I want to create a sustainable way for clients so that it may benefit them for life with techniques they can apply to everyday activities and every sport. I want to educate. Hence Balance Pro was born. 
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