Gym President Sarah Robb O’Hagan Recommends Mindfulness

Sarah Robb O’Hagan, president of America’s Equinox fitness chain, believes in the links between exercise and confidence, and beauty and strength. Not surprisingly, the New Zealander is also a tri-athlete. But O’Hagan wasn’t always so confident and fitness was a part of her journey to get there.

O’Hagan talks to Yahoo News about how she learned to love her strength, why group fitness rocks, and why the latest trend in health is about mindfulness, not exercise.

“It isn’t about fitting into size zero skinny jeans. It’s about how at every shape and size, people can be beautiful and that comes from within. If you just get your head around that, then somehow you get very good at blocking out the noise in terms of society’s perspective of what’s beautiful,” O’Hagan says.

She says one of the latest trends in fitness is FitBits, wireless-enabled activity trackers that give people basic awareness about their fitness and sleep.

“You think, OK I only walked so many steps today, I really should walk to the train instead of get in a cab. We just launched a new app to aggregate the data off the device.”

O’Hagan is a former executive of Virgin Atlantic, Nike, and Gatorade. Equinox was voted Best Gym in America by Fitness Magazine.

Original article by Sara Bliss, Yahoo News, July 25, 2014.