ASHLEY SELMAN SELMAN’S PHILOSOPHY CENTERS | NEED S AND CREA TING A P ATH.| Engaging, practical and grounded, Ashley Selman displays qualities you hope to find in your best friend—the pragmatic one who is going to tell you how it really is and give you the most reasonable, trustworthy advice. Track and Field legend Jackie Joyner-Kersee trusted Selman’s approach, and it helped lead her to winning three Olympic gold medals—a silver and two bronze. Selman also coached soccer legend Brandi Chastain. The 45-year-old fitness guru and owner of Evolution Trainers, a 10,000-square foot gym and private training facility in Mountain View, founded her business 10 years ago with only a few on her staff. Now she engages some 32 trainers, two physical therapists, three massage therapists, and a chiropractor to serve some 600 clients in over 2,000 sessions and 80 group classes a month. “There are so many ways to get healthy … it’s really about what is going to fit with each person,” says Selman. A native Californian, Selman grew up in Orange County, and went to USC on a track scholarship. 74 South Bay Accent ON G AUGING EACH CLIENT’S| Like Selman herself, the gym has a mellow, warm, yet no-nonsense feel about it. All her trainers are independent contractors and Selman has striven to create a facility with top of the line equipment that could become a playground for well-educated professionals. Clients from young teens to seniors are working individually, while others chat and rest on the earth-toned couches or glance at the view through the giant doors that open the space to the outdoors. Stressing a holistic approach to fitness, Evolution offers on-site acupuncture, chiropractic and active release techniques, massage therapy and nutrition coaching in addition to treadmills, weight benches, kettlebells and suspension trainers. “Sports,” she says, “was a huge part of my upbringing. At 6 years old, I started doing track and field and because I was so young, they started me with the ‘baseball throw.’ It wasn’t a real track and field event of course, but one for little kids. I was a skinny, scrawny, gangly kid, but I could throw the ball so far that I beat all the boys and the girls.” When she was in sixth grade, Selman’s parents bought her a javelin for Christmas. She soon got interested in the heptathlon—seven events including high jump, shot put, javelin throw and 100-meter hurdles. Dedicating herself to mastering all seven, she eventually won a college scholarship. After winning the national championship in javelin her sophomore year in college, injuries and stress during her junior year led to time off. She moved to Oregon, intending to return to USC after a year off, but instead fell in love with the Northwest and transferred to University of Oregon where she studied sociology. After graduating, Selman moved to the Bay Area to train for the Olympics with a group of women javelin throwers and launched her coaching career in track and field for Stanford University. That was where Selman met Joyner-Kersee, whom she coached in javelin before the 1996 Olympics and the 1998 Goodwill Games. “I thought I would coach track and field for college,” she notes. “That’s why I went to school to get my master’s in sports psychology from John F. Kennedy University, because as an athlete, I use visualization and pre-competition routines to get myself into the right mindset.” Personal training sessions, she discovered, could help provide some extra income while she worked on her master’s. She was lucky, she says, to work with Axis Personal Trainers in Menlo Park, where she learned that to broaden her areas of expertise beyond those she employed with star athletes such as Joyner- Kersee and Chastain. She found being a trainer who branched out to include holistic health techniques to be a fascinating and rewarding pursuit. It incorporated her knowledge of sociology and sports psychology. HAIR AND MAKEUP BY ISABEL JACKSON/ATELIER SALON & STUDIO, SANTANA ROW (2); PREVIOUS SPREAD: HAIR, MAKEUP AND GROOMING BY ROSE HILL ASHLEY SELMAN TAKES A BREAK BETWEEN WORKOUTS.
South Bay Accent - Feb/Mar 2016
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