When Veronica Monroe was 17, she was encouraged to seek out a personal trainer by her equestrian coach.
She quickly noticed the benefits of training outside of just her sport. It helped her become stronger and, ultimately, better at riding horses.
“It drove me to pursue training and fitness long term,” said Monroe, now 32.
Monroe is now a proud small-business owner of a personal fitness studio, Veronica Monroe Training, which opened in March at Ironstone Gardens on West San Mateo Road in Santa Fe. There, she teaches people individually and offers personalized workout regimens for everyone and at every level, from high school athletes to older people looking to get more active.
“Personal training is not just for elite athletes. I’ve got clients in their 80s. I’ve got two clients with [multiple sclerosis]. I work with someone who’s got Parkinson’s,” she said. “Oftentimes I get asked, ‘Do you work with someone like me?’ And it’s like, yeah, personal training is simply, in my mind, about enhancing your quality of life and helping them become strong and mobile.”
Monroe, who has lived in Santa Fe for most of her life, studied exercise science for a year at Skidmore College in upstate New York, where she joined the equestrian program, but pivoted to political science and American studies, which she got her degrees in.
She moved back to New Mexico to work in politics and found out “it wasn’t for me after all,” Monroe said.
That led her to pivot careers around 2017, and she worked her way through different fitness companies in Santa Fe, including a Barre studio on Lena Street, Santa Fe Athletic Co. and, ultimately, Railyard Fitness, where she worked as a group fitness instructor and personal trainer for almost four years.
Last year, she was let go when the company expected to close down before ultimately staying open with the help of benefactors. Monroe, however, wasn’t brought back on, and so she spent the next year at Santa Fe Spa as a personal trainer while weighing her options.
“The Santa Fe Spa has a very low barrier for entry for their trainers. … So it was a quick solution to a bigger problem,” she said. “I did know as soon as I left Railyard, I would like to open something of my own. It worked out for me that it was just easy to get in there [at Santa Fe Spa]. There was no long-term commitment.”
While at the spa, she searched for a property to open her studio, which took longer than expected. Finally, she found a space at Ironstone Gardens in February.
“I looked at some spaces and put in some letters of intent, and nothing ever came to fruition,” Monroe said. “And before I knew it had been a year up there … before I signed a lease in the Ironstone Gardens on Feb. 1.”
Monroe’s new studio has a focus on being “anti-gym,” as she calls it. That means, she said, getting rid of the gym atmosphere and bringing her clients a more personable approach to fitness.
She has certifications in Barre, TRX I and II and functional range conditioning — a mobility certification used with many professional sports leagues — and will shortly become a certified functional strength coach.
Her plan, for now, is to refine what she has and bring a “higher level of service to all of my clients.”
“I feel like they’ve stuck with me through some tough times, and I want to dial in their programs and their experience in the gym and just really make sure I’m catering to them as best I can,” Monroe said. “And then in the future, I’d love to get some more accessible ways to train, like some semi-private things going where the cost of entry is a little less.
“I’d also love for the space to be a place where I can share other wellness- and health-related things in,” she continued. “Have people with different backgrounds from me and different movement disciplines come in and do a workshop or give a little lecture and really make it a space for health and wellness.”
