Member Highlight – Nicole Irlbeck owner of Restoration Fitness
When Nicole started running in high school she found a huge relief for the teenage depression she was experiencing. Running became her confidence builder, stress reliever, socialization time, and mood builder. Ultimately, it saved her in many ways from going off the deep end emotionally. Her love of running started there, but when she took running to greater extremes for perfection in her body and higher levels of performance she found that what she once loved was actually hurting her body. It was this realization, that fitness could both help and hurt people, that a desire for greater balance in health messages through positive body image began to drive Nicole toward her career in health.
Running became her focus when she headed to the University of Iowa. She choose this school because as a Iowa native, born in raised Bettendorf, she wanted to stay in her home state. She knew she wasn’t ready to give up running so she stepped it up a notch and went after a spot and succeeded, on U of I’s, NCAA Division I cross country running team. Knowing that it was one of the highest levels you can run at without going pro, Nicole didn’t think she would make it … but she did. This was monumental because it highlighted her strengths as a team player, cheerleader, and one who inspires others, even when she was not number one.
It was during this time that she got to see all the “crap” that can go on with high level sports. One of the worst examples that still haunts her today were the weekly weigh-ins – where a male assistant coach would allow the girls on the team to see how much each team member weighed as a type of gauge of fitness. The woman who was the best runner on the team during Nicole’s freshman year was beautiful and a larger body type. Nicole saw the upper classman’s abilities and found herself wanting to be as carefree but ended up trying to match fellow teammates at lighter weights. It wasn’t long before Nicole found herself in counseling for an eating disorder and going through special medical testing to look at the damage her restricted eating and high-level exercise had done. This started Nicole’s personal experience with understanding that each person has their own ideal body weight.
Nicole continued to pursue her degree in Exercise Science and Athlete Training. She was intrigued with her growing knowledge of how to be a better performing athlete and made a decision her junior year to leave the cross country team for the sake of the overall health of her body and more importantly, her mental wellness. She continued to have a hard time grasping who she was outside of running. What was her worth if she was not running? She needed to find out by running only for pleasure not for the competitive nature of the sport.
It was a huge transition, and it took years for Nicole to find freedom from the disordered eating and exercise that she had long used as a crutch to make her feel whole. She realized that running, in the way she had been doing it, had been a great escape, but had started to get in the way of fully understanding who she was and her potential in the life that lay ahead. It began to crystallize that she wanted to share what she had learned with others. She wanted to free women from getting buried within their bodies, the way they looked, and the extreme expectations they put on themselves to perform. It became a passion and a life mission that she still strongly pursues today.
During her senior year in the position of Athletic Trainer she was responsible for the sports medicine care for the men’s baseball team. This allowed her to really switch gears and not focus on her own athletic abilities but the abilities of others. She began to explore the medical aspect in evaluating injuries and looking at movement patterns. Rehab issues became her focus as well as on field care for a variety of things from emergency care to chronic dysfunction.
She knew at that point she had to make decisions about what she would do as a career choice with graduation right around the corner. Sitting down with her mentor, the Director of the Sports Medicine Department, she asked, “Is there anyway that I can combine what I love about Sports Medicine and what I love about the fitness aspect of being an athlete?” He told her that she was “too smart” for a career in sports and leisure and encouraged her to go to grad school to become a Physicians Assistant. At that time, however, she felt P.A. school was simply too far reaching from the focus she desired for her life, which was fitness, wellness and rehab.
Ultimately she went to grad school for exercise science and expanded her knowledge in that field. She became the Grad Assistant for the woman’s soccer team and taught classes in the sports medicine and leisure departments. In addition, she created a research project and from beginning to end studied all the elements of shoulder proprioception. She did a non-thesis on “Effects of Reactive Neuromuscular Training on Shoulder Joint Position Sense in Healthy, Unilateral Overhead Athletes”. (softball, baseball, volleyball, etc.).
With all this under her belt she graduated in a year and a half with her Master’s degree in Exercise Science and Sports Medicine and headed to Colorado to start a new life. For 8 short months she worked at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine providing rehab services along side physical therapists.
Her stint in Boulder at that time (as she was destined to return) was short lived because personally, she had met her husband, Dan Irlbeck, in grad school. A week after moving to Colorado she traveled to Seattle where her then boyfriend Dan was looking at post grad school in his field of Orthotics and Prosthetics. It was during this trip to Seattle that he asked her to marry him and she accepted. This change of plans redirected her to Chicago where Dan had decided to take his post grad school courses.
In Chicago, Nicole was the family breadwinner so she proceeded to find a job that would allow her to focus on her interests while still earn enough money to keep she and her new husband afloat. Thankfully, she became a personal trainer at a gym two blocks from where she was living. She worked there for two years enjoying her time with clients, but felt she was not utilizing or tapping into her strengths in the sports medicine arena. That led her to search for new opportunities in her field. She accepted a position with Dr. Kathy Weber, a renowned female sports medicine physician.
Working at Midwest Orthopedics at Rush with Dr. Weber she finally felt like she had found a piece of her niche. She loved working along side a female that was driven and had confidence - and had confidence in Nicole. Within two years she found herself starting to think outside of the box, and seeds of the entrepreneurial spirit in her were beginning to surface.
In 2005, Nicole and Dan decided to move back to Colorado. Nicole accepted another clinical position with an orthopedic surgeon. Her role in that position was much different than she had previously experienced, and it directed her even further into listening to her hearts desire to start her own business. The clinic owned a sports performance training facility and as she got more involved there, she really felt the entrepreneur within her coming to life. The facility was a new business, and the start-up environment allowed her to learn new things about personal training and business ownership. But mostly, it motivated her to find a way to fill the gaps in resources for sports training for women and girls.
Finally, in 2007 she took the plunge, creating her company, Restoration Fitness. Partnering with a woman’s only gym in Boulder she began to offer in-home and studio fitness training services. When the gym closed 8 months later she transitioned to a new studio at Health Styles where she still provides services today.
Nicole shared, “I feel really good about the fact that I have created a business that I can personally sustain, but I have a passion to reach more women. I would say the most frustrating thing about my job is that we, as a society, are drawn to quick fixes. When we see an advertisement that we can lose 5 pounds in 10 days - we jump on it. Not that it is not possible but in doing so we fail to see what is really going on.” From her perspective she says, “It is why people want to lose 5 pounds in 10 days….because if you can get to the ‘why’ you can help them for life.” People emotionally eat or try to look a certain way for a number of reasons and until you identify them you are just putting on a band aid.”
Currently Nicole does a wide variety of in home programs for women. She really sees the advantage in doing that for them. After several years of doing this she finds her business evolving into more group settings because when you step out into community you are not just sharing of yourself but also gaining support from others.
With this Nicole is starting semi-private training as well as doing a Downer to Dynamite program. She also does her Tween2Queen program where she works with pre-teen girls and their moms to build self-esteem and greater dialogue around the issue of body image. “I really have a passion for getting women’s minds out of the gutter. Because when we feel like trash, we treat ourselves like trash, and allow ourselves to be treated like trash – meaning we are always last on our list. When we get out of our self-imposed trash-can- with-the-lid-on-escape – we are able to be out there as we were meant to be.”
In her role as a member of the Victory Circles, Nicole finds support and the inspiration of other like-minded women entrepreneurs. Nicole says, “It is so important for business-women to share their struggles, joys, and triumphs in a safe environment. We want to be and do so much, and I find that often, we need to just rest in who we are without the constant high pressure. The Victory Circles reminds me to embrace who I am while still pushing me to keep my chief aim high.”