Coach Anna
Anna Geary talks to Andrea Smith about her sporting and broadcasting careers and how fitness starts with the family.
When Woman’s Way chats to Anna Geary about the next series of Ireland's Fittest Family, she drops a delicious hint that we can expect to see fireworks between the coaches. And now we can't wait for it to air at the end of the month.
Anna and fellow judges Davy Fitzgerald, Derval O'Rourke and Donncha O'Callaghan have returned to the RTÉ One series again, and viewers will see passions running high as they each try to steer their families to victory.
While they get on great and the slagging is fierce in their Whatsapp group, the celeb trainers are all deadly serious about winning the competition.
“The rivalry between the coaches is intense,” Anna laughs. “We’re great pals, but my God, you’d fight tooth and nail for your family, which does happen in this series. You’ll see a bit of head-to-head between some coaches, because it’s a competition to us and not just a TV show.
It’s real for us too, so when the cameras go off , the adrenaline is still flowing and it's not like we can just switch it off .”
The Cork woman has been on the show since 2015 and was the winning coach in 2016 and 2018. She says that the new series is the strongest yet and “couldn’t have been more dramatic. “There’s some big surprises in the early rounds,” she teases. “Families that you think are very strong go out early, which even took the coaches by surprise.”
Anna (34) knows a lot about competition as she was captain of the winning Cork team during the 2014 All- Ireland Senior Camogie Championship.
By the time she retired from the sport in 2015, she had four All-Ireland wins, four All-Star awards and three club titles under her belt. She has since carved out a busy career as a performance and lifestyle coach, media personality, broadcaster and public speaker.
Anna is always on the go, and found that the pandemic forced her to slow down a little and gave her some clarity.
For example, she took up reading fiction again and realised the importance of making time to catch up with friends and family.
She admits that even though she has a background in sports and fitness, she wasn't always motivated to exercise during lockdown and had to come up with ways to encourage herself and her followers.
“There were some days when I was really demotivated and just wanted to eat pizza for breakfast in my pyjamas,” she admits.
“And that’s grand because we need those days too. I came up with a thing called ‘Strive for Five’, where you do five exercises for one minute each. If you can almost trick yourself into doing it, the dopamine hit comes and you get your high so you’re more likely to keep going.”
Anna had a very active childhood growing up on a dairy farm in Milford in North Cork. Her dad Michael is a farmer who still works on the farm with her younger brother Thomas, and her mum Ellen Ann is a retired teacher of Irish, history and geography. “They have both always been so supportive,” she says.
“My dad is a super-competitive person and I really learned my work ethic from himself and my mam. He was the biggest supporter when I was playing camogie and was almost like the 16th player on the team. He’d be delighted if I did well and would remind me of the things I didn’t do well, so he kept me on the straight and narrow.”
After graduation, Anna did a post-grad course in PR and communications and worked for some multinational companies initially while also playing for Cork. After she captained the team to victory in 2014, disaster struck when she cracked her shin bone so was unable to play for a time. That made her think about what she wanted from her life and future so she began training as a performance coach.
“I’d say my dad would probably say, ‘If you didn’t do that bloody course, you'd still be playing for Cork,’” she laughs.
Anna told her parents that she wanted to try to get into media and broadcasting and they were very supportive.
After 12 years playing camogie, she retired in 2015 aged 27, and her decision caused shockwaves as she was such a high-profile figure in women's sports in Ireland. It wasn't a decision that was taken lightly.
“I realised that if I wanted to change my career and try new things, it would be impossible for me to keep up that level of commitment to Cork,” she says. “It was a huge wrench but there wasn't the same hunger in me to go back as there was to explore new career opportunities. Playing for Cork was such a privilege, but I felt that if I wasn't 100 per cent prepared to give everything I had to it commitment-wise, it was now somebody else’s turn.”
Her gamble paid off because she received the call from Ireland’s Fittest Family shortly after she retired. This was followed by the opportunity to work with Marty Morrissey on radio and the opportunities just keep coming.
Although she appears really confident and outgoing, Anna admits that she can sometimes struggle with wanting to please people and also with imposter syndrome, particularly around her media career.
“I have to challenge that and park it by reminding myself that I’ve worked hard for it and it’s not like I was an overnight success,” she points out. “It has been said about me, ‘Oh she’s so competitive,’ but why is being ambitious and driven seen as a negative thing for women and a positive thing for men?”
Her philosophy is that it is better to try something you think you’d like, even if it doesn't work out or you fear making a fool of yourself. Better than wondering, “What if?” or worrying about being viewed as having “notions”, she says.
She adopted this approach when she became the Cork Rose in 2014, and when she took part in Dancing with the Stars in 2018 - when she was runner-up to singer Jake Carter.
While she loved learning to dance with professional dancer Kai Widdrington, Anna was definitely out of her comfort zone when it came to the outfits. “The costume team were amazing but sometimes you’d be shown an outfit and you’d be like, ‘Where’s the rest of it?’” she smiles. “Sport taught me growing up that your body is an instrument rather than an ornament and it's about what you can do with it, but everyone has insecurities.”
“So I had to own up to a lot of those as well, especially when you’re looking at professional dancers beside you with legs up to here,” she says, pointing to her shoulders.
Anna is delighted to be an ambassador for Laya healthcare’s Laya Super Troopers TV, the newest element in the established health homework programme, Super Troopers. The 28-part TV series aims to provide families and children with fun activities and advice on how to promote a healthier lifestyle for all the family.
The free episodes are presented by children and they feature stars such as Anna, Johnny Sexton, James Kavanagh and Karl Henry, focusing on nutrition, physical activity and mental wellbeing.
They feature an array of fun activities, advice and challenges for children, parents and teachers to do themselves.
“Over a million kids have availed of the Laya Super Troopers programme since 2014 and I was really impressed at how the information is relayed in the episodes in really fun, bite-sized chunks,” she says.”
There is a really nice vibe to it and there are great challenges for the kids and their friends and family to complete.”
Anna first met her husband, Kevin Sexton, through friends on a night out in Dublin in December 2014 and they spent the night slagging each other. He was in a relationship, but got in touch with Anna months later when he was single again and they began dating.
“You have to be able to have a laugh with someone,” she says. “I think that's the number one thing because even if we have an argument about something, it's very short-lived because Kevin has a way of making me laugh. He’s very thoughtful as well, although I have no interest in the big gestures or flowers on Valentine’s Day, and he’s a great cook.”
She married Kevin in 2019, and says they feel lucky that their parents are in good health, so didn’t have the added worry that people with loved ones with underlying health conditions experienced during the pandemic.
Although, with her parents in Cork and Kevin’s in Dublin, travel restrictions meant that they were frequently unable to see them during lockdown. “That was the hardest thing,” she says.
She and Kevin had just moved into their house in Kildare when the pandemic struck, and the upside was that it gave them a chance to get settled and spend a lot more time together.
“That was lovely,” she says, “as normally there are times of the year when we’re like ships in the night.”
While Kevin worked for a long time with the GAA, he qualified as a strength conditioning coach online during lockdown. He has now begun retraining as a secondary school teacher of English and geography, and Anna is delighted for him that he is following his heart.
When they were buying their house, she strategically told Kevin that as Dublin was so expensive, they'd have to live in Kildare or Meath. She was banking on him plumping for Kildare due to the old Dublin/Meath rivalry. “I’m moving him closer to home,” she jokes. “Donncha O’Callaghan says, ‘You have him on the road to Cork now.’”
Ireland’s Fittest Family returns to RTÉ One on October 31st.
For more on Laya Super Troopers TV visit layasupertroopers.ie