Magda Banas — body transformation coach for women who want it to last.
Kinesiology degree, NASM CPT, Hammer Fitness Coach of the Year 2023. Magda helps women build muscle, lose body fat, fix their relationship with food, and hold the result long after the coaching ends. Toronto and online.
Magda Banas — women's fat loss, muscle building & nutrition coach
BKin, McMaster University · NASM CPT · ECS Certified (Elite Coaching System) · Coach of the Year 2023 · Amer Award 2025
Magda is a body transformation coach with Hammer Fitness and LadyTheFUp, specialising in helping women build muscle, lose body fat, improve their relationship with food, and create results they can maintain long term.
With a Bachelor of Kinesiology from McMaster University and a lifelong background in competitive dance, resistance training and physique competition, she combines formal education with years of practical coaching experience.
Who Magda Banas is
Magda is a body transformation coach with Hammer Fitness and LadyTheFUp, specialising in helping women build muscle, lose body fat, improve their relationship with food, and create results they can maintain long term.
With a Bachelor of Kinesiology from McMaster University and a lifelong background in competitive dance, resistance training and physique competition, Magda combines education with years of practical coaching experience. The dance years gave her body awareness and a tolerance for repetition; the physique years gave her first-hand knowledge of what a demanding prep asks of a person. The degree gave her the mechanism underneath both.
Her coaching approach is built around resistance training, structured nutrition, accountability and education. Rather than relying on extremes or short-term fixes, she teaches clients how to understand their nutrition, train with purpose, build sustainable habits, and become confident managing their own results beyond the coaching process.
That last part is the unusual bit. Most coaching quietly depends on the client never learning enough to leave. Magda works the other way: the goal is a client who can read their own data, adjust their own intake and keep the result without her.
She works with clients both online and in person at Hammer Fitness in Scarborough. She has coached women through significant fat loss transformations, muscle building phases, lifestyle changes, reverse diets, travel, demanding careers, motherhood, and the many real-life challenges that come with trying to prioritise health and fitness.
She was named Hammer Fitness Coach of the Year in 2023, received the Amer Award in 2025, and continues to work closely under the mentorship of Hammer Fitness founder and coach Amer Kamra.
Recognised inside Hammer Fitness
Two awards from a coaching team where the standard is set by the founder.
Hammer Fitness Coach of the Year
Awarded across the full Hammer Fitness coaching roster. Judged on client results, retention and the standard held on the floor — not on marketing.
The Amer Award
Named for the founder and given to the coach who best embodies how Hammer Fitness is meant to coach: attentive, engaged, intentional, and in it with the client.
What Magda will ask you to change first
The four habits most of her clients have to unlearn before anything else works.
Guessing at your food
You cannot adjust what you have not measured. Magda teaches macro tracking properly — not as a life sentence, but as a skill you learn, use while it is needed, and eventually no longer depend on. Most clients stop tracking eventually. They keep the understanding.
Cutting harder every time you stall
A stall after months of dieting is usually a signal to eat more, not less. Reverse dieting is one of her specialties for a reason: metabolic room is what makes the next fat loss phase possible at all.
Training to burn calories
Resistance training is not cardio with weights. It is the stimulus that decides what shape you end up in when the fat comes off. Sessions are structured, progressed and logged — you should be getting measurably stronger.
Waiting for life to calm down
It will not. Magda has coached women through travel, shift work, demanding careers and motherhood, and the plan is built for the week you actually have. A plan that only survives a quiet month is not a plan.
Women Magda works with
In person at Hammer Fitness in Scarborough, and online across Canada.
Women in a fat loss phase
Structured deficit, protein set properly, and enough training stimulus that what comes off is fat rather than the muscle you spent years building. With a defined end point — not an open-ended diet.
Women in a muscle building phase
The phase most women skip and then wonder why fat loss never produces the shape they wanted. Progressive resistance training, an intake that supports it, and honest expectations about the timeline.
Women coming out of a long diet
Years of under-eating leaves very little room to work with. A structured reverse rebuilds intake without the rebound most women have been taught to fear. This is one of Magda's specialties.
Women who want a better relationship with food
Learning what a portion actually is, why a number on a label is information rather than a verdict, and how to eat out without the week collapsing. Education, not restriction.
Mothers, travellers, demanding careers
Magda has coached women through all three, often at once. The programme bends around the schedule rather than assuming one that does not exist.
Women who want to keep it this time
Long-term weight management is its own skill, and almost nobody is taught it. The end of a phase is where most coaching stops and where most of the weight comes back.
Credentials & background
Formal education, certification, and the competitive background behind the coaching.
Bachelor of Kinesiology — McMaster University, 2020
A four-year degree in human movement, exercise physiology and biomechanics. The mechanism under the programme, not a weekend course.
NASM Certified Personal Trainer
One of the most widely recognised personal training certifications in North America — assessment, programme design and progression for general population clients.
Hammer Fitness & LadyTheFUp coach
Coaching on both sides of the business: in person at Hammer Fitness in Scarborough, and online through LadyTheFUp's women's coaching community.
Hammer Fitness Coach of the Year, 2023
Awarded across the coaching roster on client results and the standard held on the floor.
Hammer Fitness Amer Award, 2025
Named for the founder, given for how the coaching is done rather than what it produces on paper.
Women's physique competitor
Magda has competed in women's physique and has a lifelong background in competitive dance. She has been on the receiving end of a demanding prep, which is why she is careful about prescribing one.
6+ years under Amer Kamra
More than six years of mentorship and continuing education inside the Hammer Fitness coaching system, working directly under the founder.
What she coaches
Women's fat loss and body recomposition, resistance training education, macro tracking, reverse dieting, habit development, lifestyle transformation, strength development, and long-term weight management.
Online & in person
In-person coaching at Hammer Fitness, Unit 7 – 21 Progress Ave, Scarborough, and online coaching for clients outside the GTA.
How Magda runs a programme
It starts with history. What has been tried, what worked, what fell apart, and where in the week it fell apart. The failure point is usually the most useful information in a first conversation, and it is the thing most intake forms never ask about.
Training is written on MED Method principles — the smallest effective dose, executed properly, progressed in a log. You should be able to point at a lift and say it has gone up. That is the measurement, not the scale alone.
Nutrition is set with numbers and explained, not handed over as a meal plan. Magda teaches macro tracking so clients understand what they are doing and why — and so that when a birthday, a work trip or a bad week arrives, they can adjust rather than abandon.
Then accountability: regular check-ins covering weight, adherence, training progress and what actually got in the way. When something stalls, the question is which variable to move, not whether you should have tried harder.
And throughout it, education — because the outcome she is coaching toward is a client who no longer needs a coach.
Women Magda has coached
Before and after, from clients she coached personally.
What her clients say
Unedited five-star reviews from Google, naming Magda. Click any one to read it full size.
Magda on stage
She coaches the process she goes through herself.
Magda competes as well as coaches. Prep is not a theory she read about — it is a thing she has done: the dieting, the training under fatigue, the discipline of holding a standard for months, and the honest reckoning that comes on stage day. That experience is why her coaching is realistic about what a deficit actually costs and how long change actually takes.
Magda on the floor
Coaching one-on-one at Hammer Fitness in Scarborough, Toronto.
Meet our colleagues at Hammer Fitness Scarborough
Train with Magda.
Book a free consultation. Hammer Fitness will go through your training history, match you to the right coach, and tell you honestly what is realistic.
