Malvina Mana — women's coach at Hammer Fitness
Training, nutrition and behaviour coaching for women in Toronto and online. Thirteen years with Hammer Fitness, 3rd at the Canadian National Pro Qualifier, and a coaching practice built around how change actually sticks.
Malvina Mana — training, nutrition & behaviour coach for women
ISSA & ECS Certified · ECS Body Composition Specialist L1 & L2 · MED Method · Pre- & Postnatal · 13+ years
Malvina joined Hammer Fitness in 2013, when the whole team could be counted on two hands. She has been part of the community's growth to more than 1,000 members internationally across Hammer Fitness, Hammer Fitness Online and LadyTheFUp.
She started as an athlete, not a coach. Two years competing under Amer Kamra took her to the stage at the Canadian National Pro Qualifier, where she placed 3rd in Fitness — an experience that shaped how she coaches now, because she has been on the receiving end of a demanding prep.
Who Malvina is
Malvina's route into coaching ran through competing. She spent two years as an athlete under Amer Kamra and stepped on stage at the Canadian National Pro Qualifier, placing 3rd in Fitness. That gave her something a certification cannot: first-hand knowledge of what it feels like to be coached, pushed and held to a standard through a demanding physical and mental stretch.
Her academic background is a BA in Literary Studies and a degree in Human Resources Management — both disciplines about people, language and behaviour rather than about sets and reps. When she moved into coaching with LadyTheFUp, she built her fitness education on top of that foundation: training, nutrition, behaviour, and the psychology of change that lasts.
Over the years her coaching stopped being about workouts and meal plans alone. She works with women through different stages of life — through stress, through changing relationships with food, through shifting relationships and the ordinary weight of everyday demands. Her approach pairs evidence-based training and nutrition with behavioural and lifestyle coaching, so clients understand not only what to do, but which habits and thought patterns keep getting in the way.
She takes the view that a coach is never finished learning. Continuing education is how she keeps up with the physical, nutritional, behavioural and lifestyle factors that decide whether a woman can make a change and keep it.
For Malvina, coaching isn't about transforming a body. It's about building the strength, knowledge, confidence and skills to keep showing up long after the coaching ends.
On stage — 3rd at the Canadian National Pro Qualifier
Two years competing under Amer Kamra. The reason she knows what she is asking of a client, because she has been asked it herself.
Client transformations Malvina has coached
Real before-and-afters from women she coached personally.
Qualifications & continued education
Coaching credentials, plus the education she has added on her own since.
ISSA & ECS personal training
Two independent personal training certifications, covering programme design, anatomy and progressive resistance training.
ECS Body Composition Specialist, Levels 1 & 2
Both levels of the ECS body composition qualification — the technical track behind changing what a body is made of rather than only what it weighs. This is the certification that separates a coach who can run a diet from one who can hold muscle through it.
MED Method, under Amer Kamra
Trained directly in the Hammer Fitness method: minimum effective dose, precision over volume, resistance training as the primary driver.
Pre- and postnatal fitness
Specific qualification for training through pregnancy and the postpartum return — one of the stages where generic programming fails women most often.
Neuroscience of coaching
How motivation, habit formation and decision-making actually work, applied to why plans get abandoned in week three.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
CBT education used to understand the thought patterns behind behaviour — applied as a coaching lens, not as clinical treatment.
Nutrition, plus ongoing study
Formal nutrition certification with continued education, so recommendations track current evidence rather than the diet culture of the moment.
What Malvina has gone deep on
Why the plan stopped being followed
Most plans do not fail because the programming was wrong. They fail in the gap between knowing and doing. Malvina coaches that gap directly — the habits, the self-talk, the environment, the pattern that repeats every time life gets busy.
Eating in a way that survives a real week
Macros and structure matter, but a plan only works if it holds through a work trip, a sick kid and a bad night's sleep. Nutrition is built around the life the client actually has, not an idealised version of it.
Programming across life stages
Training through pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause and the years in between is not the same job as training a 22-year-old. Different recovery, different priorities, different constraints — programmed for, not worked around.
Coaching without adding another rulebook
Many women arrive having already tried the restrictive approach and carrying what it left behind. Malvina coaches toward a workable, unanxious relationship with eating — and refers to a clinician where that is what the situation calls for.
Online coaching, or in person in Scarborough
Not sure which fits? That is what the free consultation is for.
Online coaching, anywhere
Programming and nutrition delivered through the app, regular written check-ins, and video review of your lifts so execution gets coached rather than assumed. This is how Malvina works with most of her clients, including through LadyTheFUp.
Private 1-on-1 in Scarborough
Appointment-only on the private floor at Unit 7 – 21 Progress Ave. No membership required, no crowded gym — the floor is yours for the session.
How Malvina runs a programme
It starts with history, not with a template. What has been tried, what worked, what fell apart and why — because the reason a previous attempt failed is usually the most useful information in the room.
Training is written on MED Method principles: the smallest effective dose, executed well, progressed in a log. Nutrition is set to support the training and the life around it, with enough protein and enough food that the plan does not depend on willpower holding out.
Then the part that decides the outcome — the check-ins. Not just weight and adherence, but what got in the way, what pattern it belongs to, and what changes next week. When something stalls, the question is which variable to move, not whether to try harder.
Malvina on the floor
Coaching sessions at Hammer Fitness, Scarborough.
Recognised at the Hammer Fitness Gala
One of Malvina's clients taking an award at the 2025 Hammer Fitness Gala.
What her clients say
Messages from women Malvina has coached.
Meet our colleagues at Hammer Fitness Scarborough
Train with Malvina.
Book a free consultation. We will go through your history, match you to the right coach, and tell you honestly what is realistic.
