Tana Ashlee

The Instagram Training Sensation Is Serious About Helping Make Fitness More Approachable for Women.

- Mike Carlson

As a city, Las Vegas is not famous for its modesty. Sin City is renown for its pool parties, nightclubs, and being an epicenter of IFBB/NPC Bikini contests. If you live in Las Vegas, you either have a great body or you’re working toward one.

Tana Ashlee is definitely one of the former. But this self-described “Instagram trainer” is more likely to share her thoughts and life lessons with her following than a gratuitous cleavage shot.

“I did one bikini contest when I was 17, but to be honest, I pretty much pissed myself. Not really, but if I could have, I would have,” she laughs. “I don’t do well in the spotlight. It was not my thing. I don’t like contest dieting. I want to live a healthy, balanced life. God bless the people who can do competitions, because I don’t have it in me.”

What Ashlee does have in her is a genuine desire to help her fellow women lead fitter and healthier lives. Her wildly popular Instagram account is filled with videos offering women-centric training and diet advice, such as how to combat cellulite or the dreaded “bat wings.” Part of her online appeal is how she mixes solid training advice with authentic snippets of her life with her boyfriend and her two 80-pound pit bull rescues, Theo and Bailey.

“I want to help people, and my being real helps people talk about their problems,” Ashlee says. “I just try to be real with who I am.”

Mike Carlson: How many online training clients do you have?