Our Essentials Collection is the best-selling, subtle gem we’ve never talked about. Until now. Essentials were born in 1984, as the basic collection that would be at the core and foundation of all future generations of Casall clothes. We’re teamed up with Rebecca Hammel to showcase our Essentials collection. Rebecca is an Engineering Consultant by day and Personal Trainer & Writer by night. For Rebecca, it’s an essential lifestyle. Not a seasonal trend. This is what our Essentials are about: A foundation for an essential lifestyle.
We interviewed Rebecca to get her story behind the powerful career and lifestyle she’s created for herself. Rebecca shares her experiences on finding balance and incorporating personal passions into essential living:
Let’s start with your background – were exercise, engineering, and writing part of your early childhood?
I’ve been training and working out since I was quite young and it’s a big thanks to my dad. He’s always been running, cross-country skiing, windsurfing, and I followed after him. He never tried to get me into sports, I was the one who wanted to join in!
Meanwhile, he was also working at IBM which meant lots of learning and hearing about programming and the latest in tech. We always had the latest technology around the house, so, naturally enough – IT and sports sort of came together on their own for me.
After things took natural shape of their own, when did you combine the two fields professionally?
The journey to get to where I am today had many stops and layovers. After graduating from a specialized Sports & Technology high-school program, I worked in Norway to save money for higher education. My goal was to pursue a Personal Training program and go on to become a PT.
When I returned home to Sweden, I got the opportunity to work for SATS. At that time, they had this deal with their trainers: first, we had to audition for an official Group Trainer position, if we got it, they would pay half our tuition, with the condition that we would teach 2 classes per week for 1 year. Unfortunately, I missed the audition and got last pick…I got every Saturday and Sunday mornings for 1 whole year. Goodbye weekends…!
That hard year paid off and right after, training became such a huge part of my life. I was working as a PT, writing for a training magazine, working in a nutritional store, and doing everything related to training. And then, something happened. Suddenly, I stopped enjoying training and began to dread everything related to it. I realized that I had worked my interests away. I burned them out through work, and I really didn’t like that feeling. And that’s where the story of the other big part of my life, engineering, comes in.
I began to study engineering at KTH and without even realizing it, I began to feel energized and passionate about training again. Studying required me to cut out some training and when I did I found something even more important – balance.
Today, I’m an IT consultant for Forefront Consulting, Personal Trainer, Group- and running instructor at Sats and Contributing Writer for the Sats training magazine.