Fitness trainer continues to inspire despite adversity

The bad news is that adversity keeps coming in 2023 for Ashley McCallum. Since April, she has undergone two surgeries, including open-heart surgery to repair a condition she described as a “ticking time bomb.”

Just as she was starting to feel like herself again and was on a global stage leading others in intense fitness workouts called body attack and body combat, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She had a hysterectomy on Dec. 4 and learned a few weeks later that the cancer had spread.

But if anyone can keep her chin up in the midst of such news, it’s McCallum, a 39-year-old Spotsylvania County woman who has battled baldness caused by alopecia and skin cancer caused by exposing her bald head to sun. She also had a pretty serious motorcycle accident a few years ago that would have sidelined most mortals.

“She’s a fighter. She continues with a positive attitude no matter what obstacles come her way,” said Stephanie Korper, a Spotsylvania nurse who joined McCallum’s studio, Smash Athletics in Massaponax, on the advice of friends.

Coerper never went to the gym regularly before her first visit in May, but these days she’s in the studio almost every day because of McCallum’s influence.

“Her positivity is so addictive,” Koerper said. “If I ever feel like something is impossible or too hard, I just think about how Ashley would tell me I can do it. Her influence on people is enormous.”

McCallum and her husband Jeff look more like two teenagers than a couple married for 19 years with four sons. Her hand is almost always nestled between his palms, and when she speaks, he looks at her as if every word melts his heart.

When he gestures as he speaks, her hand leaves his grasp for a moment, but always finds its way back. She says “we” when describing what happened to her because it’s obvious that it affects him as much as it does her.

“She’s the strongest person I’ve ever met, we have a lot of faith and the power of prayer is amazing,” her husband said. As each diagnosis changes or impacts her life, she always looks adversity in the eye and says, “I knew , that you will come, what took you so long?’

In the summer of 2022, the McCallums learned that she had an aortic aneurysm, a bulge in the wall of the main vessel that carries blood from the heart to the body. She wanted it taken out immediately so she could get on with her life.

Dr. Alex Na, director of cardiovascular surgery at Mary Washington Hospital, cautioned that this is not a procedure to be entered into lightly. But after the bulge quickly grew, he agreed it was time to break her sternum and tear open her ribs to get at the area around her heart.

Before the anesthesia wore off from the surgery, she was asking if she could go home to heal. Ditto on Days 2 and 3. By Day 4, when McCallum was moved to the step-down unit, the surgeon agreed to release her, but warned that she needed to give herself time to heal.

If she broke her sternum again—because she did a push-up or burped too soon—she could die, Na told her.

“It scared the crap out of me,” McCallum said.

She waited three months to do any exercise that puts pressure on the chest, even though she was on the Smash stage teaching classes before she was officially cleared.

On the same day of her surgery, she was invited by Les Mills USA, a fitness company for which she is a trainer, evaluator and presenter, to come to Los Angeles for a Global Fitness Festival. The videos made that day will become part of toolkits that instructors around the world will see.

The recording was one week after the permission date Na gave. McCallum had been unable to train as usual until this point; she wondered if she would have the stamina to make the event happen. As the others around her pushed their bodies to the limit, would hers literally crack under the strain?

“I had a lot of self-doubt. Body Attack is a lot of reaching and running, a mixed aerobics-style strength class,” she said. “When I did, I was very relieved.”

If her heart was beating during exercise, her husband’s was in his throat. After the shoot, he ran to the stage and kissed his wife with such force that a stranger nearby took a picture.

The woman found Jeff McCallum later and sent him the image of the two of them, their hands on their cheeks and their lips locked.

“There are many things in my life that I will remember, but this is something that I will never forget,” she said. “It was in the moment, all that hard work. All this doubt.’

Jen Kuhn, vice president of Les Mills, said she had a “front row seat to witness” McCallum’s “leadership, dedication and love of helping others.”

“There were times when she was scared,” Kuehn said. “Greater than her fear was her unwavering determination, and that determination inspires us all.

“Ashley was once again on stage in front of over 5,000 attendees,” the executive said, “reminding us that nothing is impossible.”

Female athletes often have lighter menstrual cycles, but McCallum experienced the opposite and her cycles got worse every month. She was anemic and had low iron.

Some measures were prescribed, but her doctor also suggested a biopsy, just in case, even though women McCallum’s age don’t usually get uterine cancer.

When he tested positive, McCallum was devastated. She was angry, angry, even admitted to being “kind of depressed.” She wouldn’t go to the studio for about a week, which was unheard of for her.

“There’s a quote that says you grow through what you go through, but there are moments,” she said, searching for words. “I feel like the bad luck just keeps coming, you know?”

What made her diagnosis even worse was that she and her family recently lost their first cousin, Amber, to breast cancer. She was 42 and the two women grew up together. McCallum’s father was then diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.

The one thing that got her through it was “the love and support of the community,” she said, both in Smash Athletics and with her extended family.

“It was an outpouring of love, just from everyone,” her husband added.

The pair stopped by Smash on their way home from the second surgery, which took place on Monday. McCallum then surrendered to her body’s needs and her husband’s demands that she be still, and she rested for two days.

By the end of the week, she was back at the studio watching videotaped training sessions of people training to be instructors. Every day she got a little closer to getting on stage and performing because, as she says regularly, “Movement is my medicine.”

But her husband was always watching, reminding her to let her body heal even as he longed to see her back to normal.

“I’ve got to put the leash on that stallion,” he said.

A few days before Christmas, the McCallums later learned that the cancer was not confined to the uterine area. Doctors initially suggested a second surgery, but decided to try radiation treatment instead.

McCallum’s streak of bad news led one gym member, Diana Kern, to call her Job, the biblical character who was repeatedly tempted by the devil and lost everything but refused to curse God.

“It doesn’t just get knocked over,” Kirn said, “it’s bulldozed. Just like they say in class, life will knock you down, get back up. And she does it again and again and again.

“You can’t help but look at her and be inspired.