IWD: Meet the 30-year-old empowering Abuja women through inclusive fitness

At 30, Cynthia Theophilus has bagged two degrees and dozens of educational certificates and is pursuing her doctorate — all around estate and business management. But those qualifications are just cushions for when she decides to pursue a career in that path. Now, she dedicates her time to building Ophil Wellness, a fitness studio for low-impact exercise, and helping clients, including women restricted by religion and health challenges, to achieve their health goals.  

Cynthia did not always get the support she needed. Her position as a middle child in a family of seven did little to shield her father’s disapproval of her career choice. As a child, she participated in the relays, jumps, and sprints, but those were writing on the wall that her father chose to ignore. It would take years to buy his support.

Seated in her office, a small administrative section of the studio where reformers’ pilates classes are held, Cynthia recalled her start with a wry smile. Among her four siblings, she has long held the title of the fittest, a kinder description of a square peg in a round hole.

“Now my parents are fine with it. My mom has always been supportive. For my dad, at some point he couldn’t quite understand it,” she said.

It was not until 2019, just before she started her master’s degree, that the grey skies began to clear.

“I wrote him a business proposal,”she said, describing her father as a ‘numbers guy’. “He said ‘this is the first time that you’re making sense to me’.”

Today, Ophil Wellness situated in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, is everything Cynthia has always wanted. With over 10 classes ranging across various kinds of yoga, pilates, and dance, the health-enthusiast and personal trainer is building a family different from the one she grew up in.

Among the clients that troop to the studio are hijabis — Muslim women who follow the religious practice of wearing a head covering such as a hijab, common in Abuja. Islam has strong warnings against men and women being in closed spaces unless they are family members. This makes it tricky for Cynthia’s female Muslim clients seeking a space to comfortably work out especially as the fitness studio is open to all genders.

Small markings of “w/o” appear next to certain pilates, yoga, and barre classes. Cynthia explained they mean “women only”.

“We live in the north, we have a lot of Muslims, right? They don’t feel comfortable, especially the hjiabis, they don’t feel comfortable doing all those things (stretches) especially when you are raising your legs and you know, bending over, they don’t feel comfortable having a man in that space,” she said.

“So, we needed to create a safe space for them to be able to do their journeys and whatever it is they’re doing without a necessary consciousness or feeling too aware that someone is there.

“I wanted them to be able to have that safe space and not feel judged or watched by any man or feel uncomfortable in any way.”

The privilege extends to all kinds of women who do not feel comfortable working out in the presence of men, she clarified, noting that some Christians and other conservative women attend the classes.

Cynthia’s actions have earned her qualitative and quantitative commendations from multiple women struggling to gain confidence in their bodies. For the personal trainer who likes to hide away in a book on off days, interacting with different characters who are positively impacted by her work is a different kind of euphoria.

Cynthia stumbled into the fitness journey by accident, after watching a yoga session on the internet, but does not fail to encourage the crowd of women who throng Ophil Wellness seeing that it helped her insomnia and athritis.

Somewhere down the line, the 30-year-old hopes to put her estate and business management degrees to use.

“But not from the marketing angle,” she clarified, adjusting her glasses from sliding off the tip of her nose as she winced. “Been there, done that, it’s not my thing”.

This time, Cynthia is looking to invest in properties for her personal benefit.

“Fitness is still the hill I’m willing to die on though,” she added with a chuckle.