TORONTO, Ont. - In 2016, Laurier's cheerleading team won their eighth national championship. This capped off an impressive run of three championships in four years for the Golden Hawks, who also won in 2013 and 2014. 

An integral part of the team's success over that span was 2016-2017 team MVP Taylor Learmont.  

While three national championships as a Golden Hawk is certainly reason enough to be celebrated, what Learmont has accomplished since graduating is even more impressive. 

At the time of writing, Learmont has amassed over 833,000 followers on her Instagram account, @littletfitness. That's an eye-popping number, but it only begins to cover the extent of her influence. 

"I used to really hesitate on it because I never really considered social media as necessarily a career," Learmont confessed. "Now that I have had quite a bit of success, I do feel more confident saying I'm a content creator and then I also own my own business as a personal trainer." 

While these may seem like two very different career paths, Learmont says the two are interdependent. Her success on social media helps attract clients for her personal training business, which in turn keeps her inspired and motivated to create new and interesting content. 

"It did take me a long time to really gain that confidence in the social media realm," Learmont said. "I have a passion for both; I love creating content, but I also love helping people and being able to be a trainer. I never see myself giving up that aspect of my job." 

A scroll through @littletfitness shows the work of an experienced and proficient creator, as well as a trainer with a staggering knowledge and mastery of exercises.  

Many of these exercises seem unbelievably difficult, until you remember Learmont's gymnastics background, and the fact that she breaks down each movement so they're easy to understand even for beginners. She also often posts the many takes in which she failed to complete an exercise, which is a somewhat unconventional approach to fitness content creation.  

"I don't just show the success, I show the journey that took me there. Sure, this video is only 15 seconds, but it took me an hour and a half to get there." 

"[It's about] letting people know that you're not just this Instagram page, you're a real person behind the page who goes through struggles and has to fail a bunch of times before they get it right." 

This is just one of many things Learmont has learned over the course of her young but already booming career, a career which traces its beginnings back to her time as a Golden Hawk. 

A gymnast in high school, Learmont had never competed in a team sport before joining the Laurier gymnastics team.  

"I started to get into fitness because I wanted to make sure as a teammate that I'd be able to carry my own weight, making sure that I perform and not let anyone down." 

The aforementioned success of the team during her tenure put to rest any worries that Learmont would do anything of the sort, and her foray into the world of fitness sparked an interest that would eventually grow into an extremely successful personal brand. 

"I kind of transitioned from being inspired to be a good teammate to actually realizing that I really enjoyed a lot of the movements and learning how to properly workout." 

Learmont credits Alena Luciani, then the cheerleading team's strength and conditioning coach, for encouraging Learmont's interest and allowing her to plan and run workouts for the team. She also worked as a personal trainer and fitness centre attendant at the Laurier Athletic Complex. 

When she graduated in 2017, Learmont planned on working as a personal trainer for a year before beginning postgraduate studies to become a chiropractor. Like many student-athletes, she was determined to remain active even after her athletic career had come to an end. 

"I still wanted to find a way to be goal oriented in fitness... I could see myself really enjoying being able to help people in their fitness journeys." 

She also committed to posting every day on @littletfitness. "Ever since then I've been able to really grow an organic following that's invested in me as a person in my journey." 

During the pandemic, Learmont's following exploded, which she attributes to lockdown-induced boredom as well as a change in Instagram's algorithm. Her account grew from 10,000 to 100,000 followers in 2020, then to over 700,000 in 2021. She's also found success on TikTok (435,800 followers) and YouTube (18,400 subscribers).  

Despite all this success, Learmont maintains that content creation for her has "always been just for fun." 

"Even now, even though it's a big part of my income and a big part of my business, if I didn't have fun doing it, it definitely wouldn't be something I spend so much time doing." 

"I purely create what I want to create... when people ask me questions on how to grow their account or how best to do it, I always say if Instagram wasn't here, would you still be doing what you're doing? Would you still be training those specific things?" 

Learmont still posts daily on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube shorts, as well as a long-form YouTube video every week. She also recently created an app, available on her website, which includes workout programs, nutrition guides, and more.  

Besides the occasional aid from videographers as well as an assistant hired to help maintain the app, Learmont is creating and uploading all of this content herself, in addition to working as a personal trainer 40 or more hours a week. 

Currently, Learmont is focused on growing her YouTube following, which will allow her to provide more content to people for free. In the future, she hopes to be able to take Little T Fitness on the road and do workshops abroad, whether that's in the United States, or overseas in Europe and Asia.  

As for what keeps her motivated to continue pursuing all these different avenues, "I genuinely have so much fun doing what I do every single day and I think there's just so many avenues of fitness that I haven't even touched yet, but I definitely want to explore," says Learmont. 

"Being able to continually learn and expand my repertoire of skills is basically the biggest motivation," she continued, adding "being surrounded by a good group of people keeps me motivated to work on myself." 

"Social media, it just allows me to share that part of myself. But even if I didn't have social media, I would still be doing exactly what I'm doing now."