Twenty-four year-old Shadowhunters star Katherine McNamara endured some pretty strenuous training for her role as Clary Fray. To get through it, she credits her late boxing coach, Dean—who left her with a powerful mantra that she now carries with her (literally) forever. "My mantra is 'not fragile,'" the Alcon PRECISION1 partner tells Health, showing off her tattoo of the mantra on her right wrist.
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Before she began training, she "didn’t know I had the means of any real physical strength," McNamara tells Health. "I learned that if you trained for your body type, it’s possible for anyone, no matter how you're made and how your body is, to feel strong and empower yourself through training." She now regularly turns to these words to feel stronger and more empowered.
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McNamera considers her former coach to be "like a dad," someone who checked in on her mentally as well as physically before training. "He never underestimated me and he encouraged me to be more and to go farther than I thought possible," she says. She even found strength in this mantra during quarantine; it reminded her that everyone is "getting through this together, that we’re not fragile."
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As far as her tattoo of her mantra: "I keep it in a place that’s so visible to myself and anyone else," she says. It's how she honors her boxing coach and his words to her that saw her through tough times.
You can watch Katherine explain her mantra in the video above.
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