Instead, the 29-year-old University of Otago graduate is preparing for her next bodybuilding competition, competing in the IFBB Bikini Fitness category, her sights firmly set on qualifying for the third time to compete in this September’s Olympia, the Olympics of her sport and new career.
Miss Martin, who grew up in Gore, entered her first Bikini competition in 2013 "just as a goal". Five months later she won her "pro card" and in 2016 became the first New Zealand woman to compete at Olympia, which she described as "completely surreal".
"Most people would spend years and years and years trying to get their pro card.
"A lot of the girls I compete with now, I actually watched them on stage when I did the Arnold Amateur in Ohio [in 2014] and I was sitting there thinking ‘Man, I want to be a Bikini pro and I want to go out there and achieve this’.
"Four years later, now I’m kind of up there managing [to be in] the top 10 in the world, or the top five, essentially, in the world in my last show."
It is a far cry from her previous career as a lawyer in Auckland, a job she had no passion for and that "just really broke me, to be honest".
"It was this environment where I would watch my peers sit at their desks until 8pm even if they didn’t have work to do ... just to be seen to be selling their soul to the firm and working so hard so that they would move up the ladder.
"I actually got told in one of my performance reviews that I wasn’t ‘conforming’.
"That was kind of the turning point for me."
At the same time, Miss Martin, who relocated to the United States in June, was also in the final stages of overcoming an eight-year battle with bulimia and said bodybuilding had helped cement her recovery.
"I think a lot of people do actually end up in this sport from a similar background to me because it’s the way you can actually take what was negative and create something positive out of it."
Now, she is using her past experiences, which also include an abusive relationship, to inspire and motivate other women to achieve their goals through her seminar "She is Strong".
"That’s why I compete and it’s why I share all of my struggles, really, so that I can hopefully inspire someone out there to think ‘Maybe I can actually do that’ or ... ‘Maybe I don’t actually have to keep working as an accountant for my whole life wanting to jump out the window’."
"I do this to inspire someone somewhere to just put themselves first for once and just believe in themselves enough to chase whatever it is they want to do with their life," Miss Martin said.
