When I have something to say, I either write or I lift. I’ve been trying to put these thoughts into words for a while, but oof this one’s been hard to articulate.
When we (the fitness industry) talk about fitness, it often feels very utilitarian. We talk about burning calories, losing weight, builidng muscle, and fixing posture. Everything gets framed as correction. Like a way to fix a broken body, but rarely a way to explore a capable one. As a result, exercise often becomes a prescription or an obligation. But for me, one of the most powerful gifts of exercise has been self-expression.
I’ve always felt an intense duality within myself. I can be deeply emotionally aware, feminine, graceful, and kind. And at the same time, I’m an absolute go-getter—intense and demanding, with high expectations of myself and others. Growing up, most people saw only the first side: sweet, bubbly, soft-spoken, the high-achieving “good girl.” But underneath, there was always this intensity. Call it Scorpio energy, but there has always a sharpness to me that didn’t come out in my words but needed somewhere to live.
I found it in movement. The gym was where I could say, don’t f**k with me, without actually having to saying it. It’s where both parts of me, the fire and the softness, the intensity and the joy get to co-exist.
The idea of movement as expression or identity isn’t new. Things like ritual dance, martial arts, gymnastics, and endurance sports are all very much forms of expression if you ask me. But somewhere along the way, our culture stripped movement of its soul and reduced it to numbers: calories burned, miles logged, PRs set. Maybe that feels like self-expression to an engineer. Idk.
While metrics are something I do track, lifting has given me somthing a bit deeper: a language for parts of myself that don’t always surface in daily life.
When I train, I get to express the things that matter to me: precision, attention to detail, grace, courage, and resilience. But also grit and hard freaking work. I get to be controlled and calculated when it matters, and powerful, fast, and free when the moment calls for it. Most of all, it gives the intensity in me a place to live.
For anyone who truly loves fitness, it’s because they’ve found themselves, or learned to reach themselves, through movement in a way nothing else offers. For some, it’s endurance sports. For others, it’s heavy lifting. But for all of us, fitness becomes more than just “working out.” It becomes a place of self-exploration, of self-expression, of finding the parts of ourselves that don’t always get airtime in daily life.
So when I train, yes, I get stronger, fitter, healthier. But it’s also how I express who I am. Fitness doesn’t just fix a body. It reveals a self.