There is so much more to life than the continuous pursuit of destinations. If you merely bounce from one location to the next, checking goals off your life’s bucket list, you will miss the fulfillment found within the journey itself. My fitness story embodies the full comprehension of this reality in the fact that I began with fitness in high school as a means to an end. I was playing fast pitch softball and athleticism was not in my gene pool. Where the other players were able to perform on their youth alone, I had to begin working out at a much higher level to stay competitive. This drive enabled me to lead my team to State as the starting pitcher. It wasn’t easy, however it was worth all of the blood, sweat and tears I poured into it.
When I began college, my softball days were quickly thrown behind me due to a shoulder injury and the surgery that followed. It was a crushing psychological blow because I no longer had the goal of peak performance in softball to drive me. It was around this time that a friend introduced me to running half marathons. This kept me physically active but without the same diversity and intensity of training required to be a peak pitcher. Little did I realize that my body needed a well rounded workout routine and I managed a back injury that once again pushed my goals out of reach.
As I began working through my back injury, a chiropractor I was seeing recommended that I try out fitness yoga. My initial response was that yoga is for Eastern Mystics and crazy Buddhist ladies. Little did I know that the type of yoga he was recommending was for purely fitness purposes and nothing meditative. I humored him and tried a fitness yoga class offered by a gym I lived near and was shocked at how it exhausted me physically. I was hooked. In the early 2000s I moved to Duluth after marrying the man of my dreams. As we built our new life together, I realized that nowhere offered the type of fitness yoga I was craving. This in turn lead me to acquire my fitness yoga instructor certification through YogaFit. If you can’t find what you crave, build it, so that’s what I did. Teaching not only filled my desire for fitness but also helped others find fitness as well. The YMCA and my local church offered space for me to teach many different people over a series of years.
Fast forward about 12 years, four babies, and a full time mom life and I found myself 35lbs overweight, groggy, sore and unable to physically or mentally keep up with the demands of life. It was at this point that I discovered Destination Fitness. It is near my house, has amazing staff that both encourages me while pushing my limits, and gave me the all around physical fitness my body and mind both needed. It wasn’t until this point in my life that I fully realized that fitness is an ongoing journey in my life rather than merely a means to an end. Destination Fitness helped me regain everything I lost during pregnancy and find my fitness drive again. My husband even says that he’s not sure if we can afford for me NOT to have a full membership. This is the motivating factor that lead me to get my Group Fitness Instructor Certification and begin working alongside the Destination Fitness team to help others in the way they helped me. Fitness is not merely a means to an end. If we overlook the journey of physical fitness, we miss the fulfillment found within a healthy lifestyle.
