10/09/2026
There have been workouts I’ve walked out of feeling as though I had betrayed my own body.
I had used its energy to force it through movement that felt wrong for me. The instructor tells you to go harder. Your body asks you to ease off. And suddenly, there is this quiet battle inside you: honour what you feel, or prove that you can keep up.
I know how often I have chosen to keep up. How easily someone else’s encouragement has become permission to ignore myself.
That is the part of workout culture I find toxic. The pressure to override your own limits, wrapped in the promise that you will feel good about yourself afterwards. The assumption that everyone in the room needs to be pushed further.
Sometimes I need to feel safe enough to stop. I am done treating every workout as a test of how much of myself I can overrule. If listening to my body makes me seem weak in a room that celebrates pushing harder, I can live with that.
I want to give my body back some of the softness it has lost in this culture. I want movement I enjoy, space to build strength at my own pace, and the freedom to leave a class knowing I stayed on my own side.
Even the goals deserve questioning. What am I training towards? Do I actually want the changes I am working for, or have I simply absorbed somebody else’s idea of what my body should become?