“If I Wanted to Lift Weights, I’d Go to a Gym.”

When I first started offering strength classes at the studio, someone left me a message that said, “If I wanted to lift weights, I’d go to a gym.”

And I’ll be honest — it hurt my feelings. It really did. It hit me in that place where you suddenly wonder, Wait… is everyone thinking that? Did I misread this whole thing? It was a gut punch.

But after I sat with it (and probably overthought it for way too long), I realized something: They didn’t understand what we were actually doing. And that wasn’t their fault — I hadn’t really told the story yet.

Because what we offer here is not the same as the traditional “strength” classes I used to take at gyms or the Y. Those classes have their place — I loved some of them. But they were usually the same formula: jump right in, work hard, sweat, wipe down your equipment, maybe stretch your hamstrings for 12 seconds and call it a day.

There was no cool-down.
No real warm-up.
No mindful anything.
Just… go.

And again — nothing wrong with that. I went for years. But what I wanted for us was something that felt more connected. More sustainable. More grounded in how yoga teaches us to move: with awareness, with breath, with the understanding that your body is not a robot you can just command into intensity.

And here’s the part I don’t want people to miss: I still want to be challenged. I love a hard workout. I like to sweat. I like to feel strong. I don’t want watered-down movement — I want movement that makes me better.

But I also want to take care of my body for the long haul. I want to push myself in a way I can recover from. I want to feel powerful and supported. Challenged and sustainable. And that’s exactly what we do.

So our strength classes? They start with yoga.
A real warm-up.
Breath.
A moment to check in before you pick up anything heavy. And at the end, there’s an actual cool-down — not an afterthought. Yoga, stretching, nervous-system-calming cool-down. The thing that is missing from almost every workout class I have ever taken.

And that alone makes a huge difference in how people feel walking out the door.

But the bigger thing — the thing I didn’t expect — is how many people have told me this class has changed their relationship with exercise. Changed how they think about “hard” workouts. Changed what they believe their body can do. And more than one person has told me, “I feel like I can do this for a long time.”

And honestly… that is exactly what I hoped for when we started this.

I didn’t want a class that people could power through for six weeks and then burn out on.
I wanted something people could grow with, stay with, and actually enjoy — something that feels strong and challenging but also doable and fun.

So yeah… if you really just want to lift heavy weights with no warm-up, no cool-down, no pause, no breath, and no mindful component, then absolutely — a gym might be the right place for you. But if you want strength that honors your whole body, your energy, your nervous system, your longevity — and still leaves you dripping sweat and feeling like a badass — that’s what we do here.

Strength that feels good.
Strength that lasts.
Strength that makes sense for real people with real lives and real bodies.

And to the person who wrote that comment… thank you. Seriously. You helped me see what I needed to say out loud. 🤍