'I Never Thought I Could Strength Train With My Respiratory Condition. Now I Bench 100 Lbs.'
I was a dancer for 14 years—everything from tap, jazz, hip hop, with a primary focus on ballet—so I considered myself extremely active. I also dabbled in softball for about four years. But movement wasn't always easy for me.
I was born with an extremely rare respiratory condition in which my airway closes off and narrows over time, which in turn severely hinders my breathing and speech quality. I’ve had 80-plus surgeries throughout my lifetime to maintain a stable airway. I was never able to truly excel in any form of physical activity due to exercise-induced exhaustion and breathing problems. Despite all medical hardships, I remained active in dance and performed to the best of my ability.
My strength journey began when I started working at the front desk at a gym four years ago.
As mentioned, I was a ballerina for over half my life and had a so-called ballerina’s body (long and lithe, if you will), and I hated it. I was thin, much thanks to genetics and an overly active lifestyle. People always felt the need to comment on how tiny I was, telling me to “eat a burger sometime” and skinny shaming me to a point where I was engulfed in self-loathing.
I wanted nothing more than to feel muscular and strong.
Not only for aesthetic purposes, but I wanted to gain strength as an act of direct defiance against my tiny airway that controlled the amount of physical exertion I could do, or at least told myself I could do.
My varsity football player boyfriend tried to take me to the gym with him and showed me the basics of lifting, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t putting on any muscle or weight–I was just working up a sweat and wearing myself out.
At the time, I was also struggling with orthorexia (or, a fixation on healthy or "clean" eating)—I wasn’t consuming anywhere near the amount of calories I needed to put on any weight because I was so scared of ingredients that I couldn’t pronounce or identify. When I started working at the front desk at the gym, I was surrounded by personal trainers, certified nutritionists, and all the muscular women that I so desperately wanted to emulate.
All of these people soon became my really good friends, and that’s when I started to get serious about my goals to become muscular and strong.
I started working with a trainer who taught me about the importance of calculating macros, lifting heavy, and sleeping properly.
My fears and misconceptions of “unhealthy” foods and overall gym anxiety were eradicated as I trained under a progressive overload (meaning you continue to add more weight/resistance as you get stronger) and caloric surplus program (eating *more*!), and that’s when I started to see major results.
Now, a typical week of exercise for me looks like four to five days of lifting with two to three rest/recovery days. My workout split is a push day (chest/triceps/shoulders), pull day (back/biceps), and lower body (quads one day, glutes and hamstrings the next leg day). I incorporate inclined treadmill walks for cardio and/or warm-ups as my breathing allows.
My most impressive strength feat is my barbell bench press max: 100 pounds for two reps. When I started in 2018, I couldn’t even press the bar!
I am most proud of my progress in muscle gain and definition. Now, any chance I can get to wear a sports bra or tank top to show off my arms, I’m taking it! I am constantly in awe of the muscle definition I have gained and how I actually look strong.
A specific goal I went after was adding strength and size to my quads and hamstrings (I am glute-dominant), and I achieved this by lifting heavier weights than I ever wanted to and by eating in a caloric surplus, focusing on high carb and protein dense meals. I am now eating enough, and know what my daily macro goals are in order to continue putting on muscle weight. I could literally talk for hours about the impact proper nutrition has played on my gains. Consuming enough carbs, protein, and fat to fuel my workouts and replenish energy spent has been the biggest game changer.
I also focus on rest, recovery, and sleep. I have to remind myself that strong muscles are formed on rest days. I strive to incorporate enough rest and recovery time in between my workouts so that I can go into each session fueled, recovered, and focused.
I am always still chasing new goals—but I am thankful everyday that I’ve moved forward physically and mentally from where I was.
I am blown away by the fact that I can squat and deadlift on a platform in the middle of a busy gym with heavy weights, proper form, and little to no anxiety.
If it hadn’t been for my personal trainer, community of coworkers and fellow lifters at the gym, and my gym-rat boyfriend, I never would have started training properly and making progress. I would have continued with the HIIT and bodyweight workouts that left me dripping in sweat, all while living off too-few calories and wondering why I wasn’t getting ripped.
The confidence and self-love that I have gained from strength training has literally saved my life in more ways than I can even count.
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