My entire life I have been a competitive dancer, but then COVID shut the whole world down. Now after COVID-19, we were back at school in September of 2020. I had been doing extremely well with online learning so the in-person classes were a challenge. I ended up dropping most of my classes at school and taking them through an online program where I was able to move at my pace which was typically faster than what was being done at school. This online school ended up working well for me and I was even able to graduate early, but that is not what we’re talking about right now.
When I first started online courses I was very overwhelmed as it was different then highschool as I was able to see and know all of the work I needed to do. So when I was faced with this I became very stressed with school. I would get up extremely early and stay up late working on school because at the time I hadn’t figured out a good method or routine. I was so stressed I had lost weight and spent many days crying due to the stress of school. It got to the point where my mom had to make a rule that I was only going to be doing school during the hours that other students are in school so 9-3. I was so stressed that I was still waking up at around 6 am naturally. When she set this rule she suggested that if I was waking up early to try doing some exercise or yoga in the morning until it was school hours. At this point, I was desperate to distract my mind from school so I did. This was when my love for fitness and working out began, it was after that day that working out became an essential stress reliever in my life.
I spent the first 2 years of my fitness journey still competing in dance, doing around 15 hours of dance a week along with getting up in the morning to work out. The gyms were still not fully open at this time as well and I was too nervous to go in a public gym, so my dad built me a squat rack and bench press out of wood and bought some weights off the Facebook marketplace. After graduating high school I fell more and more in love with the gym and decided I wanted to try powerlifting since I was already incorporating most of the lifts within my workouts. Additionally, I thought this was the best time as I was no longer going to be competing in dance. So in the late summer of 2022, I decided to get a coach. My coach is Lily Riggs, she holds records in Canada and has also competed for Team Canada at the World and North American championships. From there, I started to focus on powerlifting and then even did my first competition in November of 2022. At this competition, I was able to gain a provincial record and win in my weight class.
Fast forward to today, I have competed in 3 competitions, one of them being provincials. Now I am making my way to a Regional competition to help qualify for Nationals that is happening in September of 2024. My ultimate goal would be to compete for Team Canada at the World Championship or in the Common Wealth Games. It is always crazy for me to think that what was once just a stress reliever became a sport I love and cherish, where I can continue to grow and dream.
Here are some pictures from dance and a picture of me and my coach at a recent competition I did in November. Below are some videos in my very first ghetto gym that my dad built for me!
A picture of my coach just killing it on the World Championship platform.
