The Level Up Story, Part 1Prefer to listen? I was recently interviewed on When You Come To New England, "A Small Businesses Podcast", and we talked...

Growing Up in Motion: The Roots of Level Up

<p class="cdb-p"><em>The Level Up Story, Part 1</em></p><blockquote class="cdb-blockquote"><p class="cdb-p"><strong>Prefer to listen?</strong> I was recently interviewed on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="cdb-link" href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/15LkN5MT72V0QYDha0MQ8V">When You Come To New England, "A Small Businesses Podcast"</a>, and we talked through how Level Up came to be. A huge thank-you to the show for spotlighting small businesses across New England and for having me on. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="cdb-link" href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/15LkN5MT72V0QYDha0MQ8V">Listen to "My Chat with Twyla from Level Up Fitness &amp; Wellness Center" on Spotify</a>. If you'd rather read, keep scrolling.</p></blockquote><h2 id="cdb-heading-it-started-on-a-stage" class="cdb-h2">It started on a stage</h2><p class="cdb-p">Before I ever coached a client, I was a kid in an adult dance company. I danced alongside my mom for the first 17 years of my life, traveling all over New England and keeping up with performers twice my age. It was some of the most fun I've ever had, and it asked a lot of a body that was still growing.</p><p class="cdb-p">By 18, I wanted more. I wanted to branch out, study other styles of dance, and see what a professional career had to offer. But my body felt exhausted and weak, and that didn't match the goals I had. If I wanted to chase them, I needed to get stronger and stay that way.</p><h2 id="cdb-heading-learning-it-myself" class="cdb-h2">Learning it myself</h2><p class="cdb-p">Personal trainers were expensive, and I was 18. So I made a different call: I'd learn the information myself. If I understood how to keep my own body strong, I could keep dancing for as long as I wanted, on my own terms.</p><p class="cdb-p">That decision quietly set everything else in motion. I was teaching dance at the time, and when I wasn't working with the kids, I found myself training their parents, showing them how to stay strong and posting dance classes for adults. Somewhere in there it clicked. The aches and pains I was dealing with as a dancer were the same ones showing up in the parents, the office workers, the weekend athletes. The reasons behind them were different, but the pain, the healing, and the path back to strength looked remarkably alike. Training was never meant to be just for dancers, so I opened the door to everyone.</p><h2 id="cdb-heading-when-strength-alone-wasnt-enough" class="cdb-h2">When strength alone wasn't enough</h2><p class="cdb-p">As my clients and I got older, the things that used to work stopped working as well. Old injuries kept resurfacing. Bodies that had bounced back easily at 18 needed more than a good workout to recover. I started referring clients out to massage therapists, chiropractors, and acupuncturists, because that's what I was doing for myself.</p><p class="cdb-p">The problem was that adult life doesn't leave much room for a calendar full of appointments, and starting over with a new provider every time you need help can be exhausting, even emotional. Then one day a client looked at me mid-session and asked, "Can't you just stick an elbow in it?" I couldn't. Not yet. So in 2017 I went back to school for massage therapy and specialized in medical massage. That question is the reason training and muscular therapy now live under one roof at Level Up.</p><h2 id="cdb-heading-level-up-today" class="cdb-h2">Level Up today</h2><p class="cdb-p">Today, Level Up Results is a personal training and muscular therapy studio in Waltham built for people whose bodies come with injuries or complicated hurdles: chronic pain, old injuries that keep coming back, postpartum and pelvic floor recovery, hormonal shifts like PMOS or perimenopause, and the stubborn weight gain that often tags along with all of it. We look for the source of the pain, track progress with body fat scans, and adjust the plan as the body changes. Most clients feel a difference within just a few sessions.</p><h2 id="cdb-heading-bringing-the-fun-back" class="cdb-h2">Bringing the fun back</h2><p class="cdb-p">The thread running through all of it is the same thing that got me started: movement should feel good to come back to. Some of the best workouts reconnect you with the movements you did as a kid, whether that was shooting hoops, running bases, or, in my case, dancing. When training reminds your body of what it already loves to do, showing up gets a whole lot easier, and that's the kind of strength that lasts.</p><p class="cdb-p">You don't have to lose yourself just because life gets full. In 2020, the pandemic shut our doors, and five days later I found out I was pregnant with twins. My body, my business, and my sense of who I was all changed overnight. Coming back wasn't a straight line. There were months when getting strong felt impossible, when sleep was a memory and my body didn't feel like mine. Some days I started a workout and never finished. Some days I didn't start at all. I questioned whether the person I used to be was still in there. But I kept coming back to the two things that had always made me feel like me: strength and dance. Ten minutes at a time, then twenty. I remember the first workout where my body felt steady and capable again, after months of feeling like it belonged to everyone but me. Then the first time I danced again, really let go and moved, I felt the old me come rushing back. That was the moment I knew she'd never actually left. She was waiting for me to make room for her. Careers, family, and life will always find ways to pull you away from yourself, and the world will tell you that's just the season you're in. At Level Up, we don't believe that. You're worth fighting for, and that's the fight we take on with you.</p><p class="cdb-p">Whether you're brand new to Level Up or you've been with us for years, welcome to our passion and our journey through life together.</p><h2 id="cdb-heading-hear-the-full-conversation" class="cdb-h2">Hear the full conversation</h2><p class="cdb-p">Want the story in my own voice? Catch my interview on <strong>When You Come To New England, "A Small Businesses Podcast"</strong>: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="cdb-link" href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/15LkN5MT72V0QYDha0MQ8V">listen on Spotify</a>. Thank you again to the show for championing local small businesses and for such a fun conversation. Go give them a follow!</p>