February 2022 Client Rockstar Michelina "Joyful Movement" Matozzi

Our Feb rockstar is an important figure in the lives of many young people in my amazing hometown. And her consistent movement routine with ieFitness has her feeling ready to tackle the difficult tasks she faces each day. She's unlocked the cheat code that most of us can't crack when it comes to sticking with exercise: Do movement that brings you joy!

Michelina is a high school English teacher in Quincy, IL. She teaches seniors, “hopefully getting them ready to be people in the real world when they finish high school.” She uses literature to get her students to think about the world and how they connect to it.

Michelina’s a huge book nerd. She’s in book clubs and always sharing what she’s reading on social media. But when she’s not snuggled up with her dog and book, she loves to be outside, or doing yoga, or Latin dancing…just moving! (And I happen to have the inside info that she’s in a local rollerblading gang…I’m trying to get in.) That's what I call joyful movement!

Michelina decided to start training with my 8 week Bodywise program that offered nutrition and fitness to get on track with her pandemic munching. We’ve been working together for about 1.5 years and going strong!

“I just feel better when I’m moving consistently and the exercises you come up with aren’t ones I would necessarily do and I’m gonna say the word…they can be fun…and they’re challenging in a way that’s sneaky. You demo these exercises and I think ‘oh that’s gonna be easy’ and then I do it and it’s like ‘oh I’m gonna be sore tomorrow’ but sore in the best possible way. And like that feeling of strength because I feel so much better. I have neck and shoulder problems and working out with you keeps everything aligned and keeps me from getting hurt.”

(Michelina and her workout partner, Rachel, are big eye-rollers when I say something is gonna be “fun.”)

“Not only do you modify for each person and what he have in our homes - You can can be using cans of beans or wine bottles or weights - but it’s also the community - the support the joy, actually, that you get out of each workout. Plus you get to learn to love planks.”

During the initial program she started training with her “workout wife” Rachel. Rachel is in Charlotte, NC and Michelina is here in Quincy with me. They’ve never met, but have developed a very special bond training online together. “It seemed weird at first. Ok, so I’m gonna be training with this random stranger over Zoom. And then, it turned out we’re both huge Harry Potter fans and we bonded from there. We have this relationship over Zoom where we encourage each other through our workouts. It's really amazing and fun; I feel like I’ve known her much longer than a year and a half!”

Through training with ieFitness Michelina has gotten to meet people from all over the country. “You get to meet all these people that motivate you in ways that you never thought! Plus you get to do it from home. So there’s no really no excuse. You have that community and that accountability.”

I agree with Michelina that everything is better when you do it as part of an encouraging community so big kudos to her for finding that community and sticking with it!!