Why Breaking the Rules of Fitness Finally Got Me My Life Back
When you’re seventeen, breaking the rules feels less like a choice and more like a necessity.
painting by Rebecca
My friend Rebecca and I took a train into New York City to visit her cousin. It took 24 hours and we were entirely by ourselves!
We didn’t really have a grand plan.
But through a series of ridiculous connections—a friend of a friend of a friend—we somehow found ourselves being snuck backstage at a Smashing Pumpkins concert at the Roseland Ballroom.
Our reward for taking that leap and breaking a few structural boundaries?
We ended up watching the opening act standing right next to Billy Corgan.
Rebecca later painted Billy performing, a perfect capsule of that night.
Years passed, lives changed, and we all drifted into our own busy corners of the world. But those wild, rule-breaking moments have a funny way of anchoring you to the people who were there.
Recently, when I started writing Notes, another longtime friend, Yinka, reached out. She told me she still has a birthday card I sent her twenty years ago. In fact, she framed it and hung it on her wall.
It featured a famous, rebellious quote by Katharine Hepburn:
The funny thing is, I’ve always been someone who is okay doing things a little differently. I’m not afraid to color outside the lines. And yet, when it came to fitness, I still fell into the trap of trying to execute everything perfectly.
I was buying into the fragmented script the fitness world hands us: strength training here, flexibility there, core stability somewhere else.
At the time, I did a brief stint as an elementary school teacher (hello, George Cox!) while teaching Pilates on the side. I was simply too exhausted to follow any of it. It felt like a third job I was failing at.
So, I finally did what I do best. I threw out the standard script.
I developed a practice where strength, flexibility, and core integration could adapt to whatever I needed that day. Sometimes I needed to push myself, sometimes I needed to restore, and sometimes I blended the two—but I was never just checking off boxes.
My reward?
I got more of my life back. I wasn’t as exhausted, I was able to manage everything better, and I was noticing real progress.
Because when you stop fighting a broken script, your body feels different.
Safe and sound on Yinka’s wall.
It turns out Katharine Hepburn was right, and that card absolutely belonged on the wall.
The magic really does happen when you step backstage.
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About
Melissa Van is a Pilates teacher, retreat leader, and writer based between the US and Europe, with over 20 years of teaching experience. She helps women over 45 stay active with a portable Pilates practice that fits into their lives through personalized coaching, retreats, and weekly reflections on movement and travel in her newsletter, Notes from the Road. Join her in Tuscany to move, laugh, and make friends with women who refuse to slow down.