We are built for these times 💪🏽
In Filipino Martial Arts, strength isn’t just force—it’s structure, stamina, and endurance. It grounds you during dynamic movements, maintains form under pressure, and sustains effort over time. Strength isn’t just something you build—it’s something you embody.
Your body is designed to adapt—when you lift weights or face resistance, it naturally builds muscle, just like your heart beats without you thinking about it. But moving? That part is up to you. You have to choose to move, and when you do, your body will respond.
For nearly 15 years, I’ve trained individuals across all backgrounds—athletes, everyday folks, elders, and those recovering from injuries. While some train to get stronger, recover from injury, or simply feel better in their bodies, I’ve seen firsthand how strength training can be life-changing—especially for the Filipino American community.
With the high rates of hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease in our community, strength training isn’t just about fitness—it’s a tool to take control of our health, build resilience, and feel at home in our bodies again.
The body is resilient, but it also carries the imprint of generational stress—passed down through survival, adaptation, and the weight of lived histories. Just as the body can store stress, it can also rewrite its narrative.
Strength training isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about longevity, prevention, and healing. It’s one of the simplest, most powerful ways to reclaim your health and break cycles of chronic disease.
But it’s bigger than just health. Your body is the home for your spirit—the foundation for everything you are meant to do in this world. The work you’re here for—your purpose, your activism, your calling—depends on your ability to show up fully, and that starts with how you care for yourself.
We are living through complex, challenging times that call for both physical and inner strength. We are the generation carrying and processing the unhealed experiences of our ancestors—the pain, the survival, the resilience they never had the space to release. That energy lives in us, deep in our nervous systems.
Unraveling and transforming it takes strength—just as much as any weight we lift.
A strong, resilient body isn’t just about lifting weights—it’s about having the capacity to hold, process, and carry forward all that’s been passed down to us.
We might carry a lot—but we don’t have to be crushed by it.
Because we are built for these times.
When I train, when I lift heavy things in the gym, it feels like preparation for this deeper work. While we may not face the same battles our warrior ancestors did, because of them, we have the strength to meet our own.
The past isn’t a weight that holds us back—it’s the foundation we rise from. And we can trust that our bodies were built for all of it.
We carry our ancestors’ strength, not just their struggles—so we can live fully, free to own our own story.
So what if… every rep, every lift, every moment of strength training was an offering?
An act of devotion. A means to honor the resilience passed down through generations.
What if lifting wasn’t just about getting stronger—but about reclaiming something deeper?
I lift as an act of gratitude for my ancestors' survival.
I lift to break free from narratives that separate body from spirit.
I lift to challenge binary notions of strength and softness, masculinity and femininity.
I lift to feel grounded—to trust that the earth supports me.
I lift to remember—what it means to occupy space, to move with power, to fully inhabit my body.
Because a strong body is a liberated body—one that moves with power, defies limitations, and carries the wisdom of those who came before us as we carve our own paths forward.