My Shift From High Intensity to Low Impact Workouts

My Shift From High Intensity to Low Impact Workouts —> a story I’ve been wanting to write about & share for awhile because it has truly made such an unbelievable difference in my health journey. My stories surrounding my health, my body, and my lifestyle are focused around what works for me.  Everyone is so incredibly different in the best way and my hope + intention is to help anyone who needs a shift in some aspect of their health that is no longer serving them.

I played very competitive soccer throughout my entire life and went on to compete in college. From a young age I was working with personal trainers & coaches on strength training, agility work, endurance, and everything you needed to excel on the field in hopes of getting recruited by colleges. I always hated endurance running, but was one to love the strength & agility work. When playing at a competitive level you learn pretty early on to push your limit. Your taught to go harder when you feel like you have nothing left and to keep moving until your body no longer allows it.  Fast forward to college and the level only intensified. While it was a lot to deal with both mentally & physically, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I was in my element. I was part of a team, traveling the country with my best friends, and playing a sport that created so much of my identity. 

Through it all, you realize just how much your body can handle and how much your mindset can affect your performance. Your body shows up in ways you never thought were possible, but when pushed beyond its limit, it’s bound to start cracking. There were girls on my team who went all 4 years with nothing but a muscle strain or sore legs, and then there were people like me who started falling apart, literally. I started getting lower back injections because I could hardly walk some days, I tore ligaments in my hand so I had a cute little brace for a while, I tore major ligaments in my ankle so I was queen of crutches & foot boot, I was still dealing with ACL issues from knee surgery in high school, and my junior year I ended up having hip surgery which pretty much ended my soccer days. But again, after each injury I cared very little about my healing and solely about when I could play again. Getting back on the field was all that mattered and if I was 75% healed, that was good enough for me. 4 years goes by real quick and if you can’t play that game or the entire season, there’s another girl sprinting to take your spot. Looking back on it now, I wish I could take a deep breath and give this body a little more rest, a whole lot of gratitude, and thank it for showing up as best it could in those moments.

It’s not easy to break habits, physically and/or mentally. After college ended, I was thrilled to give up the endurance running that I was always forced to do and pursue workouts that I personally enjoyed. For my entire life, workouts were focused around intense training that pushed you to the limit, left you exhausted, and ended with a real sweat. That’s what I believed working out should look & feel like, and anything less than that was pretty much a waste of time. Yoga? Weird. Pilates? Too slow. Barre? I’m not a ballerina. I LIVED for SoulCycle and couldn’t get enough of it. If I wasn’t spinning my heart out, then I was either at the gym doing personal workouts, boxing, or at circuit training classes. I was in great shape, I loved the workouts I was doing, and kept a routine regardless of how my body was feeling. I worked out a minimum of 5 days a week and if I felt strained, extremely tired, or sore, then that meant that whatever I was doing was working and I should keep it up. I graduated from college is 2014 and this was my way of life until 2017 when I got extremely sick very quickly.

It took over my life in the worst way and it was completely debilitating. I went through months & months of seeing one conventional Western medicine doctor after the other trying to get some answers. While this was all happening, I really tried to keep my life as normal as I possibly could, and that meant sticking to my workout schedule. It was one thing that I felt like I had some control over, so I continued to attend the intense workout classes, push my body past its limit, and ignore every sign it was giving me. The more I pushed, the sicker I got. I was too stubborn to see it and refused to believe that my workouts, the one thing that should be keeping me going, had anything to do with my decline. I hit a point where I was hardly able to walk to work, take the stairs, get out of bed, or even function on a day to day basis.

It wasn’t until I was introduced to my integrative & functional medicine practitioner that things started to take a turn (I actually still work with her to this day!). Putting my health conditions aside, she was the first person in this entire process to even ask or talk about my workouts and the type of physical activity I was doing. She immediately put a huge red flag in my face and explained that the workouts I was doing were putting my body in complete overdrive, with no way of replenishment. To put it simply, my body was at 0 and I was still trying to give 150%. I was completely depleted and was “prescribed” to stop all medium-high intensity workouts and to make a shift. I started out with a much needed BREAK - very little movement, if at all. Walking to & from work was the goal and that didn’t even happen sometimes. I then shifted into yoga, pilates, and even just longer walks. Things I used to NEVER consider real workouts, but were now my new normal. I started to love them because of how they made me feel both physically & emotionally. There was so much more connection between the mind + body and I really began to feel the difference. I could feel what was giving my body energy and what was draining it. I learned to take days/weeks off when my body needed it and I learned to modify almost everything in classes if the movements were too much for me. I was doing intense medical treatments at the time, but I swear it was also the shift in my workouts & lifestyle that made the greatest difference. Workouts were just one part of the lifestyle changes, but a significant one.

To this day (about 3 years later), almost all of the workouts I do are low impact. I love it, my body loves it, and it’s what I find works for me. I personally just don’t enjoy the high intensity workouts like I once did and it’s not something my body craves anymore. I will forever love some of my favorite high intensity classes and will of course do them when I feel up for it, but the thought that I’ll gain too much weight or won’t have the body I strive for if I don’t do them is GONE. And let me tell you, it’s so freaking freeing to feel this way. When I share my workout routine with people, 99% of the time their reaction is “that’s it?!” and the answer is YES. You don’t need to run a marathon to be in great shape. If you love running marathons, do it! I APPLAUD everyone who has the strength & passion for that. A little bit goes a long, long way. I wish it didn’t take me this long to realize that, but it’s so true. There are days where I absolutely overdo it, don’t listen, and shortly realize that I probably did more harm than good pushing myself into that workout. I recognize it and move on. This didn’t happen in one day, believe me. I’m writing this post THREE years later, so trust me when I say it’s been a journey of ups & downs.

If you’re looking to add more low impact workouts into your routine, there are definitely a few online programs + studios (I’m based in NY) that I’d recommend looking into! Just some of my suggestions that I have personally found to lean + tone without feeling the high impact intensity -

I know this a lengthy post, so I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to read and listen to my story. I honestly feel like I could write about this topic forever and the amazing transformation it has had on my life. I hope I’m able to connect with some of you through my experiences and would love to hear any comments/questions you may have!


Michelle Iannacchino