by: Deion Clifton
Think about your fitness level and ask yourself: are you happy with where you are? Why do you get up and go to the gym; what’s your endgame? For Leslie Johnson, it’s plain and simple: “I want to look good. That’s my goal.”
Leslie grew up with aspirations to become a ballet dancer. She performed competitively in ballet, jazz, and tap and even tried out for roles on Broadway.
Though her regional dance days are now behind her, her passion for dance never faded. Leslie spent some time looking for a studio where she could continue to dance casually, and at HAC, she finally found what she was looking for. “The first class I took was Zumba® with Musulain. You can’t help but get into the class,” she explains. Zumba with Mus helped her find the type of space she was looking for.
From there, Leslie began branching out. She’d ask herself, “Now, what classes can I add to it, add to it, add to it?” and tried anything that sounded like it would fit the bill. Pretty soon, she was regularly appearing in a wide variety of group fitness classes, including BodyCombatTM, Pilates, Intense Interval Training, and HAC Barre. She even threw in a sprinkle of hot yoga. “I wanted to get the balance with flexibility and push that side of the dancer’s body,” she explains.
Over time, Leslie has continued challenging herself to do new things by creating a plan and building up to it. “I started doing Olympic lifts, and I started doing gymnastics. I have some things from CrossFit that I just learned, and I can’t do them very well. So, I come here, and I practice everything.”
Because of the breadth of stretches, jumps, and twists they perform, dancers tend to work many supporting muscles that are not typically used day-to-day. Leslie’s dance background has given her a heightened appreciation for those smaller muscles, and she seeks out exercises many would consider unorthodox in order to target and strengthen them.
“You have to realize you use everything,” she points out. “I didn’t really appreciate the strength I need in my hands and my fingers—the grip strength for pull-ups. So, there’s really not any part of me that I don’t consciously think about working out.” She believes it’s necessary to train every part of the body, including parts often neglected in more traditional workout regimens, and she spends a lot of time at the gym to achieve this.
Build Back Better
Though she works out seven days a week for at least two hours per session (yes, you read that right), Leslie knows the importance of recovery. She stresses, “When you’re doing fitness, you also have to heal; the two go hand in hand. And most people that are pushing their body to their limits don’t give it that respect.”
To end her sweat sessions, Leslie spends 30 minutes a day stretching and rolling out using a foam roller, then b-lines it to the sauna and a cold shower.
And, when she is faced with soreness or an injury, Leslie takes care to avoid exercises that could potentially aggravate the affected areas and make things worse. She also uses the MELT Method to reduce pain. “I learned about the MELT Method that [Hot Yoga] gives here. It’s something that I started to study under Amanda Yue.” This method uses specially designed treatment balls and soft rollers to enhance mobility, stability, and performance. It is clinically proven to reduce chronic pain.
Even with all that recovery, injuries aren’t always preventable. Last year, Leslie experienced a hamstring injury that kept her from participating in her favorite group fitness classes. After the fact, the first person she turned to was her son. “He’s been a big help in my process because he’s a physical therapist, so he helps diagnose all my boo-boos,” she chuckles, praising her son for his assistance in crafting treatment plans when she’s needed them. “It’s good to have that in the family.”
The hamstring injury forced Leslie to work out independently for several months. Up to that point, her workout experience had always taken place in a studio, with a class, and under the direction of a group fitness instructor. She was still pretty new to working out on her own, so she consulted the internet for fitness inspiration. “I turned to Instagram and Facebook as my friends. I’ve collected hundreds of exercises that I do, and I’ve cataloged them by body parts and equipment that I need to use,” she explains.
She used social media reels to create workouts for herself every day for ten weeks while giving her hamstring injury time to heal. Those ten weeks would completely change the way Leslie works out. “I was seeing my body change and develop in a different way where people thought I was a bodybuilder.”
Leslie went from taking group fitness classes and feeling like she needed to be in a team setting to being comfortable exercising alone and coming up with her own workouts. She even started finding different ways to do your everyday exercises. “I’ve done all of the basics in class, so if I’m gonna do push-ups, I’m gonna do them differently. But I have to do all the preliminary stuff first,” she says.
Ultimately, Leslie’s athletic edge comes from her willingness to leave her comfort zone. “I’m going to keep experimenting, and if I fail or look goofy, then that’s okay because I was just trying to leave my comfort zone,” she says.
“You Look Good, You Feel Good”
With all that Leslie does in the gym, she can feel like she’s lost sight of the thing that continues to pull her back to the gym daily. “People would ask me why I’m not doing any weightlifting competitions, and I thought to myself, ‘Wow, do I not have any goals?’” But a quote by NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders always helps realign her focus. “I thought about something my son said to me, and it’s a quote that goes, ‘You look good, you feel good. You feel good, you play good. You play good, they pay good.’” For Leslie, fitness is all about self-confidence. She wants to look good and feel good in the body she has, and she doesn’t feel the need to prove her athleticism to anyone but herself.
Though Leslie receives a lot of compliments, the real payoff for her is her impact on others. “People say I inspire them. So that just lets you know that you can do things that you didn’t think you could.” She continues, “I see them doing things they didn’t used to do. And I think that becomes contagious.”
Leslie is a beautiful example of how easily a person can fall in love with sculpting and developing themselves through exercise. If you can find a goal and develop a plan to reach that goal, then you, like Leslie, will see growth in your muscles, discipline, and self-confidence.
According to Leslie, it’s a process of continuing “step by step by step by step. [You’ll] see progress, and then the confidence will feed itself. And it doesn’t mean doing two hours a day like me. This is just what works for me. But I think you’ll find that it starts feeding itself, and you’ll want to keep at it and see the progress.”