What I Learned Shifting From Fitness to Design
I didn’t wake up one morning knowing I’d leave fitness for design. There was no dramatic career pivot, no single turning point.
The shift happened quietly, slowly… like breath.
It began when I tried to build my own fitness brand. When I edited videos late at night for my YouTube channel, Mor Movement. When writing fitness blog posts became just as exciting as creating the workouts themselves.
Little by little, I spent more hours at the screen than in the studio.
Movement stayed in my body, but creativity began showing up in pixels.
And eventually, I realized something important:
I didn’t fall out of love with movement.
I fell into love with creating.
Lesson 1: Design Didn’t Replace Fitness, It Evolved From It
Fitness taught me discipline, patience, rhythm.
How to guide people through flow, breath, alignment.
Design uses the same muscles - just differently.
Now I don’t choreograph bodies, I choreograph visuals.
I move brands, ideas, and stories.
I create flow through spacing, typography, motion graphics instead of choreography on a mat.
Movement didn’t disappear from my life. It simply changed shape.
Lesson 2: Reinvention Can Feel Like Losing Yourself
Shifting careers at 40+ can feel like repainting your life with a blank canvas - but the canvas isn’t blank.
It’s textured with everything you’ve done, built, and lived through.
For years, I was the movement person.
The Pilates instructor.
The aqua trainer.
The body-in-motion identity shaped since I was three years old.
So stepping into design felt like stepping out of my own skin. There were moments where I questioned everything -
Am I walking away from who I was meant to be? Is everything I’ve built dissolving?
But I know now - you don’t lose yourself when you pivot. You expand.
My background in wellness helps me design with empathy. I think like someone who understands people, not just pixels.
I know how to motivate, how to listen, how to guide growth slowly - just like in movement.
I didn’t stop moving - I just found a new way to move.
I didn’t trade one identity for another - I let them merge.
I still share Mor Movement workouts when I feel the spark. I’m back in lyrical jazz classes, reconnecting with the dance floor where my love for movement was born. Movement remains part of me - deeply and forever.
Movement in my body.
Design in my hands.
Flow in both.
Lesson 3: Confidence Doesn’t Come First
When you reinvent yourself, there’s no moment where someone hands you a medal and says,
“Yes! now you’re officially a designer.”
Confidence doesn’t show up at the beginning. Courage does.
You have to tap into courage first!
- The courage to start before you feel ready.
- The courage to create without guarantees.
- The courage to take the first step into the unknown.
You learn to trust yourself through the work - by building a portfolio, working with clients, offering your services, and showing up again and again.
Confidence comes from doing, not from waiting to feel ready.
It’s a muscle.
Just like strength.
Just like movement.
You train it.
Lesson 4: Creativity Needs Movement
For most of my life, movement wasn’t optional, it was oxygen.
My body was my workspace. My day was measured in breaths, beats, steps, choreography.
So shifting to hours of sitting in front of a screen was a real shock to my system.
Creativity flows through my mind, but my body still craves motion.
Movement clears my thoughts.
It creates space for ideas.
It resets the energy when pixels blur together.
When I dance again, when I take a class, when I move through the pool or stretch - something unlocks. Ideas return. Mood rises. My design brain opens.
I used to move to teach.
Now I move to create.
My creativity needs movement the same way muscles need oxygen.
It’s not separate - it’s fuel.
Lesson 5: Lifestyle Matters Too
My career shift wasn’t driven by passion alone - it was also about alignment.
Teaching from studio to studio, client to client, city to city no longer matched the life I wanted to live.
I craved space, flexibility, and creative autonomy.
So I built a studio I carry with me - my laptop.
A space where ideas take shape.
Where I set the rhythm.
Where work feels like flow.
It wasn’t stepping away from movement -
it was choosing a lifestyle that moves with me.
Where the Two Worlds Meet
My first projects were for wellness and fitness brands - and it felt natural. Easy. Home.
Because I speak this language.
Because movement is in my bones.
And I know this:
In motion graphics, animation, branding - movement is coming with me.
It won’t live only in bodies.
It will breathe through design.
Movement doesn’t end.
It evolves.
If you’re standing at the edge of a transition - scared, uncertain, afraid to let go - remember this:
You’re allowed to dream more than once.
You’re allowed to be more than one version of yourself.
I’m not done growing.
Not done evolving.
And neither are you.
