What Alysa Liu Can Teach Us About Having a Healthy Relationship with Movement
You might be surprised to see what it is
I’ve been teaching movement for 20 years — starting with yoga and then expanding into strength training 6 years ago. My approach is weight-neutral, mostly because I think including weight loss in the conversation isn’t useful and a distraction from the actual benefits of movement — the ones proven by science.
As a movement professional, I was really inspired by Alysa Liu. Not just the joy emanating from her body during her gold medal winning skate, but learning about her exit from skating and the terms she created to facilitate her return to figure skating in a healthier way.
I considered writing about how what she’s doing is pushing back against ideals capitalism and white supremacy — how they show up in movement. But I decided to shelve that for later because this felt a little easier to write, which is what I needed this week. Still I think you can see connections between the 3 things Liu demonstrates for a healthier relationship with movement that are anti-capitalist and anti-white supremacy.
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Alysa Liu withdrew from the World Championships this year, following her joyful gold medal winning performance at the Milano Cortina Olympics this February. It’s fairly common for Olympic champions to pull from the World Championships since they happen so close in the competition schedule, but this also feels in line with how Liu has redefined her relationship with skating.
Liu famously retired from ice skating following the Beijing Olympics because she was burned out and unhappy. 2 years later, she decided to return to figure skating, but only if she could set her own terms.
The entire world saw the results of Liu’s choices and it was a beautiful thing to witness.
2 years ago, when Liu returned to figure skating, she was determined to skate for herself rather than for what others wanted from her.
She established a list of non-negotiable conditions when she reached out to her former coaches, about what figure skating would look like for her in order to return:
1. She has more artistic control.
This means she chooses the music she skates to and she collaborates with her coaches on the choreography, including adding in athletic or artistic elements she wants to do.
2. She has the ultimate say in how she trains.
This means she chooses what food she eats and how much she eats. She will no longer starve herself to achieve a body type preferred in the figure skating world. She’s also in charge of her training schedule. She can decide to take breaks when she needs them and is unwilling to push herself beyond her limits.
3. She has full control over her image.
She chooses what to wear and what she looks like – including her hair and her piercings.
4. She skates for herself.
Instead of letting competition guide her, she lets her love of the sport, her joy while skating, and the artistry guide her. The point of figure skating for her isn’t winning; The point is to do what she loves because she loves it.
She places joy front and center, rather than the prestige of winning medals or championships.
Alysa Liu was 18 when she created these terms of engagement, which is in of itself, impressive. When I was 18, I was a freshman in college in NYC, making all sorts of bad choices and definitely not making thoughtful decisions about my mental or physical health.
What Liu did at 18 and what she accomplished as a result at 19 (winning gold at the World Championships) and then 20 (gold at the Olympics), is nothing short of remarkable.
I started teaching yoga when I was not much older than Alysa Liu is now. But it took me years of teaching and reckoning with my own complicated relationship with fitness, to create a healthier relationship with movement and my body overall.
The conditions Liu established as guideposts for her return to skating are really similar to some of the ideas that I share with my students and clients as foundational to building a more consistent movement practice from a healthier, more grounded place.
These ideas offer a helpful roadmap for charting a healthier relationship with movement in general, whether you are a professional figure skater or someone simply trying to approach movement without toxic diet culture or fitness culture beliefs getting in the way.
#1. Establish your WHY
When it comes to habits like regular movement, most people expect to rely on motivation. The problem with motivation is that it is fickle. Some days you wake up totally jazzed to lift weights and other days you’d rather stay in bed, reading filthy romance novels.
Your WHY is better than motivation because it’s there all of the time.
Alysa Liu came back to figure skating because it genuinely brings her joy to be on the ice. It’s her WHY – not the medals or the money or fame, although certainly those things are decent perks. But they’re not what wake her up early in the morning to practice nor are they what push her to train.
To give another example, I like strength training but I don’t always want to do it. Some days, I wake up tired or stressed or just not in the mood, but my WHY is clear.
I lift weights because I like feeling strong and I want to keep my body resilient as I age. I don’t want to feel increasingly frail or broken down as I get older.
I also know that being consistent with movement is essential because it’s much easier to stop doing something than to start.
So my WHY keeps me heading down to my basement gym even on days when I’m not as excited about lifting weights.
This doesn’t mean I am forcing myself to move when I’m not feeling well. Or that I don’t scale back if I need to go easier.
It simply means I remember why I choose to lift weights in the first place and because I know once I get started, I’m always glad I did it.
So I do the thing.
#2. Set boundaries that support your needs
Boundaries are what help keep you in check, if you have type A/overachiever tendencies like I do. Clear boundaries can help set rules of engagement that prevent stupid decisions based on ego or expectation.
Boundaries are also great for creating clarity around what you are willing to do and what you are not willing to do.
Alysa Liu did this when she said she was no longer willing to starve herself or train to the point of burnout, as well as by saying she would no longer be sitting on the sidelines of her own figure skating career with other people (mostly older men), making all of the creative decisions for the actual work she was doing. She simply would not return to the sport if she was not given the freedom and respect to make choices about her body, her training, or her life.
She also talks about finding balance between skating and having a life as a 20 year old woman. Liu is no longer willing to sacrifice friendships, birthdays, vacations, or simply relaxing in service of figure skating.
I personally hold the most boundaries around running, largely because I used to push myself really hard as a runner in ways that did real damage to my body. For example, I won’t go for a run if it’s super windy or when it’s colder than 28 degrees. I typically don’t run when I’m on my period and bleeding heavily. I also no longer track my runs unless I am specifically training for a race (which is a once a year affair) because tracking my runs is triggering to me – I have a tendency to try and run faster or push harder which often leads to nasty headaches.
When coming up with boundaries, think about the circumstances that will make movement feel aligned with your values, your needs, your mental health, and your lifestyle.
Here are some examples:
Listening to your body rather than listening to online fitness influencers
Committing to daily workouts but keeping them to 10 minutes or less.
Eating the same amount of food regardless of whether you’re doing a hard workout that day or not.
Refusing to push yourself to exhaustion, depletion, or injury.
Only exercising M-F and giving yourself decadent rest days on the weekend
Opting out of things you just don’t like (I hate jumping jacks and hip thrusts, so I just don’t do them)
The cool thing about boundaries is that your our boundaries are not set in stone. You can renegotiate them from time to time if you feel like things need to shift.
#3. External goals are less important than internal feelings or desires/identity
This is probably the most controversial in the fitness world, but I stand by it.
I don’t think external goals are helpful when it comes to having a healthy relationship with movement.
When I say “external goals” I mean things like “run a marathon” or “deadlift 200lbs” or “do a handstand away from the wall” or “go to the olympics.”
External goals have a finite timeline.
These are targets and once we hit them, what happens next?
In the case of Alysa Liu, she says in an interview with Rolling Stone, “I knew I wanted to go to the Olympics when I was a little kid, so I was going to hold out for her and then be done. I had my plan: “I’m just going to go to the Olympics and then quit.” And that’s what I did.”
By 16, skating made her feel anxious because she was under so much stress and had so little control over her own life. She figured if she could just hit the Olympics target, she could be done.
What brought her back to skating was being reminded of how good it felt to skate when she went skiing for the first time – she felt the same adrenaline rush flying down a mountain that she did when skating on ice. Because getting to the mountains was hard but getting to the rink was easy, she went back to the rink, easing herself in by skating with a friend. And she had fun. There’s more to the story, of course, but you can guess the rest (or read the Rolling Stone article).
The feeling drew her back in. Not the desire to compete in the Olympics again or win a gold medal.
Similarly, when we place the emphasis of our movement practice on achieving a goal like the marathon or the handstand or the deadlift, getting there can result in focusing more on accomplishing the goal and forgetting why movement is important in the first place.
This can make it easy to just stop doing the thing once we are no longer training. But then we lose all of the benefits of this impressive thing we were training for.
A handstand is cool, but so is being able to put your luggage in the overhead compartment on a plane.
A marathon is impressive, but so is being able to jog behind your kid on their bike when they’re trying to learn how to ride without training wheels.
Deadlifting 200lbs is badass, but so is being in your 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, or 80’s, and not feeling low back pain because you slept funny last night.
For some people, building a healthier relationship with movement is about rooting into the feeling you get from the movement you choose – like Alysa Liu feeling joy, exhilaration, and an adrenaline rush from figure skating. Or the desire to be capable and confident in your body in everyday activities, using the examples I shared above.
For other people, it’s less about the feeling and more about identity. Even though Liu hasn’t spoken about this in any of the interviews I’ve read, I think it’s in the same vein as feeling or desire, so I’ll share a story to explain.
A few days ago, I posted a video of myself tap dancing. I came back to dance in my 40’s after taking a 25 year hiatus. Tap has always been my favorite style of dance and where my body feels most at home but I stopped for years because I was busy being a yoga teacher and then a mom and it didn’t even occur to me that I could start again until I moved to a town with a phenomenal adult dance studio.
Anyway, I posted this video of myself tapping and calling myself not a dancer, claiming this identity even though it felt a little uncomfortable.
A friend commented that she’d never considered herself a runner – it was just a thing she did because she liked how running made her body feel and it significantly improved her mental health. One day, she was out in the neighborhood with her kids and someone recognized her as “the runner.” She was caught off guard but still felt totally seen, telling me, “I laughed and said, Yes I am! And I totally owned it. I AM a runner, even on days when I feel heavy. I AM a dancer, even on days when my body feels like it’s fighting the rhythm of life. Just saying it and owning it keeps it real.”
When you anchor into an identity, “I am a runner” or “I am a dancer” or even “I am someone who likes to feel strong”, committing to movement becomes about committing to who you are at your very core.
There is a power in claiming an identity, especially when it might be something you didn’t ever expect to be.
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If we’re aiming for a sustainable movement practice, it can’t be rooted in motivation or external goals or have no clear container for how to move in a way that feels good.
Sustainable movement requires care and consideration. It requires a desire to move for yourself, not for other people or unhealthy belief systems.
Alysa Liu proved, on a world stage, no less, that the only person who truly matters when it comes to moving your body, is you. That’s helpful advice that all of us can take to heart and bring into our own movement practices.
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She was so fun to watch, and I love that she did it her way!
This was a great read, Naomi. Thank you. :)