A basement and a pair of dumbbells.

Fourteen years old, home gym, no coach. I picked up a set of dumbbells in my parents’ basement and something just clicked. No program. No plan. Just a feeling that I wanted to be stronger.

Surrounded by people who lived it.

I got a job at the front desk of a gym. Bodybuilders, trainers, coaches, people who ate, slept, and breathed this stuff. I watched everything. Asked too many questions. Fell in love with the culture.

First show. First real chapter.

I competed in my first figure bodybuilding show and started documenting the whole thing on a small page I called maddieliftsweights. I didn’t expect anyone to care. A lot of people did.

It stopped being just about me.

The page grew. I started hearing from hundreds of girls going through the same thing. Training alone, figuring it out on their own, looking for someone who gets it. That changed what this whole thing meant to me.

Learning why, not just how.

I enrolled in Kinesiology at UBC. Muscle movement, anatomy, biophysics. I wanted to understand the science behind what I was already doing every day. It completely changed how I train and how I coach.

Building what I wish I had.

I opened my coaching practice for girls who are ready to build muscle, take up space, and stop second guessing themselves. This is what I needed when I was starting out. Now I get to be that for someone else.