Gentleness is Strength: Lessons from the Gym, the Trail, and Within

I’ve been a personal trainer for over 13 years, and I’ve had the privilege of training athletes, youth, and everyday people who just want to feel strong again. But something I’ve learned along the way is that strength isn’t always loud. It’s not always about the heaviest lift or the fastest sprint. Sometimes, strength whispers.

Sometimes, strength is gentleness.

That might sound odd coming from someone who’s finished the Georgia Death Race three times. That’s 74 miles of rugged mountain trail, hours of pain, solitude, grit, and a whole lot of questioning why you signed up in the first place. I’ve placed 14th. I’ve gone after top 10. And each time, the race teaches me something new. Not just about endurance, but about self-talk.

Because you don’t finish a race like that by hating yourself into performance. You finish it by learning how to stay with yourself, even when you’re at your lowest. You finish it by refusing to abandon yourself, mile after mile.

And in that space, I’ve realized: gentleness isn’t weakness. It’s resilience. It’s having the strength to not punish yourself when things don’t go as planned. It’s choosing presence over pressure.

I see it in the gym, too. Athletes and clients come in thinking they have to beat themselves into change. But what actually works (what actually lasts) is when we build a relationship of trust with our bodies, our minds, and our effort. Real transformation doesn’t come from shame. It comes from a shift in motivation, from surface-level goals to deeper identity-based ones. It comes when someone stops trying to be someone else and starts remembering who they are.

For years, I was incredibly hard on myself, especially around pressure to succeed. I thought if I wasn’t tough, I’d never make it. But that voice, the one that said, "you should be further along," or "you’re messing it all up," wasn’t strength. It was fear, dressed in a drill sergeant’s voice.

Gentleness, I’m learning, is what brings clarity. It’s what steadies the hands and softens the blow. It’s what makes you stronger because you don’t need to prove your worth, you already know it. And when you train from that place, when you live from that place, you build something sustainable.

And here’s the thing—we’re allowed to have fun with it. Gentleness doesn’t mean we lose our edge or drive. It just means we bring a little lightness to the journey. We laugh during the hard reps, crack jokes during recovery runs, and let joy sneak in between the milestones. It’s okay to smile on the way up the mountain.

You can push hard and still be kind to yourself. You can chase big dreams and hold space for when it gets messy. You can run a race through the mountains and whisper, "I’m proud of you for still going."

Gentleness is not the absence of effort. It’s the presence of trust.

And that, I believe, is the kind of strength that lasts.

—Trey the Trainer a.k.a. Thunderdog