From No Workout Routine to Leading Outdoor Backpacking Trips for Teens in Australia: Charlotte's Story
- Jess Takimoto
- Dec 9, 2025
- 5 min read
“No matter where I lived or what my schedule looked like, SHINE became the one thing that always grounded me.” -Charlotte
Watch the full story: https://youtu.be/WVXz_lYrMZw?si=YlPEmAwhoUk4Lb5C
Summary
Introduction
If you’ve been around SHINE for a while, you’ve probably seen Charlotte’s name pop up in the chat, heard her shout-outs on Zoom, or met her in-person at events.
Charlotte is an outdoor educator who splits her time between teaching in classrooms and guiding hiking trips in the backcountry. She lives in Kingston now, but SHINE has followed her through student housing, teachers’ college, Australia, and a very chaotic house with five women, two cats, and a bunny.
She’s been with SHINE since fall 2020 and keeps coming back because it gives her structure, strength, and a truly anti-diet approach to fitness.
💙 From “I don’t really have a relationship with fitness” → “This is part of my daily life”
💙 From COVID cabin fever → community, routine, and joy
💙 From diet culture noise → body-positive leadership for the next generation
What Was Charlotte's Relationship With Fitness Before SHINE?
Before SHINE, Charlotte wouldn’t have called herself “a fit person.”
In high school, the only time she was consistently active was on sports teams — and even then, she was showing up for the sport and the team, not because she genuinely loved “working out.”
“It’s not that I had a bad relationship with fitness… I just didn’t really have one.”
Once she got to university, movement mostly dropped off. She didn’t have a clear picture of what working out could look like outside of organized sports:
❌No real routine
❌No sense of what to do on her own
❌No consistent structure around moving her body
Fitness wasn’t a daily habit yet — and it definitely wasn’t a joyful one.
The Turning Point: Finding SHINE
Charlotte found SHINE in the fall of 2020, during one of the most chaotic seasons of her life.
She had just moved into a house in Kingston with roommates she barely knew — including Coach Abbey, who was already doing SHINE.
At first, it started with one invitation. “Hey, I’m going to this workout in the park… want to come?”
“I was like, ‘Yeah, whatever, I’m not doing anything, it’s COVID. I’m trapped in the house… let’s go to this thing.’ And it was so fun and so challenging.”
From there, it snowballed.
They started doing SHINE online together at home. Then more roommates joined. Soon, they were:
Living in an apartment with five women, two cats, and a bunny
Rearranging the entire living room every day to fit yoga mats
Jumping, dancing and doing burpees in an upstairs unit (sorry to the downstairs neighbors!)
Turning on the party light and turning workouts into a full-on living-room dance club
And it wasn’t just the workouts.
After class, they’d cook and eat together. They’d go around the table and share the best part of their day, even when everything about COVID felt heavy.
Movement became:
✅Structure in the chaos
✅A reason to get off the couch
✅A ritual that kept them sane
“That experience made me realize how important it is to have fitness as part of my day-to-day — something I get to do.”
Australia, Guiding, and Needing To Feel Strong for Her Job
As Charlotte moved into outdoor education, her work got very physical:
Long days hiking with students
Heavy packs (think ~60 lbs)
Steep climbs and long expeditions
Add in a shoulder dislocation and some time away from SHINE, and she realized: staying strong wasn’t optional anymore — it was job support and injury prevention.
When she moved to Australia for a year of guiding, loneliness and lack of structure started creeping back in.
“When I felt those same emotions I had during COVID, I knew I had to get back to SHINE.”
So she did:
Logging into 5:30 p.m. ET classes at 7:30 a.m. Australian time
Doing Dance HIIT in camp cabins with earbuds in
Letting housemates join in until they loved it too
“It’s preventative for me. It’s self-care for my mental and physical health.”
Hearing SHINE-isms in the Hard Moments
One of the clearest signs Charlotte’s relationship with fitness had changed showed up on a hot, brutal half-marathon training run.
She hadn’t done SHINE in months, but when things got hard, her brain pulled this out “It doesn’t get easier. You get stronger.”
“That was my first indicator that my relationship with fitness was changing. The way I talked to myself when I was struggling was positive.”
That mindset now helps her:
➡️Get through tough hikes
➡️Recover from injuries
➡️Keep showing up even when routines change
Bringing Body-Positive Fitness to Grade 9 Girls
On a week-long expedition with 16 grade 9 girls, Charlotte ran an exercise where they wrote:
One fear about the trip
One thing that would make it “the best possible experience”
Some wrote about friendship and challenging themselves. Two wrote:
“I would lose 10 kilos.”
It broke her heart — and activated everything she’d learned at SHINE.
“I told them: the least interesting thing about you to me is the way that you look. We’re here to be strong, to fuel ourselves, and to have an incredible experience. We don’t care what your body looks like.”
All week, they:
Ate enough for big days
Encouraged each other on tough hikes
Spent a week without mirrors and without diet talk
“Setting that tone early meant their social connection formed around strength and support, not shrinking.”
Making Fitness Work in Weird Spaces & Time Zones
Charlotte has done SHINE:
In cramped student housing
In Australian rentals
In camp cabins in the “remote wilderness”
In different time zones with people sleeping in the next room
At first, she worried it would be awkward. It wasn’t.
“People get that you want to prioritize a workout. And it’s such a fun way to invite others in.”
Her current perspective?
“I’m ruined for all other workouts — I just want to scream and dance. SHINE is my club.”
READY TO START YOUR OWN SHINE STORY?
Feeling inspired by Charlotte's story? Listen to the full episode of SHINE Stories on Spotify or Apple now! If you’re ready to start your own journey and experience the power of community, book a free intro session today and let’s chat about how SHINE can help you transform your relationship with fitness.
Ready to start your transformation? Click here to book your free intro session today!
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