Melissa & Jesse Bender are a married couple committed to living a fit and healthy lifestyle. They passionately believe that everyone has the right to be healthy. Fitness improves your quality of life and overall well-being. This blog is an expansion of that belief, with the goal of creating an accessible database of exercises to inspire others to pursue a healthy lifestyle at home, without spending a lot of money.

This blog follows our fitness journey. These are the workouts that we do to stay healthy, strong, and in shape. Melissa and Jesse both hold Master’s Degrees in Occupational Therapy, and work full time as Occupational Therapists. Melissa is a certified Yoga Instructor, and both Jesse and Melissa have coached Cross Country. The Benders teach Boot Camp and Yoga classes at a college wellness center.

Jesse is a collegiate level, hall of fame cross country runner. Jesse has been running since high school. Jesse also uses his therapeutic skills to assist runners in maximizing their individual potential. Health and Fitness means much more than looking good in a bathing suit. Your body is the vehicle that carries you through life. By caring for your body and maintaining a healthy lifestyle you help shape the quality of your future. As therapists, we often see that strength and flexibility can mean the difference between a person returning home to live alone, or requiring long term care. It’s time to stop remediating problems, and start preventing them.

In Healthcare Primary Prevention aims to prevent disease of injury before it ever occurs. Exercise, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is one of the most effective ways to prevent disease, injury, illness and preventable death. Studying Occupational Therapy has given us a more significant appreciation for all the things the body is capable of. Exercise can help you to maintain a maximum level of health and wellness throughout your life. We believe that healthy living is about balance, and creating sustainable healthy choices. It’s about variety of experience, and life long learning. It’s about finding the beauty in the things you are capable of, expanding so you can do more, and sometimes accepting the things that you can’t do. Thank you for taking the time to follow our journey. We hope that in some way it is able to positively influence you to start your own journey. We love hearing about people’s successes, so please feel free to share and comment. Thank you,

Melissa & Jesse