When God Calls You Into a New Season
Sometimes the vision waiting on the other side of the valley can only be built by the person you became during the climb.
BoxPilates™ is being built in Summerlin, but my vision extends far beyond opening another fitness studio.
I am building the kind of place I once needed—a place where people feel inspired to become stronger, remain active and live at their optimum.
At the core, I believe that is part of our purpose. We are called to live with a servant’s heart, and serving others also requires us to care for the vessel God gave us.
For me, movement has never been only about how the body looks.
Movement is how I reconnect with myself. It is how I rebuild after loss, return to alignment and prepare my body to support the life I am called to live.
Pilates and boxing have both played a powerful role in that journey.
Now, I am bringing those worlds together.
The Strength I Once Knew
Long before BoxPilates, I was a professional boxer and mixed martial artist. I trained in Muay Thai, boxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I ran, coached and built much of my identity around being physically strong.
Boxing taught me discipline, precision and the courage to keep moving forward when every part of me wanted to stop.
It taught me that power without control is wasted energy.
It taught me to breathe under pressure, remain focused through discomfort and trust the work I had completed long before stepping into the ring.
Those lessons followed me far beyond athletics.
They followed me into entrepreneurship, media, marketing and Las Vegas real estate. They shaped the way I approached leadership, reinvention and every new challenge placed before me.
But eventually, my body forced me to redefine everything I believed about strength.
When the Body Forces You to Listen
Years of repetitive movement took a toll. I suffered labral tears in both hips and eventually underwent two hip surgeries.
For someone who had always relied on movement, losing the ability to move freely felt like losing part of my identity.
The physical pain was only one layer.
The injuries arrived alongside the pandemic and the shutdown of my first fitness studio, Fitzone Labs. The business I had poured myself into was gone. My body was struggling. The future I had imagined suddenly disappeared.
Those years nearly crushed me—physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Rock bottom rarely announces itself in one dramatic moment. Sometimes it happens slowly, through a series of losses that leave you questioning who you are without the life you once knew.
I had spent years believing strength meant pushing harder.
Recovery taught me that sometimes strength means becoming still enough to listen.
Pilates Helped Me Rebuild
Reformer Pilates became an essential part of my recovery after surgery.
It helped me rebuild my hips, strengthen my back and reconnect with a body that no longer felt familiar. The practice taught me how to move with greater control, alignment and awareness.
Pilates did not make me less of an athlete.
Pilates made me a wiser one.
I began to understand that the hardest workout is not always the most effective. More intensity does not automatically create better results. True strength is built through intention, consistency and a willingness to respect what the body needs.
As I continued training, I kept imagining the method I wished had existed during my recovery—something that preserved the precision and alignment of Reformer Pilates while bringing back the rhythm, coordination and conditioning I loved about boxing.
That desire became the foundation for BoxPilates.
Where Boxing Meets Reformer Pilates
BoxPilates combines Reformer Pilates with low-impact, boxing-inspired conditioning to create a method centered on alignment, core control, coordination, flexibility and purposeful strength by design.
The method reflects my background as a boxer, mixed martial artist, coach and longtime student of movement. It also reflects everything recovery taught me about longevity.
BoxPilates is not about adding random punches to a Pilates class.
It is not about punishing the body, chasing exhaustion or recreating a traditional boxing gym with heavy bags.
It is a thoughtful integration of two disciplines built on many of the same principles: breath, focus, precision, control, timing and intentional movement.
Boxing taught me how to generate power.
Pilates taught me how to align that power.
Together, they created a new way forward.
What the Valleys Taught Me
This new business is a DBA of Fitzone Labs, which makes this chapter even more personal.
Fitzone Labs was my first studio dream. Losing that business during the pandemic could have become the final chapter of my life in fitness.
For a long time, I believed that closure meant failure.
Now I understand that some dreams return with a deeper purpose after we have grown into the person capable of carrying them.
Nothing from that first chapter was wasted.
The clients taught me how important community can become.
The shutdown taught me that a business needs more than passion to survive.
My injuries taught me to respect the body instead of fighting against its limitations.
The recovery taught me patience.
The valley taught me faith.
BoxPilates is being built from all of those lessons.
What I learned through the peaks and valleys helped create this method. Every setback refined the vision. Every loss forced greater clarity. Every season prepared me to build again with more wisdom, purpose and alignment.
Sometimes the dream on the other side of the valley resembles the one you lost—but this time, you are stronger, wiser and ready to build from a more solid foundation.
Faith Does Not Remove the Fear
I am still learning.
Still building.
Still trusting the process.
I would love to say that pursuing a God-given vision removes fear, but that has not been my experience.
Building BoxPilates has required me to face the kind of gut-wrenching fear that can make standing still feel safer than moving forward. Yet I have learned that indecision often becomes more painful than taking the next faithful step.
Fear does not always mean you are moving in the wrong direction.
Sometimes fear appears because you are moving beyond the limits of what you can control.
Faith does not guarantee a clear blueprint. Faith gives us enough courage to take the next step before we can see the entire staircase.
That is why I am here.
I am here to keep choosing faith despite the breakdowns, business closures, losses and pain.
I am also here to remind you that you can choose faith again.
You can rebuild after the door closes.
You can begin again after your body changes.
You can honor the person you once were without remaining trapped inside an old identity.
You can carry the lessons from your lowest season into the life you are creating now.
Nothing We Learn Is Wasted
My path has never followed one straight line.
Media taught me how to find the story.
Boxing taught me discipline.
Injury taught me humility.
Pilates taught me alignment.
Entrepreneurship taught me that vision means very little without execution.
Real estate taught me the emotional power of place.
For years, I have helped tell the story of Las Vegas through its homes, neighborhoods, architecture and evolving communities. Real estate showed me that people are rarely searching for four walls alone.
They are searching for a life.
They want to know how a space will make them feel, who they might become there and whether the environment will support the future they imagine.
That understanding now shapes the way I am building BoxPilates.
I am not simply creating a room filled with Reformers. I am creating an environment where people can reconnect with their bodies, strengthen their minds and feel supported as they become the healthiest version of themselves.
My real estate chapter is not disappearing.
I will continue sharing the homes, neighborhoods, businesses and communities shaping Las Vegas. I will also remain available to connect buyers, sellers and referral clients with trusted real estate professionals when they need guidance.
These parts of my life are not competing identities.
They are connected by one purpose: helping people create lives, spaces and habits that support who they are becoming.
The Purpose Behind the Build
My vision for BoxPilates is to create a place where progress remains personal and movement supports the life each person was meant to live.
Some people will walk through our doors wanting to become stronger.
Others will arrive after injury, loss, burnout or a season that left them disconnected from their bodies.
Some will be experienced athletes.
Others will be beginning again.
Every person deserves a method that meets them where they are while helping them move forward with greater strength, control and confidence.
That is the heart behind BoxPilates.
It is strength without punishment.
Precision without perfection.
Progress without comparison.
Movement with purpose.
Keep Choosing Faith
God’s grace meets us where we are—whether we are standing on the mountaintop or walking through our deepest, darkest valley.
But grace does not leave us unchanged.
Grace continues shaping us into who we were created to become.
Here’s to a new season of transformation through our highest highs and lowest lows. We learn life’s deepest lessons not in comfort, but in the moments that make us weary and weak—calling us to surrender, rebuild and align more fully with our Creator.
The valley was not the end of my story.
It became the ground where a new vision began.
BoxPilates™ officially opens January 2, 2027, in Summerlin, Las Vegas.
I invite you to become part of this new movement from the beginning.
Join the BoxPilates priority list for studio updates, preview opportunities and Founding Membership information.
For Las Vegas real estate, community and lifestyle content, continue following Susan Marques at SusanMarquesRealEstate.com.
