Dancing Queen
Lake Nona’s newest cardio class instructor brings dance fitness to the community
September 23, 2020
Every Saturday, you’ll find SOUL Fitness founder Missy Isom dancing her heart out at Dockside in Laureate Park Village Center where she teaches the ultra-popular Club Cardio + Core class.
A wife, mother, and personal trainer, Missy is passionate about showing up for yourself. Through her unique brand of dance fitness, Missy brings her passion to life through choreography and strength training with modifications for every age, size, and physical ability.
In this Q&A, Missy shares her inspiration for SOUL Fitness and how one weekend in Lake Nona led her to relocate her family and business to Laureate Park.
What brought SOUL Fitness to Lake Nona?
My husband and I had been living in a small town in North Carolina for 13 years. He’s a pilot, but his base was in New York, so it was mostly me and our two kids at home. We needed a change and started looking at other bases for his airline. I knew I wanted to move to the Orlando area and then I stumbled across Lake Nona and knew we had to visit.
We came down for a weekend and fell in love with the vibe and the community’s focus on health. The weekend we visited, there was a huge dance fitness event at Boxi Park and I knew it was a sign because I had been teaching dance fitness for almost 10 years in my own studio.
I danced my heart out that weekend and immediately felt like I was part of this community. Within a few months, we were here. It was that sense of community that brought us here.
What inspired you to start your own business?
I started SOUL Fitness after giving birth to my daughter. I had been working in corporate banking for years and knew I didn’t want to go back to that but didn’t know what was next.
After I had my daughter, I was struggling to feel like myself and realized I could use my love for fitness to help make me feel better. So, I got a group of other young moms together and we started working out. I quickly realized this was what I wanted to do and became a personal trainer. Our little group started to grow into a larger community of men and women of all ages. It grew and grew until I moved into a studio within a year.
I put my whole heart and soul into teaching which is one of the reasons I named it SOUL Fitness. This is my love and my passion!
Tell us about your Club Cardio + Core class.
As a personal trainer, I’m a huge advocate about not being a cardio junkie. You can do all the cardio you want to make the scale go down, but you’re not going to tighten and tone your muscles without strength training.
The Club Cardio + Core class mixes 40 minutes of dance and 20 minutes of strength training using body weight. I know not everyone is a dancer, so I like to make the movements easy to follow and show different modifications that way everyone feels included.
What is your vision for the future of SOUL Fitness in Lake Nona?
I would love to add weekday morning and evening classes at Dockside. My vision is to one day have my own studio again or bring my program to a gym. There are so many other opportunities in Lake Nona and I’m open to exploring them all.
Coming from a little town in North Carolina, Lake Nona is big and full of diversity and love it. The weekend I visited, I knew Lake Nona would embrace SOUL Fitness. I’m so happy to be living in this community where I can develop relationships with people and be there for them physically and mentally.
Join Missy for the Club Cardio + Core class every Saturday from 9:30-10:30 a.m. at Dockside. Register here and be sure to bring a mat for body weight strength training.