Isabella Pilon is in the gym at least 20 hours a week, sweating, conditioning, working, and fighting through all kinds of pain. Throughout her whole life, she’s rarely had any outside social life due to the fact that she’s always training, so when she does, it’s incredible. Most often, people outside of gymnastics don’t usually know she’s a high level competitive gymnast, unless she tells them specifically. Meaning they’ve never seen the other side of her.

The other side that is very obnoxious and loud once you get to know and trust her. The other side that takes in so much mental and physical pain on a day to day basis that she is crying on the inside, whether that be due to brutal muscle and joint pain (back, arm, or knee pain) or the harsh exhausting hours of training that seem to be getting worse and worse as competition season is peaking just around the corner, antagonizing her to the point she feels that success is just out of her reach. The other side of her, that only her closest friends really see and are astonished by. 

Life is always creating barriers around or in front of her, waiting for her to face it head on, just to throw her a curve ball right back just as she finds her way through it. Life is and never will be easy, but it takes a strong dedication and drive to overcome it. Throughout all of her nine years in the sport, she’s never wished it hadn’t happened. All of her hard work and dedication shapes who she is as a person today, or who she is on the other side, which nobody ever knows about.