The Day You Do Not Want to Go Is the Day It Counts
EPISODE 04 / FRANCESCA SABINO
Francesca Sabino didn't find ISI® Elite Training herself. Her friends at Matthews got tired of waiting for her to get around to it and pushed her through the door.
"They said, do it, you should get into the gym. And I was like, all right, fine."
-FRANCESCA SABINO
That was August of 2025. Here is where "fine" ended up.
"Every day I wake up and I'm like, I can't wait to go to the gym. Sometimes I plan it a week in advance."
-FRANCESCA SABINO
The videos make it look worse than it is
Before she tried it, Francesca's entire impression of HYROX came from the internet, which was terrifying.
"You see the TikToks, you see the videos, and you're like, wow, this is intense. And I was like, there's no way I can do it."
-FRANCESCA SABINO
Her own description of the format, once she understood it, is the least intimidating version anyone in this series gives: you run about six tenths of a mile, then you do one of eight different workouts, and you repeat that. Eight runs. Eight stations.
Her point is that the intimidation is front loaded, and it lives entirely in the period before you know what your body will actually do.
Saturday, 7 a.m.
Matthews runs a HYROX session every Saturday morning at seven. Francesca describes it less like a workout and more like a shift everybody agreed to take together.
"We all support each other. We all start the morning off very upbeat and bring each other up and then keep pushing each other that whole hour."
-FRANCESCA SABINO
She's specific about who is in the room, and it is not a room of professional athletes. Women, men, children, every age. Everybody pushing everybody to be better than they were yesterday.
October
Then there is the other kind of day. October is a hard month for Francesca for personal reasons, and one morning a couple of months in, before she had any real routine to lean on, she couldn't make herself go.
"I woke up and I was like, I can't make it to the gym. And I thought to myself, if you don't make it to the gym, then you're not going to feel good about yourself today."
-FRANCESCA SABINO
She went.
"I literally thought afterwards, thank God I came. It made me so happy to be here and be with everybody."
-FRANCESCA SABINO
There is no version of that story where the gym was the point. The people were the point, and the gym was where they were.
What actually changed
Francesca is direct about where she started mentally, and it was not a confident place. She describes being stuck in a belief that she was not good enough for a room like that.
The Saturday sessions worked on that before they worked on anything physical.
"Everybody's so motivational. They push you through it, like keep going. And I was like, you know what? This is easy work. We got this."
-FRANCESCA SABINO
Asked to complete the sentence "ISI® is ___," she chose uplifting, and then explained it in a way that is hard to argue with. Everybody there makes you feel better than you did before you walked in.
Who she is doing it for
This is the line worth reading slowly.
"I keep showing up because I have a goal for myself that I need to achieve. It's not for anybody else. It's not for crossing a finish line. It's just something that I need to do for myself."
-FRANCESCA SABINO
Not for a medal, and not for anyone watching. Francesca started because her friends pushed her, and somewhere in the last year it stopped being their idea and became hers.
This is her advice for anyone still deciding,
"Keep pushing yourself. Don't give up."
-FRANCESCA SABINO
The first one is the hardest
Francesca's friends had to push her through the door. Find your closest ISI® Elite Training and book a session.