Welcome to my World in Academia...
Overall, the goal is to reduce chronic stress and illness while improving the overall quality of life. Continual education, research, and ethical standards, set forth by my professional fields, will be followed, established, and maintained to ultimately create stable, uniform, esteemed, tenacious professionalism and grow the body of fitness and wellness knowledge.
As educator, creating a safe, inclusive, transformational environment where sustainable healthy lifestyles and long-lasting significance are discovered, profoundly redefining balance, effectiveness, efficiencies, and energy and simplifying evidence based healthy living concepts through educating, coaching and writing.
Quality First
Dr. Tina delivers exceptional results in everything she does, ensuring your satisfaction and mastery at every step.
Expert Care
Dr. Tina brings skill and passion to every project and every class, in person or online, no matter the size.
Real Results
Proven outcomes that speak for themselves and make a meaningful difference for you :)!
Dr. Tina
My STory
I am the girl who knew, since she was little, exactly what she wanted to do.
There was never really a question — movement, performance, and helping people feel strong in their own bodies has been the thread running through my entire life, from a basement dance studio to a national stage.
My path started teaching movement out of my mom’s basement dance studio as a teenager. I went on to become a six-time All-American Dancer, led a college dance team to its first-ever national ranking, and had the honor of representing two NFL organizations as a Professional Cheerleader, performing as an Aloha Bowl Cheerleader, Hula Bowl Cheerleader, and member of the USA Spirit Squad.
Then life reshaped itself around three kids and single motherhood — and instead of stepping back from the field, I earned a doctorate, became a professor, and built a career simplifying the science of movement and behavior change. My kids have been my greatest teachers, my grounding, and my reason to keep growing, personally and professionally. Life didn’t always look the way I imagined. It became something even more meaningful instead.
Those years of discipline, preparation, and performing with purpose carried directly into my work as a Doctor of Education for Health Professions and Professor of Exercise Science. Along the way, I learned something that’s stuck with me ever since:
You can train the body all day long — but if the mind is overwhelmed, the energy is depleted, or support is out of reach, it doesn’t last.
That belief is what built InnergizeU™. It’s what built the ComePassion Impact Fund. And it’s what this title now gives me a bigger platform to keep doing.
That same work has continued to grow and evolve — InnergizeU™ has grown into what’s now Ageless Strength™, my current framework for helping people train with purpose and age with confidence, at any stage of life. The name changed. The mission never did.
A HUMAN MOVEMENT & BEHAVIOR CHANGE SCIENTIST
At my core, I’m a human movement and behavior change scientist. That’s not just a title — it’s the lens through which I see everything I teach, coach, and now advocate for on this platform. My work is grounded in biomechanics, kinesiology, and physiology — the actual science of how your body moves, functions, and adapts — paired with the behavioral science of how lasting change really happens.
Here’s why both halves matter: how you move doesn’t just change how you feel physically — stronger, steadier, less pain, more capacity. It also changes your belief in your own capability, what psychologists call self-efficacy. Every time you show up for a walk, finish a set, or move through something hard, you’re not just building fitness. You’re building evidence, in your own body and your own mind, that you are someone who follows through. That evidence is what lets you carry that same confidence into the rest of your life — your work, your relationships, your goals.
Part of that physical side is proper joint action — working each muscle through the movement it was actually designed to perform. Our bodies are designed perfectly. We just get to learn how to work with them, not against them, to maximize our lives. That’s not a small distinction — it’s the difference between movement that builds you up over time and movement that quietly breaks you down.
That’s the real reason movement matters so much to me. It was never just about the body — and it was never just about the mind, either. It’s both, together. It’s about helping people feel genuinely better physically while proving to themselves, one small movement at a time, that they’re capable of living their best lives.
My approach is grounded in Exercise Is Medicine®, a global initiative that treats physical activity as a vital sign, prescribed and valued the same way medication is — built on the foundation of the national Physical Activity Guidelines, the evidence-based movement recommendations proven to support real, sustainable health. Neither of these is about chasing extremes. Both are about consistent, science-backed movement that meets you exactly where you are.
Beyond the movement science, every program I build is grounded in established behavior change theory: Self-Determination Theory (how autonomy, competence, and connection drive lasting motivation), Social Cognitive Theory (how confidence and belief in your own capability shape what you actually do), and the Transtheoretical Model of Change (meeting people at their real, current stage of readiness, instead of demanding change they’re not yet ready for). All of it works toward Social Ecological Theory — the understanding that lasting change never happens in isolation. It has to be supported at every level: the individual, their relationships, their community, and the systems around them.
This Is About becoming you
Here’s what I believe, and what this whole platform is really built on:
You don’t need to become someone else. You just need to come back into alignment with who you already are.
That’s true for the women I coach. It’s true for the students I’ve taught for nearly 40 years. And it’s true for me, standing on this platform — not as a transformation into somebody new, but as a fuller, truer version of the woman who started teaching on her mom’s hip before she could even walk.
Becoming you isn’t a slogan. It’s the whole point — of this title, of my work, and of every person I get to walk alongside. Not more pressure to be someone impressive. Just permission, and support, to become fully who you already are.
And becoming you means making peace with all three parts of your story:
A positive past — even the parts that didn’t go the way you planned. Mine includes a basement dance studio, a Doctor of Education for Health Professions degree, and raising three kids as a single mom. Every bit of it built the woman standing on this platform today.
A positive present — showing up fully in the season you’re actually in, not the one you wish you were in or the one you used to be in.
A positive future — not a fantasy of who you’ll become, but a genuine, grounded belief that there’s more growth, more strength, and more purpose ahead of you, at any age or stage.
That’s the same lens I bring to every classroom, every stage, every client, and now, this platform.
This is also the foundation of how I teach: Transformative Learning Theory, developed by adult education scholar Jack Mezirow, holds that real, lasting change happens when we critically reflect on the assumptions we’ve been carrying — often ones we never chose, just inherited — and allow our whole frame of reference to shift as a result. That’s not information. That’s transformation. It’s the difference between learning a new fact and becoming a new version of yourself in light of it. It’s the exact process behind every client who’s ever told me, “I don’t just move differently now — I think differently.”