From Lawyer to SUF-CPT in Italy w/ Alessandra IFBB Pro

Alepotini_ifbbpro IG

What happens when the life everyone admires isn’t the life you want? We sit down with a Milan-based attorney and IFBB pro who’s trading billables for barbells, unpacking the inner voice that won’t quiet down, the pressure of prestige, and the daily signals of burnout that finally force a choice. Her path runs from military academy to Berkeley Law to a top international firm—and yet the gym became the place where she felt most herself. That contrast sets the stage for a candid, high-clarity conversation about meaning, mental health, and the courage to start over.

We dig into why strength training can be a sanctuary, how good coaches translate fear into progress, and what it takes to guide beginners without intimidation. She breaks down the realities of working as a personal trainer in Italy—independent contractor setups, slow client acquisition, and lingering stigma about the profession—while making the case for evidence-based coaching that helps older adults protect muscle and young women embrace lifting without the “bulky” myth. Along the way, we talk programming, recovery, and the quiet discipline that keeps you moving when motivation fades.

Then we open the black box of immigration: why moving to the United States to coach or compete isn’t simple, what “exceptional ability” really means for visas, and how to build a credible, compounding profile through certifications, results, publishing, and community. We contrast social media highlights with the unglamorous grind—6 a.m. training, 12-hour office days, and small wins across time zones—that actually create change. If you’re balancing a celebrated career against a calling that won’t let go, this story will help you map the next step, not just the dream.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Intro
• 0:30 From Military Cadet To Berkeley Law
• 2:48 Falling In Love With The Gym
• 5:01 The Inner Battle And Burnout Signals
• 8:10 Why Not Italy For Training
• 12:57 Visas, “Exceptional” Status, And Barriers
• 16:10 Social Media Vs Reality
• 18:20 Community, Fear, And Finding Support
• 20:35 Seminars, 2026 Goals, And Next Steps
• 24:20 Where To Connect And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showupfitness.com. Also make sure to check out my book, How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Have a great day. Keep showing up. Howdy all. Welcome back to the Show Up Fitness Podcast. Today we have this young lady who is not only a lawyer IFB competitor, but she is hoping to get to the States again and start training people. A really fascinating story going from lawyer to potentially trainer. And I just want to begin by saying Buenos Aires. Buenos Ada? Did I say that properly?

SPEAKER_01: 0:51

Buenos Ara, Buenos Aires, that's perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Chris, for having me. And thank you for, you know, this great podcast you have with so many hosts and so many stories.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02

I think a lot of people would put lawyer on the respectable chart and do that for the rest of their lives, but you're you're maybe gonna pivot into the fitness world. So I kind of want to talk about that journey from a societal standpoint because people, you know, I want to be a lawyer, I want to be a doctor. But as you said earlier, when we were talking, we only have one life and you really want to pursue your passion for fitness. So let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25

Yeah, so basically, I actually I did one other big change when I was younger because I started uh as a military cadet when I was basically 17 years old. That's how I started studying law in the first place, just randomly, because of course, when you enter the military academy, you're also supposed to get a law degree. So I started studying law there, and then after four years in the Italian army, I basically decided I wanna I wanted to keep studying. Um so I I finished, I completed my law degree, I took a master's degree here in Italy, and then I also took a master's degree in California. I had, I mean, I was lucky enough to be accepted at Berkeley Law. So that's how basically I moved to California and I lived there for an entire year. That amazing degree allowed me to get a good job here. I came back to Italy. I I got my you know good job in a very, very um exceptional law firm. It's an international law firm, and right now I'm currently working for an international law firm as an associate. But as you said, um when I wake up in the morning, my head, my heart goes somewhere else, and I do um love basically the fitness world, uh the bodybuilding world, because in 2020, at the end of 2021, 2020, beginning of 2022, I started working more seriously with a coach. I fell in love with the gym, I fell in love with how the gym made me feel. It was my safe place. And you know, um, I see so many people that are scared of like entering entering a gym, but like day by day they realize that the gym can truly be a place where you know you can be safe, you can be understood, you can be, you know, listened to. Um, and that's why personal trainers and good personal trainers are so important. And thank you for spreading the word in this like industry. And yes, right now, even though I'm still like working as a lawyer, I'm completing my whole Italian bar exam process. I do wanna do more for this fitness word. So I'm now uh taking the um this uh SUV certification, and they wanna be, I wanna be a personal trainer in the future, yes, because as you said, we only live once, and you know, it's just it's all about what you you love doing in the end. We spend so many hours a day working, and it has to be somewhere you like. And I love talking to people in the gym, helping people, telling my experiences, my stories, talking about my competitions abroad. And so we'll see how it goes. But one thing is sure for 2026, and the goal is starting working in the fitness industry. Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 5:01

And that was one of the things that I start my book out with is are you tired of your soul-sucking nine to five job? But your job isn't even nine to five. You're you're like eight to eight, you're putting in 60 plus hours a week, and and like you said, you're fortunate, but it must be really challenging struggling inside because of that divide where yeah, you're getting your bills paid, but is this something you want to do for another 30 plus years? And so those voices are probably pretty loud because of how passionate you are about fitness. So, what is that struggle like from an internal point, but also from a societal point? Because I'm sure a lot of people will look at you and say, You got it made. You're you're a lawyer at a great law firm. Yeah, you're good.

SPEAKER_01: 5:40

Yeah, that's what like most people think. I mean, you made it. Um, so you're you're there, you're you know, at the top, you're gonna be a law firm partner one day. But actually, when I look at my you know older colleagues, all the partners in the law firm I'm working with, I'm just like, do I wanna be like them in 10, 15, 20 years' time? And the answer is basically no. And if I don't do anything right now or in the next future, I know that one day I will have this like crazy regret about, you know, what if, what if I tried? What if I tried to pursue what I really wanted? And it's it's it's not easy, don't get me wrong. And I'm not saying that I'm not like extremely, extremely grateful for what I have right now into my life because I do have a job and I'm I'm lucky to have it. My colleagues are great human beings and they allow me to, you know, maybe have some, take some free hours on a Friday to go competing all around Europe. But again, um I think that like especially in these like new generations, there's more and more awareness about mental health and your actual you know mental health status, which is something we should take care of, um, as well as our of course physical, physical health. But then you have to also remind yourself that you gotta take care of your health, of your mental health, of your mind, of your brain, of your feelings, of your emotions. And there's like this internal voice when I wake up every day, which is louder and louder and louder, and it's scaring, scaring, scaring, that's why. But um again, you can't ignore it for so long, and when you when it's it's it's actually it all starts from this light small voice, and then your body starts to send you signals, and it's like someone knocking at the door every single day saying, Hey, I think you're a little bit tired, you probably need one more coffee today, and then oh my god, um, you have a headache, and you have just five hours of sleep tonight because you you've had to work maybe longer than usual, and then you start feeling a little bit of anxiety, of emptiness, and these are all signals your body starts to send you, and you can ignore them, yes, but until when and again, I don't want to be 40 years old, I'm 28 years old right now, and I do think it's never too late to start over from something you truly love. And Chris, I was like listening to an episode, a recent episode of your podcast with a young lad with who is I think 63 years old, and he just you know he also started a new career in this like fitness world, and he was saying it's never too late, it's never too late to fight for what you truly want. And you know, I have I'm lucky, I I mean, I I'm not lucky, but I I'm lucky to have no family here. I have no, I have nothing that permanently, you know, keeps me here. And the final goal would be yes, relocating to California because it's a place where you know I would live like 100%. But you just need to start somewhere, and I decided to start signing up for you know the your certification. I just decided to start there because I needed to do something for me. And right after the my, you know, the the moment where basically I clicked continue and accept and pay now, I felt more myself. And this is something. So I'm not saying I have to like leave my job tomorrow, but you know, day by day starting to walk towards my goal, which could be, you know, today I just um listen to you know the uh session, your session about nutrition last week, because I of course I lost it because you know there's all the time difference, nine hours time difference. It's it's not it's not uh something easier to uh live through. But it's those little things day by day, day by day. And I know I'm better now because I'm aware. I'm aware of what I want, and that's where I want to be. I wanna I wanna walk through, you know?

SPEAKER_00: 11:08

So we have a lot of listeners from all over the globe, and I can think of some things that they may be thinking about. One would be like, why would you want to leave Italy? It's so beautiful there, it's great. Why not you just stay there and train? So let's talk about that first, and then the second part, which the easy question would be, well, then just come to California and start training here. But it's not as easy as it sounds. So let's talk about those things.

SPEAKER_01: 11:32

So, first question why not Italy? Uh, Italy is a complicated country, I would say, overall Europe. Um, I do live in Milan, which is even more complicated. So basically, Milan is the big, big, big city in Italy, where it's not the main city, the main city is Rome, but all the economy and the big entities, the big law firms, the big like the business world is in Milan. So it's a very expensive city, it's a very demanding city, and you gotta be in a rush every single day. Like people here are running. Even on a Sunday morning, when you wake up and you go to the subway, people are just running. I don't know where. They're just in a rush, always in a rush. And so it's a very expensive city, and it's not just it's just not easy to live here. Um, because you're always like this whole society wants you to be and push you to be the best of the best everywhere. So it's a very competitive, if I say, society. And it's good if you want to work in a law firm, in a good law firm, you need to work in Milan because it's where all the big firms, big clients are. With regard to the training aspect, it's actually very bad in Italy. There's so much ignorance about the fitness industry, the fitness world, believe me, much more than there is in the US. Um people are not working out in general. And if you want to work as a PT, either you're a very, very popular influencer and you build your own clientele there. So you're an online fitness coach, you're an online, I don't know, maybe prep coach or whatever, since I'm more, of course, familiar with the bodybuilding industry. But it takes time to, you know, um start coaching people there and to start earning some money there. If you want to work into a gym, there are these like small gyms where personal trainers are just not considered not, they do not have, let's say, this, this like great refutation. If you are a personal trainer, people are just like, hmm, it's a personal trainer, you know. She probably didn't know what to do, and she decided to stay in a gym for the rest of her life. And if you wanna be again a personal trainer, you gotta basically pay the gym. So um 90, 90%, I think scenario, you work for a gym, but you're an independent contractor, so you gotta pay the gym. And maybe the gym can help you get some clients, but again, it's up to you. And it's it's not easy to get a good pay if you wanna be a personal trainer. And I do wanna work with real people, real human beings. I want to help people, I want to help like you know, elder people, I wanna help younger girls who are too skinny and scared to lift weights because they're afraid to get too muscular and too bulky. And there's another dilemma here, which is probably overall Europe. Once you start your career, you know, as a lawyer, as a doctor, you're supposed to stay there. And it's not gonna be easy for you to switch like to an entire different career. I think it's much easier in the US because I used to live there and I know it's not considered that bad. If you just at some point realize that the choice you made when you were like 17 years old, it's not gonna be your choice for the rest of your life. And that's okay because we are humans and we are supposed to evolve, to change, to you know, keep evolving throughout our throughout our our life. So that's why I wanna um again try to get back to the US, also because being an athlete, being a bikini FBB pro athlete, I wanna compete in the US. The dream, the final goal would be, you know, fighting for the Olympia dream, of which is of course competing at the Olympia, which is the main um bodybuilding stage in like this whole world, and it's in the US. It's much easier to work with um the fitness industry, so sponsors and whatever, different gyms, and you know, that's why I'm looking at the US um for my personal future. The issue is that right now it's not easy to move to the US. It's not easy as an athlete, it's not easy as a coach. I would say it's it's if you're only a personal trainer, it's basically impossible. Um, and it's not easy also as a lawyer, because in order to be in the US for let's say a long period of time, I I'm not saying like permanently, because that's another, that's another, that's a whole another topic. But if you want to stay in the US with a visa, so if you want to get a visa and you're I mean a personal trainer, or let's assume you're a lawyer, a doctor, you gotta be considered exceptional in order to be, in order to get your visa. And this goes, I mean, this is true for lawyers, doctors, physicians, it's the same for everyone. So you have to be some sort of qualifications uh that you need to, you know, show, and it all depends on the immigration um actually, you know, uh representative that will get your case. It's very subjective. So you can try, you can apply to get a visa, but I mean you can it's never it's never an easy route. And um being exceptional, I mean showing you're exceptional has to be related with some form of awards or international like recognition, qualification. And for example, take me as a lawyer. Yes, I'm a lawyer. I have now uh two years of experience working for an in an international law firm. I'm working in the technology law field, which is something very, very cool for these modern times. But again, I'm not exceptional when you compare myself to a random associate in the United States. So why, you know, why me instead in place of them? Um, it would probably not be enough right now. Um, so yeah, that's the tricky part about getting back to the to the US. And yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 19:24

I I love Alessandro's story because it's it's a great you know, thought experiment with those that it's really just where you're born is the lottery. And if you were born here, you could just snap your fingers and go, you know what, I'm gonna change careers. And yeah, you may have those internal struggles, but the fact that you aren't able to come over here and pursue that, those that are listening, I think it's something to take for granted and realize that you know you have an opportunity to help people and train people. And so, you know, we all carry burdens, and at the end of the day, you have to be in. Because you don't realize what other people are going through. It'd be so easy to say, oh my God, you know, look at your Instagram. You're doing so great and you're in amazing shape and you're doing what you love and you're a lawyer. But then when you peel back those onion layers, it's there's a lot more to it. And it's not as easy as just saying, you know, I'm gonna, I want to move to the United States because of the legal aspects, and and it's just a lot more to it than uh you would see. You know, I think that you know show up just needs to hire you as our team lawyer, and then it'll be perfect, right?

SPEAKER_01: 20:31

Well, we can talk about that, Chris. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And of course, for example, I know um to be a show-up finance trainer, you have to, you know, have worked at Equinox or I think Equinox, right? Correct me if I'm wrong. Oh, right, all right, yeah. I'm more familiar with the Equinox gym because I trained at an Equinox in Berkeley.

SPEAKER_00: 20:57

And you know, uh, but we were there when a couple of uh our trainers were there as well. You probably oh my gosh, 2023? Yeah, Dean was there and also his girlfriend. I did a podcast with her, and now there's uh girl that that her name is Majoya, but she is she's there now, she was there about um maybe six months ago she started.

SPEAKER_01: 21:17

But there's definitely trainers that I know what you're talking about, and they saw people that came in and you know they started as trainers, and it's a great, great, a great opportunity when you have the chance to go there and start working and then maybe move somewhere else and get the chance to work with you in the end one day. So never take that for granted. That that's what I'm saying, and never believe at what you see on social media, because that's there, there's it's like that's like it's probably like one percent of what people are truly, truly experiencing. So when you look at me, everything seems like perfect. I do have a great physique, I work out, I'm happy, I live a great life. But in the end, yes, I'm grateful for the life I have, for my health, for my physical health, but I'm struggling every single day. I wake up at 6 a.m. It's it's a fight. Uh I go to the gym um first thing in the morning because then I have to go to the office, and it's gonna be a like long day into the into the office until 8:30, 9 p.m. on Fridays. I'm lucky because I work from home. So today I'm working from home. But again, never take anything for granted. Life is great, but yeah, that's something I I truly, I truly believe in. Uh, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 22:52

And that's why we have a great community, is that we've I've tried to connect you with uh a couple of people that we know in Italy. And it's like when you surround yourself with other motivated, like-minded people, that's that spark. And it's so easy to allow that spark to die out. And like you said, 20, 30 years down the line, now you have that regret. And that's going to be the worst feeling in the world when that spark dies out. So you have to find people who keep that flame going. And whether if you're doing continue education or you're listening to podcasts, you know, talk about it. Get into the Facebook groups. And if you're struggling, or if maybe you relate to Alessandro, you know, mention it in the Facebook group because then you're just having a conversation, you know, that could turn into so much more and you don't realize it. And people are, I think one of the coolest things about the seminars is when we do our breakouts and we do our you know Swift analysis, and when we get to the F part, which is fear, you really see people opening up and really um divulging a lot that it's it's great just to debrief because you realize that you're human and you have struggles, and whether if it's a fear of failure or imposture syndrome or not being able to do what you do, it's just great to see those engagements. And so you have to realize that having those conversations and surrounding yourself with the right people, the community is huge for your success.

SPEAKER_01: 24:08

Absolutely, absolutely, and I want to be there. I mean, still, I I cannot right now come and leaving the US tomorrow, but I can come to one of your seminars and I want to do that in 2026. So I'm looking for you know your upcoming calendar because I know it's gonna be great to connect with you, to connect with people, and it's gonna be very, very helpful. Again, it's like you know, it's those little sparks. It's it's just like a miracle. Uh starting to fight for what you want and you know, keeping the lights on.

SPEAKER_00: 24:54

I like that. So we'll be in uh quarter one. We got our six spots. We got Atlanta in the beginning part, Phoenix in the end part of January. Then we'll be in Red Bank, New Jersey, and New York in February, Houston in March, and also California. So maybe we'll see you in quarter one. If not, we'll have quarter two and we'll be doing a lot more with Lifetime, but also with Equinox Live Workshops. So there'll be plenty of opportunities. And where can people find you on social media if they want to you know reach out and say thank you for this? Because I know you're gonna touch a lot of individuals out there.

SPEAKER_01: 25:24

Yeah, thank you so much for for this great opportunity. Please you can reach out to me at um Ale Potini. It's A-L-E-P-O-T-I-N-I, uh I f pro. And yeah, thank you so much, Chris, for what you're doing. I mean, it's just great. It's thanks to you that this whole fitness industry, it's just a better, it's it's a better word. Let's just say that.

SPEAKER_00: 25:54

I love it. And I'll I'll put your Instagram and our the caption and everything, and I'll share this today. Thank you for being awesome. And remember, you got some big ones, so big biceps are better than small ones, and keep showing up. That agreement, I love it.