FS8 Strength Stories: Kassidy Cook – Strength, Reimagined
At the heart of FS8 Strength Stories, is a series dedicated to the real people who make up our community. Members from all walks of life who are redefining what strength looks like through their own experiences, challenges, and growth.
Strength isn’t just earned on a podium. Sometimes it’s found in learning to slow down, to breathe, to be still. This FS8 Strength Story features Kassidy Cook – an Olympic diver and FS8 Athlete – who’s proof that even the most decorated athletes have more to discover about their fitness. For Kassidy, FS8 didn’t just add a new workout to her routine. It rewrote her entire definition of what it means to be strong.
Read Kassidy’s powerful FS8 interview below.
Born to Move
Growing up in an athletic household as one of six kids, with a father who played college football and track and a mother who played basketball, athletics and movement was engrained into Kassidy’s family from a young age.
“Movement was just a huge part of my life,” she says. “I was a very energetic – some may say annoying – kid, doing every sport possible.”
Sport wasn’t just a pastime in the Cook household. It was a language. A way of connecting, competing, and belonging. And from the age of six, Kassidy had one goal she kept returning to, no matter how far away it seemed.
“The Olympics was a goal of mine since I was six years old,” she says. “It shaped me into the person I am – very competitive, very driven, very motivated. I knew I was going to stop at nothing to get there.”
She didn’t.
The Long Road to the Podium
The path to the Olympics, Kassidy is quick to point out, was anything but straightforward.
“My journey wasn’t very linear,” she says. “I had a lot of peaks and valleys, as a lot of athletes do.”
Years of elite diving shaped not just her body, but her mindset – and eventually, her understanding of where that mindset had limits. The same drive that propelled her to the Olympic stage also had a shadow side: the belief that pushing through was always the answer.
“As I’ve gotten older in the athletic world, I’ve learned that ‘stopping at nothing’ isn’t always the best way to go about things,” she reflects. “I have to listen to my body. Sometimes that means I need to slow down, take a breath. Not every workout has to be this high-intensity competition.”
It’s a realization that came not from failure, but from experience. And it would fundamentally change the way she showed up – in sport, and in life.
The Breath That Changes Everything
Ask an elite athlete what separates a good performance from a great one, and they’ll talk about the mental game. For Kassidy, the Pilates principles she’d trained with throughout her athletic career became a secret weapon in the most high-pressure moments.
“When you’re in these high-pressure situations, you get really nervous and your body starts to shut down,” she explains. “That’s when it really translated over from what I learned in Pilates – those deep breaths, calming your nervous system. When you’re standing on that diving board in front of thousands of people, and millions watching on TV, that breath is everything.”
Control. Presence. The ability to reset. These weren’t just tools for competition. They were a way of life, one that Kassidy would find again, in a different form, through FS8.
Redefining Strong
For most of her life, strength had meant one thing to Kassidy. Physical. Visible. Unbreakable on the outside.
“Five or ten years ago, I always thought strength was physical – big muscles, not showing emotion, not showing any weakness,” she says. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that strength is so much more than that. The mental strength is even more important. Knowing when to take those deep breaths. Knowing when to stop. Knowing how to calm down.”
It’s a perspective shift that didn’t happen overnight. It was earned – rep by rep, breath by breath – through years of competing at the highest level and learning, eventually, that the strongest thing you can do is be honest about where you are.
“Strength is being okay with not being okay,” she says simply.
Coming Home to Pilates
Pilates had been part of Kassidy’s world since childhood – lessons through her athletic program, woven into the fabric of her training. But when her competitive career ended and she built a life of her own, those sessions quietly disappeared. Then came FS8. And with it, a feeling she hadn’t realized she’d been missing.
“After my first class, I was like: wow. I haven’t felt this feeling in forever,” she recalls. “It’s this calm energy that you get, which I didn’t get from any other workout. I left feeling sharper, not exhausted. Clear. After my first FS8 class, I haven’t stopped going since.”
A Different Kind of Energy
As someone who had spent years training with high-intensity and functional strength programs, Kassidy knew the post-workout adrenaline rush well. FS8 gave her something different – and in many ways, something she needed more.
“I’ve always done high-intensity or functional strength training, and you feel this adrenaline after,” she explains. “But it can be a little exhausting. After leaving FS8, I felt clear and calm. Refreshed.”
What struck her most was the unique combination at the heart of the FS8 method: Pilates, Tone, and Yoga, all in a single class.
“You have studios across the world that focus on one of those things – your strength studio, your yoga studio, your Pilates studio,” she says. “Going somewhere where you could get all three was a really fun and unique experience. It’s addicting.”
A Community That Roots for You
After years in competitive sport, Kassidy knows better than most how different it feels to be surrounded by people who want you to win – not beat you to it.
“I’ve been to gyms and workout classes where you just go and you don’t want to talk to anybody, you just want to get your workout done and scram out the door,” she laughs. “But at FS8, I go and I’m so excited to see my friends and chat with them after class.”
It’s the absence of competition that makes the community so compelling to Kassidy.
“In my FS8 studio, I feel like you’re there rooting for the people next to you,” she says. “You want to see them try something new. You want to see them level up. The community that FS8 has built is fulfilling and nurturing.”
“FS8 makes me feel this calm energy,” she says, “and supported by this wonderful community.”
Strength, Reimagined
FS8’s motto – strength reimagined – resonates with Kassidy in a way that feels deeply personal. Because she has lived that reimagining, in real time, across the arc of her life.
“That motto really resonates with me because my definition of strength has changed so much in the last few years,” she says. “I used to associate strength with the physical. Not showing weakness, not showing emotion. But now I realize it’s so much more than that. The word strength has been totally redefined.
To watch Kassidy’s full story visit: https://fs8.com/fs8-strength-stories/
