The BUF Story

Our Story

Build Up Fitness began with one relationship.

A smart, funny, kind young man who had just turned 17 when we first met, and me. I call him Moonbeam.

I was lucky — he invited me into his life, a life I came to know well. Over time I watched him and advocated for him as best I could through the foster system, the juvenile system, and eventually — and unsurprisingly — the adult system, where he is currently.

Walking alongside him gave me an education I could not have received elsewhere.

It may seem obvious, but this often isn't part of the conversation: young adults who end up in jail or prison are not trying to fail. They’re trying — often very hard — to build a different life.

When everyone you’ve known follows one road, be that college or prison, finding a new road isn’t simple-the food is different, the language is different, and it's not home. If the streets are home? Home may not feel safe, but it's still home. You feel the love. It's complicated to leave home, it's different for each individual.

We are fortunate in San Francisco. There are many organizations helping young people find jobs, mentors, and support, and they deserve a depth of gratitude that cannot easily be expressed.

What I saw in my living-alongside experience was something many parents of adolescents know:

young people crave agency.

Young people want their lives to be their own. They want to make decisions and build their own path — even when that path includes mistakes.

Some young people make mistakes and are redirected, rerouted, and supported.

In some zip codes that rerouting is to jail and then prison. There is little tolerance and little support. Just the cage and the punishment.

Moonbeam shared many wisdoms. Once he shared this:

“Slow money fo’ sho’ money. Fast money don’t last money.”

When poverty is all you’ve known, and finding safe spaces and a job gets too tiring, fast money can look like the only way out.

Moonbeam showed me something else too.

He wanted different.

Build Up Fitness grew out of that idea.

We are a nonprofit personal training gym in San Francisco that pairs paying clients with apprentice trainers — young adults building stable careers after facing serious systemic barriers.

Apprentices earn hourly pay while learning strength training, client relationships, and the discipline from self that is needed to build their own clientele.

The lesson comes from the gym itself.

You don’t walk into a gym and walk out stronger.

Strength comes from repetition — showing up again and again.

Motivation might get a client or an apprentice through the door.
Discipline keeps them going — not punishment, but the steady commitment to themselves that allows real change to take hold.

The brain works the same way. Neural pathways strengthen through repeated action, just as muscles strengthen through repeated movement through the process of neuroplasticity.

Build Up Fitness is built on a simple belief:

Strength — of body and mind — can be built.

Clients come to get stronger physically.

Apprentice trainers build strength in discipline, stability, and career skills.

Together we create a place where clients build strength, apprentices build careers, and community builds opportunity — one rep at a time.