Megan Roup Wants You to Be a Little More Selfish

Megan Roup has been through a lot of change lately. The Sculpt Society founder is now a mom of two, welcoming daughters in 2021 and 2023. While navigating toddlerhood, she’s also overhauling her business, having spent the last number of months preparing to launch a major rebrand that goes live in September. If you’re thinking that doing all that sounds inspiring, it is. That’s why Beyond Yoga tapped the 39-year-old as a partner for its new Seek Beyond platform.

In the campaign, Roup opens up about the importance of movement in her life, especially now that she’s a mom. “I really wanted to show other women joyful workouts that impacted how they felt about their body,” she says. “Motherhood is about strength, resilience, and the incredible things that our bodies can do. It’s important that I continue to model a positive relationship with movement for my daughters.”

Roup’s mindset and approach to exercise has changed a lot, she says, including being OK with working out less. (Yes, even fitness influencers appreciate short workouts—and sometimes even skip them.) As with her Sculpt Society classes, her take on the great balancing act of motherhood is all too relatable.

Roup wants moms to be a little more selfish.

Between taking care of children, keeping the house together, maintaining relationships, and working, it can be hard to find time for yourself as a parent. “Most moms are putting their oxygen mask on last,” Roup tells SELF. “There’s not a lot of emphasis on women taking care of themselves first, but it’s so important.” The trainer points out that when women don’t do this, their mental health suffers. “It should be the opposite,” she says. “If we take some time for ourselves each day, it sets us up for success.”

Plus, she reminds me, parenthood—like exercise—is not all or nothing. “I don’t have to give up everything I enjoyed before kids,” she says. “I’m getting to show them that Mom is strong when she moves her body. That is going to positively impact my kids and I can model a really body-positive movement practice.”

Her workouts are shorter than ever.

Some Sculpt Society workouts are as short as five minutes—and Roup does those too. The trick, she says, is committing to less so you can show up more. “[Women] will find more motivation to press play on a 5- or 10-minute workout because it doesn’t feel so daunting,” she says. “That creates habit.… It goes into the rest of your day and impacts everyone.”

Some habits Roup has adopted over the last few years? Early wake-ups, for one. Roup says that even though she’s not a “morning person,” she wakes up around 5:30 a.m. so she can drink coffee, meditate, and fit in a workout before her kids get up. (Roup breaks down her morning routine in this recent Instagram post.) “My mental health and physical health feel better when I do this,” she tells me. As a mom of four young ones who has to get up at 5 a.m. to make exercising happen, I feel this deeply. And, according to Roup, the results are just as apparent: “I’ve never looked or felt stronger, and my workouts are the shortest they’ve ever been.”

Her approach to core work is different after having kids.

Roup says she made the intentional decision to create pelvic floor recovery programs for The Sculpt Society while she was postpartum. “I filmed and did them myself in that phase of life,” Roup says. “In all my postpartum recovery videos, and [videos for] when you’re recently cleared to work out, I am in the early days postpartum too.” That connection was important to her. “You’re seeing me go through the [recovery] process,” she explains. “When you’re postpartum and in it, you want to see another postpartum body on-screen.”

Roup also spent time researching the pelvic floor and learning about its role as the foundational component of the core, working that knowledge into her workouts. “Now, I have such a deeper understanding of deep core muscles,” she says. “I am stronger. I’m inspired to create programs to help women understand how to get deeper into their core.”

She wants people to know that she’s more than a trainer.

Roup says the Seek Beyond campaign allows her to showcase more than one side of herself. “I’m not just one person. I have so many different layers to me,” she says. “We are all more than just one thing.”

Roup stresses that she’s “not just a fitness trainer,” pointing out that she’s a mom, business owner, daughter, and wife. “I feel so passionate about movement and how movement has impacted my life,” she says. “Those are all parts of me.”

And what does she say about the great leggings debate of today?

There have been murmurs that leggings are “dead” thanks to Gen Z preferring baggier pants for working out. (At least one TikTok suggests that it’s due to feeling self-conscious in form-fitting bottoms.)

“As someone who lives in a legging, specifically my Beyond Yoga leggings, I couldn’t disagree more,” Roup says when I ask for her take. “I feel like they are definitely not dead. Maybe it’s the New York/LA person in me that I feel like everyone is in a legging. I still think they live on.”

Related:

• Coco Gauff on Protein-Maxxing, Her First Labubu, and Dressing Up for the US Open
• Do Postpartum Belly Bands and Wraps Actually Help With Core Recovery?
• Keke Palmer Got Real About the Pressure of Breastfeeding: It’s Been a ‘Doozy’

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