Anyone who has ever played sport knows the feeling: once it gets under your skin, it’s hard to hold back. Whether it’s an individual pursuit or a team effort, it doesn’t just work your body, it takes over your mind. Sometimes the anticipation alone is enough to set everything in motion, as muscles and neurons seem to fire together. Suddenly, no busy schedule, no exhaustion, not even a stomach ache can keep you away. It doesn’t matter if the night before you finished a marathon or served dinner to eighty guests. Your body is restless, and it demands to move.

There’s a reason for that. Exercise turns us into our own little biochemical power plants. Hormones shift, our perception of effort changes, and the limits we once thought were fixed begin to move further away. Goals that once felt unimaginable gradually come within reach. Repeat the process often enough, and you start craving the next challenge. The effort becomes addictive, feeding itself. The more you embrace it, the harder it is to remember life before, and the more you wonder what lies beyond the next horizon.

Irina Steccanella walks into the gym wearing a pair of oversized blue headphones around her neck and carrying a small bag with her gloves, a rigid black lifting belt, and a water bottle. Three or four times a week, she makes the eleven-minute drive from her restaurant to the gym in Castello di Serravalle, in the Valsamoggia hills. For the past three years, every visit has meant more than ninety minutes of training. She doesn’t run. She isn’t interested in fitness classes or Pilates, and she rarely stops to chat. She lifts weights, moves weights, and, in the process, lifts herself.

Waiting for her is Carmine, her coach.

“I’ve been lucky in life,” Irina says, “to have had great mentors – both in sport and in the kitchen.”

She says it just before introducing us to one of them. It takes only a single round of dips to see the dynamic between her and Carmine: mutual respect, genuine trust, and the easy humour that makes heavy lifts – and difficult days – a little lighter. Because, just like in the restaurant, bad days happen.