gap year in israel

by Tiffany Salzberg

A large part of my life is health and fitness. This passion goes beyond working out, and is more than just a “diet.” I put great emphasis on physical activity. I do plyometric workouts six days a week. I prefer circuits and functional workouts. Through this passion, I have also gotten into running. I am no marathon runner, but nonetheless, I have come a long way. This is largely what has boosted my confidence. I’ve seen myself grow stronger physically and mentally. I can carry and lift things on my own and am powerful enough to defend myself. This makes me feel independent and strong, and as a girl that is sometimes hard to feel confident about.

My good friend Zach Buller recently completed a full 5K run using the “Couch to 5K” application on his phone. He started out barely being able to run for two minutes, and has worked his way up to running 5K in 27 minutes! This took motivation and immense dedication on his part. I had worked my way up to running a 5K in the past, but never in such a short amount of time. Zach’s achievement came as inspiration to me because I was so proud of him.


I took it upon myself to start running again and get my 5K time below my existing 35-minute time. This was a good challenge for me to start off the new year. Since I committed to this, I have been running a 5K nearly every day, trying to improve my time, and successfully shaving off the minutes. I have been documenting my journey as a form of motivation for myself and others as well. I document the good days with achievements as well as the tough days where I struggle to complete the run. It is important to not only show off the positives and achievements throughout one’s journey. Everyone has off days and it is important to acknowledge that. It is also imperative to use others’ successes as motivation rather than getting discouraged by them.


This positive experience is showing me how to motivate myself through my peers’ successes and use their positive energy to get inspired.

Gap year in israel - aardvarkisrael