At just 21 years old, professional soccer player Savy King knows a whole lot about resilience. The Angel City FC defender was in the middle of a match against the Utah Royals in 2025 when she started feeling dizzy. Seconds later, she collapsed on the field and was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where she had open-heart surgery.
Now, a little more than a year after going into cardiac arrest, Savy is back training and playing with her team. “I knew that I was going to do everything in my power to continue to chase my dreams,” Savy says in the latest episode of Strong Like. “There's a lot of people that go through cardiac events, so if I can be an inspiration for those people to keep pushing, that's the best thing that I think has come from all of this.”
Savy sweats six days a week—five days of training (which includes two lifting days; one pull, one press), plus a match on the weekends. “Training for me right now, looks exactly like it does for everybody else,” she says. “I'm just being treated as a normal athlete, not someone with a cardiac event.”
Arm days are Savy’s favorite, and it shows in her routine: a mix of dumbbell bench presses, TRX rows, landmine push presses, and med ball pushes.
“I have this new perspective of not taking anything for granted,” Savy says. “And every single day that I get to come play soccer and come to this facility is just an amazing day.”
To hear more from Savy about coming back from her cardiac incident, press play on the episode of Strong Like above.
Video Executive Producer Dorenna Newton
Video Producer Angel Lenise Pyles
Director of Photography Danny Dwyer
Editor Josh Archer
Amy Wilkinson is a contributing entertainment editor at Women's Health, where she edits the magazine's celebrity cover stories and writes health features. She has previously held editor titles at Entertainment Weekly and MTV News. In 2021, Amy completed her 600-hour teacher-training at Core Pilates NYC to become a comprehensively trained Pilates instructor.
