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Charmaine Yu

The first time Tricia Yap was hit hard in the face, she did more than survive – she strategised.
She was not in a dark alley, nor a playground fight. She was in a white-collar boxing event in Hong Kong that, together with the months of training beforehand, was supposed to be a lighthearted distraction from her job as a tax technology consultant.
After engaging in this “Hedge Fund Fight Nite” competition, a fundraising event for charity, she was hooked. On top of her boxing training, she also took up kickboxing and jiu-jitsu.
So began her transition from office worker to Hong Kong’s first professional female MMA fighter. Nicknamed “The Bull”, she turned pro in 2015.
For Yap, who was around 30 when she took part in that first charity fight and was at a crossroads in her life, the adrenaline, intensity and strategic puzzle of combat were an awakening.
“It can be quite hard to make decisions if you’re getting hit in the face constantly,” the 43-year-old laughs today, recalling the paradox of combat sports.

The key was maintaining a “really chilled” mindset to analyse and strategise. “[Combat sport] is the ultimate game of chess.”
Combat sports demand physical strength and endurance but also emotional and mental fortitude – traits that still serve Yap well as an innovative health and fitness entrepreneur.
Her ability to navigate extreme pressure has been a key strength in a career marked by bold swings, from the consulting suite to the MMA cage and now into the world of holistic health.
Born in Malaysia and raised across Kuala Lumpur, Sydney and New York, she studied chemistry before switching to accounting and finance, launching her career in Australia, which eventually brought her to Hong Kong in 2009.

But the corporate ladder felt increasingly stifling.
“I remember one day I was staying late at work. I was just looking at the senior managers staying late with me, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to be any of them,’” she recalls.
The pivot was swift. In 2013, she walked away from her white-collar job to co-found Bikini Fit, an all-women’s gym. The move was not just about changing careers; it was about filling a market gap.
Yap had noted that most women’s fitness advice focused on “how to lose 5kg in five days” or “how to make your waist smaller”, ignoring the more empowering questions.
“There was nothing about ‘how do I get stronger?’ or ‘what is body composition?’” she says. Her goal was to redefine women’s understanding of health and fitness, creating a supportive community that prioritised strength and performance over restrictive dieting.

A serious knee injury in 2015 forced her semi-retirement from MMA, followed by an official retirement after the birth of her first child. Her focus shifted entirely to her business, which evolved from Bikini Fit to the Warrior Academy, later rebranded as Goji Elite, part of the Goji Studios brand. She founded Limitless Health in 2020.
Today, her company is less about conventional group classes and more about precision training and nutritional therapy for busy professionals. She has even leveraged her consulting background to branch into designing and managing corporate gyms.
“Because I have a lot of experience building gyms, I thought it would be great to help businesses to actually fit out a space or to manage their existing spaces by providing gym management, training services and even nutrition services,” she says.
At a facility she created for luxury packaging company TNT Group, Yap points out features such as a full kitchen, designed to encourage employees to cook satisfying, healthy meals at the office.
This convergence of business consultancy and fitness expertise proved vital during the pandemic lockdowns.
“That’s a big reason, during that time, Limitless evolved very quickly,” Yap says. “We branched into online nutritional consulting programmes and this whole ‘B2B’ thing, allowing us to actually survive.”


Yap’s greatest passion now is to widely share knowledge, particularly in the under-researched field of women’s health. She notes that studies often completely omit the complexities of female biology across different life stages, from puberty through perimenopause.
“If we’re not empowered to empower [women], we’re not changing women’s health at all,” she says, emphasising the need for a “ripple effect” through doctors, trainers and coaches.
Her commitment culminated in co-founding and hosting the inaugural Lifestyle Medicine Summit Asia in Hong Kong in October, alongside her long-time work partner Denise Tam. The summit featured speakers from fields including genetics, dentistry and traditional Chinese medicine, with the aim of nurturing health in the grey areas overlooked by conventional medicine.
As a mother of three daughters, this holistic approach is personal. She and her husband strive to involve their girls in their health journey, whether they are hiking in the Alps or cooking.
“My partner is a big foodie, so we try to cook everything from scratch – we even make our own jam!”

Having formally retired from the cage, “The Bull” has not lost her appetite for risk and adrenaline. Her newest competitive sport? Cross-country paragliding.
The journey from the brutal pressure of the cage to the high-stakes calm of the clouds is a powerful testament to the value of mental strength – a message Yap continues to spread across Hong Kong’s evolving health and fitness landscape.
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Lifestyle

Health & Wellness

Health

Family & Relationships

Wellness entrepreneur Tricia Yap is helping reshape women’s health by focusing on areas like precision training and lifestyle medicine


Wellness entrepreneur Tricia Yap is helping reshape women’s health by focusing on areas like precision training and lifestyle medicine.


How to age well

Healthy eating

Women and gender

Why Hong Kong’s first pro female MMA fighter now battles for women’s health

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Wellness entrepreneur Tricia Yap is helping reshape women’s health by focusing on areas like precision training and lifestyle medicine

Wellness entrepreneur Tricia Yap is helping reshape women’s health by focusing on areas like precision training and lifestyle medicine