Whether someone verbalizes it or not, at the end of the day, everyone who starts an exercise routine wants to feel more confident and more at home in their body. For any individual in the LGBTQIA community, feeling at home in our bodies may be a challenge.

For centuries, sport has been a place of competition, enjoyment, physical fitness, community, and sportsmanship. While sport has provided a positive experience for many, there has also been periods in time where sport has involved segregation and exclusion of others. Women and people of color were not always welcome in sport and dealt with and still deal with discrimination in varying ways today. Currently, there are large debates over the inclusion of trans individuals, mainly trans women, in sport. Is it fair to include? Is it fair to exclude? What does science tell us? How do we determine the parameters for participation?

Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination all exist in various forms within the fitness world. When you google image search photos of fitness, working out, or strength training, it often results with thin, white, abled bodies. This is leaving out many individuals who are part of the fitness world and want to be included in the demographic. What kind of messages are we sending to people by leaving them out?

Growing up, many of us heard from our parents or teachers say things like, “you can be whatever you want to be”! When we were little we believed it, but as we grow older many of us become cynical, jaded and we stop believing that we are capable of doing something out of the ordinary and often wind up settling for good enough. We point fingers at successful athletes, businessmen, or musicians and chalk their success up to natural talent. This makes us feel better about settling for the status quo.

As coaches, we see so many people “Shoulding” all over themselves.

- Should I use X product?

- Should I eat ____?

- Should I be on [enter new fad diet here] diet?

- Should I have that goal?

- Should I be farther along in my progress?

Most of the time our answers with start with “it depends” and a follow up of questions that start with why. Why does that interest you? Why do you feel that way? Why do you see yourself working on this?

Ok who has seen the movie the Santa Claus? Remember the phrase the elves used to help Tim Allen and his son understand Santa Claus and the Magical North Pole? They said “seeing isn’t believing, believing is seeing!” This is exactly what visualization is all about! Visualization helps us see our true potential in our mind first so that we can bring them to fruition!

I was feeling super anxious about participating in a strength challenge. I had attempted this feat of strength multiple times but the anxiety of performing in front of a lot of people made me feel extremely nervous and provoked feelings of anxiety up to weeks before hand. Lots of people wanted to offer me training advice, which was all in good nature, but the best advice I got was about mental prep and changing my mindset around the event. The great part is this mental reframing has now permeated into the rest of my life!

After my first Kettlebell certification, I remember walking away with some really strong take-aways. This one has repeatedly played over in my head and is now one of my favorite coaching cues in my tool belt. I see a lot of people try to rush to get to get to their reps without taking much time to get into their set up. We spend tons of time talking about how we move through an exercise but we forget sometimes that the set up is what initiates this movement. You would never build a house on a shaky or unstable foundation, so why would you want to start a movement on top of a shaky or unstable body position?

It is widely known that social support is beneficial to long term health. Having social support has been shown to assist with individual’s mental and physical health, and stress management. While there are many benefits of social support, there are also social costs as well such as negative and strained relationships. Both need to be measured to understand more about how social aspects effect one’s health as psychological stress brought on by social strain can cause inflammation and lower immune function.

As a strength coach who has been working in the fitness industry for close to a decade, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the benefits of physical activity. Increased strength, more efficient cardiovascular endurance, improved mobility, mental health, and a building up of confidence, are all areas I have spent a great deal of time thinking about. This class has started to add, brain health to the list; specifically how exercise can help prevent Alzheimer’s and dementia.

One of my favorite quotes comes from J.K. Rowling’s Book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Harry asks Professor Dumbeldore, “is this all happening inside my head?” To which Dumbeldore replies, “Of course it is happening inside your head Harry. But why on earth should that mean it is not real?” The reason I love this scene so much is because it emphasize the idea that thoughts and ideas that swirl around in our mind have real power to that individual experiencing them. Even though thoughts are not tangible and an observer may not be able to see the inner workings of your mind, it does not make each individual’s experience any less real.

It is well known that exercise has a positive impact on an individual’s mental health. Exercising an appropriate amount, can help an individual feel more confident in their abilities, help them feel committed to and feel good carrying out a goal, and builds overall tangible strength. Exercise has even been examined for its antidepressant effects on individuals struggling with depression and anxiety.

There is an indisputable intersection between mental health and fitness. While the benefits of fitness on mental health are widely known and studied on a larger scale, there is still lots a nuance and specifics to be further examined. Questions such as how different types of fitness routines can help with various mental health struggles, what coaches can do in their coaching and programming to help provide mental health support, and what language and communication styles may be more beneficial or harmful, have all yet to be further explored.

What I have learned around motivation revolves a great deal around self-determination theory. This theory states that motivation is a feeling someone experiences and therefore is not something you can give or provide to someone else but you can create the environment in which someone feels motivated. In order to create an optimal environment in which someone feels motivated, you need to create opportunities for autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

We know that stress has a large impact on our lives, however, it seems that many individuals think that they are capable of pushing past or toughing it out when dealing with stress. While certain individuals may be more affected than others when it comes to stress, humans cannot completely bypass the effects of stress through shear will and determination. The papers “A Hard Day’s Night: a Longitudinal Study on the Relationship Among Job Demands and Job Control, Sleep Quality and Fatigue”, “Sleep Length and Life Satisfaction in a College Student Sample” and “Psychological Stress and Disease” all show how stress can have dramatic effects on an individual. I also believe by looking at the implications of each paper, we can draw conclusions on how stress, sleep, work, and disease are all linked.

In my role as strength coach diet culture, and work hard to undo the harms that these constructs have made on the community. Diet culture is responsible for so many individuals feeling less than, undervalued, shameful and hurt. It causes people to involve themselves in disordered eating habits and often times these normalized habits go unnoticed because they are seen as not that big of a deal, or even to some as “healthy”. My belief, is that an intuitive eating style is much more healthy for people’s physical and psychological health. Intuitive eating works on the basis that all individuals have a different point where their body may feel more comfortable in terms of weight and that by being more in tune with the messages our body gives us, we can build our interoceptive relationship with our body. This means listening to our hunger cues and eating foods that feel good to you without restriction.

I work in a world where health and what is “best” for someone’s “health” is talked about, debated, and exploited endlessly.  But the view of what consists of someone’s health can often times be very narrow.  For many years, the fitness industry has limited its view of health into only looking at someone’s physical activity and their nutrition intake, forgetting about other forms of health such as social support, mental health, and emotional health.