Pride & Fitness: then and now
In late 2015 a friend of mine had been working out at a CrossFit gym. He recommended it to me because I complained of a cycle of high motivation followed by a plateau in results and then a fall-off in consistency. We’ve all been there. A good workout that someone else was designing (that I could just show up to) seemed like a great next step in my fitness journey. I started regularly attending the 7 am class with my then-partner. We quickly realized that most of the other participants were gay like us. For this reason, our daily beat-down sessions came to be known informally as, “7-gay-m.”
In my early teens, I had prevented myself from being particularly athletic. I was afraid that if I didn’t play a given sport perfectly, I’d be more frequently and easily targeted. So I turned to more Queer-friendly spaces like musical theater. At the same time, while attending summer camps as a kid and later in college and grad school, I’d enjoy the occasional game of ultimate frisbee, rock climbing or jogging with friends. General physical activity did make some parts of my soul come alive.
So the first few years attending “7-gay-m” in my late twenties were transformative for me because I had rediscovered a dormant part of myself. I developed greater intimacy with my body, and I found the process to be almost meditative. During workouts, the physical intensity and the cognitive demands forced me to filter out everything but the workout itself. The music would fade, and there my beating heart and my working breath would be the only things in my universe. I’d never experienced such devotion to the present moment. I had never been able to (or been given permission to) grow such capacities — climbing rope, dangling purposefully from a pull-up bar, moving a heavy barbell around my body, etc. Held by the community and the coach, over time, I found a sense of physical strength and what I called, “general badassery.” A seed began to grow within me. I began yearning to share this type of empowerment with other Queer folks on similar journeys.
There is one reason in particular as to why LGBTQ+ people could benefit from this type of fitness, in addition to the supportive community, the spiritual empowerment, and the access to spaces from which we are typically blocked. As I was earning the CrossFit Level 1 certification, I learned about how health is bolstered by constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity. A hedge against disease, we call it. The gift of a practice that has been shown to extend life is a particular balm for Queer folks, along with other marginalized communities whose lives are often shortened. A regular fitness practice like the kinds we find at Findlay Movement can keep our minds, bodies, and spirits generally healthier and therefore more able to deal with whatever comes our way.
A Little Bit of History
The origins of present-day Pride parades and the celebration of LGBTQ+ vitality and visibility come in part from the Stonewall uprising, which took place from June 28 to July 3, 1969 in New York City. The following year, on June 28, 1970, to commemorate the uprising, the first gay pride marches took place in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Today’s attacks on our Transgender siblings highlight how continued vigilance and activism are needed and the ways in which different systems of oppression overlap with one another. For example, much of the community organizing and activism leading to Stonewall and subsequent human rights work through the AIDS crisis was initiated by Transgender People of Color, such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. There is much more to be done to ensure that everyone in our society has what they need to thrive and to live without their existence being threatened, and we have already lost so many of the people who would now be our mentors and elders, helping us to navigate present vagaries.
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Some Questions
In the face of struggles past and present, knowing that my fitness journey has been profoundly impacted by the methods espoused by Findlay Movement and CrossFit more generally, my reasons for becoming a fitness trainer and coach are clear. I am led to cultivate spaces of empowerment, especially for Queer people within fitness, and to center health, wellness, and longevity in the process. Yet after a year of coaching, I may have more questions than answers.
What’s important about the community experience?
There can be a lot of healthy ego in any gym, in which we lightly encourage each other to improve our fitness in part by competing with ourselves and each other. Sometimes we want to try a heavier weight or go for a workout as prescribed when we really shouldn’t – achieving the intended stimulus matters much more for getting fitter. Still, training is for taking risks and sometimes we take them because of ego or simply because we want to try something out, and then everything falls apart. I’ve been a witness to many such instances, and each time I observe how powerful it is for the people around you (and sometimes around me) when you're on that struggle bus to be calling your name, reassuring you that, still, you’ve got this. You can get there! It becomes a metaphor for life and something you internalize – that you can do hard things, and the people around you will hold you if/when the heat gets too hot. Sometimes, though, support also looks like holding each other accountable. How do we strike a balance between cheering each other on and encouraging each other to grow, do better, check our egos, etc?
How important is sleep, nutrition, and self-care?
Recovery is imperative; it’s almost everything. Recovery is what leads to gains; we have to eat well, sleep well, and reduce stress. Yet in today’s world, most jobs and lifestyles present major challenges to good recovery – not to mention that people experiencing poverty have very difficult decisions to make on a regular basis, for example, about whether to rest or to put food on the table, let alone worry about their fitness. We only see health benefits if we have good recovery, and this isn’t even available to many people, and, when it is available, it’s challenging to maintain. How does a gym community support each other in maintaining recovery? How can we offer our hands and feet to those without access to fitness and how can we help make the changes that would expand access?
How can empowerment be woven into the everyday experience of gym members?
During any effective class, a coach is attending to many different layers of athletes’ experience at once. There are six attributes of an effective coach that have to do with teaching, seeing, correcting, group management, presence & attitude, and demonstration. With a goal like mine, to cultivate spaces of empowerment within fitness, we can have special events and seminars, and we can place signs of inclusion throughout the gym (like the pride flag and other supportive messages). I’m curious, though, about how in any given, everyday experience of training, a coach can help athletes bring their whole selves, encourage vulnerability and growth, and push athletes to become the best versions of themselves. How do we weave empowerment into the very fabric of our coaching techniques? This is a question I intend to continue exploring, and I invite anyone’s thoughts on the matter. Please do reach out!
Yours Truly,
Zachary Dutton
