Fuel Your Strength: Making Mobility Practical

I’ve been invited on many podcasts over the years and this was my second opportunity to be on a podcast with Strength Coach Steph Gaudreau.

The first podcast I was invited on by Steph was in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests. The invite came as Steph sought to highlight more Black coaches, coaches of color and other underrepresented groups in the profession.

I had just criticized a fitness podcast that had over 400 episodes and not one episode featuring a health and fitness professional of color.

This would seem to be an obvious flaw and bias, but no one seems to really take it seriously within the fitness industry. But why is it important to highlight this fact?

Well, in this ocean of a world where systemic racism, inherent bias and underrepresentation is simply a fact of life, we are fish swimming in waters that we often don’t realize contain these elements. We’ve been swimming in it all of our lives and so we see this normal as a baseline for our existence.

It is only when we step out of the water and view these waters from the land that we realize we are wet. The amphibious life that most BIPOC and LGBTQ+ have to live in gives us deep understanding of being immersed in the space and yet also removed from it.

Through this lens, we see our world differently than those who never have to step outside and view the waters from the shores.

As a fitness professional, the underrepresentation is obvious to me. The leadership and the views expressed are usually limited to the bias of some. We find ourselves not taking into consideration the various cultural elements and differences that present themselves. We design our training and approach our clients through a lens that is steeped in traditions that are rooted in a time long before we could even imagine taking a nuanced approach to gender, sexuality, the influences and biases that come from the constructs race, etc.

Body type, size, shape and social ideals have been imposed on all of us and are rooted in the ideas that come out of the dominant voice of the minority opinion… usually that from the minds of colonial ancestors.

So it has been an honor to be invited into spaces to share my thoughts, expertise and perspectives as a peer, colleague and esteemed professional.

These are simply small things that begin to chip away at how we view the lead voices in the health and fitness space. But we have to start somewhere and “the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.”

Please enjoy this episode of Fuel Your Strength Podcast embedded below.

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