Decolonizing Fitness

Greetings Everyone Candace and I are very excited to announce some things we are rolling out for the Decolonizing Fitness Podcast in 2020 which is currently available on SoundCloud, ITunes & Spotify. Ilya I’m a Physical Therapist Assistant and Personal Trainer specializing in Medical Exercise. I ​am the owner of Decolonizing Fitness. My weight neutral, compassionate, trauma informed care comes from all the bullshit I’ve been through as a fat, black, non binary trans person with mental health issues and chronic medical conditions. I’m an educator whose work centers gender, racial and healing justice. I am a freelance writer and have contributed to ​EveryDay Feminism​,...

Radically Fit Oakland As a queer woman of color who was adopted by a white couple in the 80’s I have grown up feeling out of place in most spaces. It’s hard to make your way through the world, as most people of color do, searching to find a space to safely take up. It took me many years to get to the point where I started demanding that space. Fitness was a huge catalyst for how I approached walking through life as a bigger bodied queer woman of color. I first fell in love with fitness ten years ago,...

The first magical skill I learned was how to change a flat tire on a bicycle. I was twenty years-old and had recently obtained my first queer haircut. Loitering on the lawn of the college bike collective, I watched as groups of two to three intimidating-looking dykes hovered around upside down bicycles holding wrenches and greasy rags. I was desperate to pick up some mechanical skills to bolster my baby butch ego, but the shame of not even knowing where to start forced me to keep on walking. I spent the following summer learning bike mechanics from a local nonprofit...

When I’m upset, energy rises inside me. I clench my fists.  I feel rage. I used to head to the gym and run until I couldn’t or lifted heavy weights until my arms shook. I thought this was healthier than throwing things, drinking, or other self-destructive behaviors but, sometimes, I did those things too. Dealing with unpleasant feelings for masculine folks is a complicated process and unfortunately, emotional processing skills in masc communities aren’t often talked about.   However, Ilya’s “Fitness Can Be Used As A Healing Modality” post has really saved me. The post taught me to understand fitness...