Anti-Oppression Statement

The purpose of this statement is for you as a current or potential future client to understand my values and practices behind and beyond Swol Boy Fitness (SBF) coaching and programming. It is based on the incredibly thorough Anti-Oppression Statement (AOS) written by Hilary and Dana of Be Nourished.

Taking on a coach is a big decision. You’re putting your trust in a stranger to give you advice and recommendations on what to do with your body, regardless of your goals. Therefore, I have written this AOS in order to help you decide if my values align with yours and if my coaching methods resonate with you before you hire me as your coach.

This statement includes information about myself beyond my “About the Coach” statement at the bottom of the page. In particular, my positionality, my commitment to anti-oppression work, racial justice and equity, my teachers and lineage, and the business practices I’ve implemented to mitigate inequity, and center accessibility and cultural humility. Despite years of teaching outside the business under my belt, I am constantly seeking more learning opportunities and making improvements to my business practices to better align with this AOS. I consider this to be a living document that will change over time, since I am a lifelong learner, listener, and highly fallible human being that is always growing.

I started SBF in late 2019. I do the work of being a strength and physique coach with the unearned privileges extended to me as a white, able-bodied, educated, middle class, straight-sized, lean person. I am committed to examining and re-examining the ways I offer and develop my services and pushing myself to be actively anti-racist as a coach and business owner. I have had a commitment from a young age to actively work to dismantle the ways white supremacy has showed up in my academic work as a student. Now that I am launching the SBF site and my formal paid coaching services in 2021, I am actively working to do the same in my organization. Outlined below are my commitments to the future of SBF and the community I hope to build here.

I promote diversity and equity as core values in the work I do. Diversity includes – but is certainly not limited to – size, ethnicity, race, nationality, gender, sex, sexual orientation, age, class, citizenship status, religion, language, and abilities. As a coach, I welcome the ways this diversity will deepen our shared understanding of the applications of my work. I celebrate and honor the strength and creativity that comes from experiencing different viewpoints, backgrounds and cultures.

I read, listen to, learn from, and attend classes and workshops with Black and Indigenous teachers. I look forward to seeking more training and consultation with equity and inclusion facilitators once the business allows me to afford them, and continually work to use this knowledge to make my services and business as equitable and affirming as possible. This as a lifelong commitment, and a process which unfolds at the speed of any relationship, and under the guidance of BIPOC Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) consultation.

SBF offers services that can (but don’t have to) include weight manipulation, as I truly believe that weight and physique manipulation should not be a central (or even a necessary) aspect of a resistance training plan, resistance training and conditioning goals, or any exercise/movement practice in general. As a coach, I do not encourage weight manipulation or promote it as a “health” practice in order to minimize the harm done by the fatphobia inherent in the ideology that suggests size is equal to health, beauty, or worth. However, as a student and practitioner of the sport of bodybuilding, I do offer services that cater to bodybuilding-focused training, or conditioning and nutrition practices to compliment competitive strength/powerlifting training. For clients that seek physique services, I emphasize that these physique-related goals should be limited to stay strictly within the realm of practitioners of amateur or competitive physique sports as much as possible. I also discourage traditional bodybuilding “prep” or powerlifting meet “cut” practices for general population clients.

I emphasize a coaching practice of sustainable bodybuilding and lifting practices that emphasize mental, physical, and emotional health as a means of being a lifelong physique/strength sport athlete or trainee. I teach clients to prioritize this rather than focusing simply on the end-goal of a competitive season, or on the short-term drastic weight-loss practices that risk an athlete’s health and leads to burnout. I do not encourage bodybuilding as a solution for short or long-term weight-loss and attempt to minimize my perpetuation of and participation in the toxicity of diet culture. As a coach at SBF, I am firmly against the way bodybuilding and physique sport practices has historically bled into the general population of gym-goers since its inception. This overlap has created a “health and fitness” culture that places a value on weight, size, muscularity, and leanness; encourages poor body-image; promotes a negative relationship with food; and feeds off all of it for a profit. I work to actively make the practices utilized at the high levels of competitive strength and physique sports sustainable and healthier, and reduce the extent to which those norms/practices promote and influence diet culture at large within the general population.

The work I do at SBF is heavily informed by various social justice movements and educators, and has been greatly influenced by several movements and histories, including Black Feminist Theory (Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Combahee River Collective); the work done by the Inclusive Fitness Movement (Coach Justice Roe of Fitness for All Bodies, Ilya Parker of Decolonizing Fitness LLC, Kinesiologist Noori Jerrard, and Roc Rochon of Rooted Resistance); the work and collection of resources on the racism within diet culture curated by Coach Shelby Gordon; and radical self-love as taught and practiced by Sonya Renee Taylor. My ideology as a coach is also informed by the Health at Every Size® movement, the Healing/Transformative Justice and Disability Justice movements, accountability as taught by Mia Mingus, and Brené Brown’s research on shame, vulnerability, and empathy. Finally, SBF coaching practices utilize intuitive eating and flexible dieting principles; motivational interviewing; self-compassion theory; cultural humility theory and practice; mindfulness-based approaches; and lastly, the principles of practicality, long-term career sustainability, and holistic health for strength athletes as practiced and taught by 3DMJ, Stronger By Science, and The Strength Athlete. I have spent 10+ years learning, and 2 years fine-tuning my approach to fitness and lifting practices and coaching. I consider this essential to working with clients at SBF and changing the way physical culture is taught and practiced.

A huge part of my work with clients is relationship-building and working together as a team, and this relational work expands outside the coaching practice. Though I personally am not an equity and inclusion facilitator or an anti-racism educator, I am committed to and prioritize learning more about oppressive diet cultures in order to keep my practices from perpetuating them. I truly don’t believe it is responsible or ethical to be an educator, mentor, or coach, in the world of strength sports without a social justice analysis. I am committed to helping people develop their analysis as they progress through their journey and connecting them to resources that can help them further.

My intention in communication with clients is to hold space and offer experiences to help mitigate the impact the culture has on you when it doesn’t mirror your wholeness. I see and know how oppression and discrimination, as well as the furthering of the thin, lean, cis, white, gender-conforming, able-bodied ideal – particularly with the normalization and spread of physique sports – has created conditions that repeatedly reinforce trauma, shame and self-blame, and separate people from their bodies and their own knowing, voice and truth. In confronting this, I aim to decenter my own identities while centering others’ lived experience as much as possible. I hope to learn from the work of consultants, educators, speakers, and other contributors with marginalized identities, and I seek to amplify the work of marginalized voices in my content, educational materials, coaching practices, and resources.

My learning is not always sufficient and my dominant identities, including and especially whiteness, betray me. Knowing that I have no doubt caused harm and am not immune from doing so again in the future, I am working on developing an accountability process. When I do cause harm, this process will involve the parties harmed and an independent teacher, and work towards repair when possible.

SBF is a relatively brand-new business run by one queer, trans person working 2 other jobs outside of SBF and is not yet profitable. Upon becoming profitable in the future, here are the additional anti-oppressive practices I plan to commit to:

I live and work on the unceded land of the Comanche, Wichita, Tawakoni, Jumanos, and Kiikaapoi people (found using Native Land). I grapple with what it means to live here as a settler - and thus an uninvited resident - and acknowledge that my presence here impedes a way of life. I am committed to justice and restitution for indigenous people, and my goal is that upon this business becoming profitable, I plan to “pay the rent” by giving 1% of my income to local organizations including the Urban Inter-Tribal Center of Texas, American Indian Movement of Central Texas, and the Indigenous Cultures Institute.

I look to help organize and participate in accountability groups with other colleagues to ensure I am true to our values, this statement, and our commitments to growth and change.

Should I expand the business and hire other coaches or employees, I will seek out, invite, and pay coaches and professionals with marginalized identities. I will offer employees reimbursement for ongoing anti-racism and anti-oppression training. I pay any consultants, colleagues, guest speakers and co-facilitators for their labor and collaboration. I will prioritize ordering any services I might need in the future from BIPOC-owned, queer/trans-owned, and disabled-owned businesses in my local area and the state from which the business is run. I will amplify the work of marginalized voices in any of my curriculum, content, and resources.

I embody policies and practices intended to create access to any resources or products I offer. I acknowledge the systems of power that grant privilege and access unequally such that inequity and injustice result, and I am committed to dismantling these systems. Black and Indigenous people and people of color, trans and non-binary folks, queer people, super and infinifat folks, and people with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by barriers to healthcare and wellness services due to systemic and institutionalized systems. I wish to push back against this impact with sliding-scale pricing, negotiable pricing for those who cannot afford within the sliding-scale range (by request), and trading/bartering goods and services if necessary. Clients who can pay full price (the recommended high end of the sliding-scale pricing) for my services create the capacity for others to access support and are encouraged to please pay what they can, thus ensuring everyone’s needs are met.

I am committed to making my work as accessible as possible for people with disabilities. I strive to make all my content screen-reader friendly and include closed captions and/or transcripts for every video I make, not only on my site, within my resource catalog, and for my coaching clients, but also on all my social media. I plan on eventually implementing a Disability Accommodations form for all my products, resources, and coaching services.

Once sufficiently profitable, I will hire and pay DEI and anti-racist practitioners to evaluate new programs and products I create, and to do ongoing accountability work with me in regards to my coaching practice.

I have big dreams for SBF, including to implement some sort of scholarship fund for clients who cannot afford coaching at any level and are unable to barter/trade services. I also hope to develop a grant for athletes looking to be competitive in strength sports to assist them in accessing their respective sport (paying for contest registration/membership fees, buying necessary equipment, covering travel/room and board expenses, etc.). My hope is that this assists in decreasing the accessibility gap in strength sports.

I appreciate you taking time to read this statement. I do not expect or believe I am the right teacher for everyone, and if you do not feel I am the coach for you, I am interested in supporting you to find mentors and support that do work best for you. I plan on creating and maintaining a list of teachers, trainers, coaches, registered dietitians, psychologists, physical therapists, and other clinicians/professionals who hold marginalized identities, and keep the list available for anyone who needs it upon request. I will update this page when such a list is developed. There is also an excellent list of resources and practitioners curated by Ilya Parker of Decolonizing Fitness. If the list is able to help you in any way, please consider making a donation while stopping by their site.