Fitness
Raising the bar: How an Edmonton gym is making exercise accessible | Xtra Magazine
In a nondescript one-storey building in the west end of Edmonton, you’ll find Action Potential Fitness, a small gym nestled in between a service dog training centre and a scrapbooking supplies shop. On the inside, it doesn’t look much different than any other fitness facility. Free weights and kettlebells, workout benches, a couple of squat racks and other manner of fitness equipment line the walls. Clients come and go on the hour, mingling with each other and the trainers before or after their individual sessions and group classes.
The uniqueness of this gym lies in the fact that over 70 percent of the staff, including the owners of the gym, identify as LGBTQ2S+. Look a bit closer and you’ll see a trans-flag-coloured stuffed shark mascot on a shelf overseeing one section of the gym, Progressive Pride flags and rainbows throughout the facility, non-gendered bathrooms and staff and clients who often wear pronoun pins or T-shirts.
Action Potential Fitness is where Toni Harris, co-owner and trans fitness trainer, finally had the opportunity to create and implement a project they’d been dreaming about for years: a fitness program designed for trans people, by trans fitness professionals.
Harris started to notice the need for more LGBTQ2S+-friendly fitness spaces in Edmonton after they graduated from their fitness-trainer program in 2017 and began working at a big box gym. One of the other trainers they worked alongside reached out to a local LGBTQ2S+ organization to recruit participants and start a group fitness class at the gym where they were working. But there was a catch: the owners of the facility would only allow the class to be scheduled 30 minutes after the gym closed and all of the other clients and trainers had left the building. It was then that Harris really began to understand the barriers and discrimination that the LGBTQ2S+ community face in the fitness world.
In the majority of fitness facilities, the gender binary is still very much entrenched. Policies such as gendered change rooms and classes, or requiring forms to be filled out with the name and gender on your ID create an exclusionary environment in which those who identify outside the binary are often forced to “choose a side.” This experience can make something as simple as exercising feel embarrassing and stressful.
“Gyms don’t even know how not inclusive they are,” says Zita Dube-Lockhart, Harris’s business partner and co-owner at Action Potential Fitness. Dube-Lockhart feels that one of the major limitations in the fitness industry is that it hasn’t done any real work to recruit, develop and train diverse people with different lived experiences. “The fitness world talks a big game about how we’re for everyone, but being for everyone means actually ensuring that you have everyone at the table in your leadership, in your instruction, in your conceptualization and in your participation. And actively looking for gaps in who you are not reaching.”
Back in 2017, Harris may have been somewhat heartened to see at least some space in the fitness world being carved out for LGBTQ2S+ people, but knew there had to be a better way to foster inclusion than relegating queer and trans clients to an after-hours slot. So they made it their personal and professional mission to better understand the fitness needs of the queer and trans community and to be part of building a space where those needs could be met.
Harris, who was not yet out as trans at the time, started researching exercise response and accessibility within the trans community, and began training more trans and non-binary clients one-on-one. They were slowly building a reputation as a safe and well-informed fitness professional within the local trans community in Edmonton. It was also through these interactions with trans clients that helped them build up the confidence to start their own transition. “The connections and relationships [I was building] with other trans humans and hearing their experiences made it less scary for me.”
Harris met Dube-Lockhart as they were both finishing the fitness-trainer program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. They connected instantly and shared very similar views on fitness accessibility, body neutrality and inclusion. In April 2019, Harris moved their solo personal training practice to the gym space Dube-Lockhart was already running. When the pandemic struck, the two decided to weather the storm together. They formalized their partnership, rebranded the facility as Action Potential Fitness and worked relentlessly for two years to hold their community together.
Their mission—fitness for every body and health for everyone—set the course of the facility and their niche quickly turned toward barrier reduction for marginalized populations. Dube-Lockhart says their vision was to have a fitness space that was built on the framework of “belonging, dignity and social justice.”
“We recognize that health is an individual and communal experience, mediated by issues of accessibility, social power and privilege,” says Dube-Lockhart, who is also queer and neurodivergent. “There are often difficulties in accessing the right information and professionals who understand and have similar lived experiences.” In order to address these challenges, and with the help of their mostly queer and neurodivergent staff, programs offered at Action Potential Fitness include ones for early learning and gross motor skill development for neurodiverse children and their parents/caregivers, youth programs and radical body acceptance fitness programs that are affirming and weight-neutral.
With the resources now in place in their own facility, Harris also began to develop programming to serve and support the trans community on a larger scale. In January 2023, the first cohort of trans and non-binary clients were enrolled in a free six-week “Intro to Weight Lifting” pilot program, called Fitness Trans Formed.
“We had put up a feeler post on social media, along with a registration link and thought we might get five or six people. We had 36 people register,” Harris says. They were elated and a bit overwhelmed with the response, but “just couldn’t turn anyone away.” Many of the fitness and wellness programs that were previously offered through other LGBTQ2S+ organizations in Edmonton had shut down during the pandemic and never restarted. “We heard from so many people who said they’d been waiting for something like this.”
Dorian Block was part of the inaugural group of Fitness Trans Formed participants. He had recently moved to Edmonton from the U.S. to be with his partner and was looking to find a community. His partner sent him an Instagram post about the program and he jumped at it and registered right away.
“I really started trying to masculinize my body in different ways when I started considering top surgery. I was not the physical type, and started with yoga stuff and then just weightlifting.” Block joined a gym when the date for his surgery was set. He was in Texas then, and he says walking into the gym was scary at times. “I felt like I was always putting myself in a space that wasn’t specifically built for me and always had to mentally pump myself up to go. I would say to myself, ‘You are paying to be here, you were here first for this piece of equipment.’” He was also very aware of how he dressed going to the gym, and before surgery, often wouldn’t use the men’s change room.
After surgery, Block was doing workouts he found online from trans creators posting on Instagram, but never anything that was tailored to him or his personal fitness goals. “Finding a trainer locally who shared an identity with me and was able to kind of match my fitness goals to my workouts, and my eating habits and dietary needs, was not something I ever thought possible.”
Block admits that being around other trans people had historically not been affirming for him. The pervasiveness of diet culture, shame and hyper-macho attitudes he had previously experienced left him with a lot of anxiety about even entering a space with other trans folks. One of the first things Block noticed when he joined the Fitness Trans Formed program was how body-neutral the environment was. “Everyone just showed up at whatever stage [they were at] in their little gender journey.” Instead of feeling anxious, Block said he felt empowered being in such a trans-affirming and safe space and this renewed his sense of motivation to get back to working out.
Harris notes the intake forms that participants fill out ahead of time put people’s minds at ease way before they even get to the gym. The forms ask questions about pronouns and names (Harris points out that they will never ask to see someone’s ID or need to know their deadname, something many mainstream gyms require for membership). “We also have a lot of non-binary people register for the programs who just want to be in a space with other people who aren’t going to question what the heck non-binary means!”
Every personal trainer who works with the participants in the Fitness Trans Formed program is trans. It’s this lived experience and the specialized knowledge they have about the unique considerations of trans people that is not only key to the success of the program, it’s also imperative for the safety of all involved. “It’s things like having an understanding of the different physiological effects of being on hormone therapy or knowing how to safely modify workouts because participants are wearing gender-affirming garments like binders or gaffes,” Harris says.
All of these considerations are talked about very openly in the workshop portions of the program. Dube-Lockhart says the goal is not only to teach the participants the basics of weightlifting and using fitness equipment, but also the importance of the mind-body connection and understanding how trauma affects both mental and physical health.
Harris’s ultimate goal with the Fitness Trans Formed program is to not only get trans people moving their bodies, but to also help them reconnect with their bodies—something that can be difficult for many trans people who come to the program with anxiety, trauma and/or gender dysphoria.
A 2022 New York Times article exploring the healing power of weightlifting explained how people who’ve experienced trauma will often avoid exercise entirely because of the physical stress response it can generate. The heart beats faster, blood pressure increases, there’s shortness of breath—physical symptoms that are similar to those experienced during a trauma response. Harris agrees that for many of their clients differentiating between a trauma response and the physical discomfort of starting a new workout program can be difficult. The Fitness Trans Formed trainers work through a trauma-informed lens to educate participants to recognize these discomforts and help them to incrementally build both their physical strength and their mental resilience.
The Fitness Trans Formed program is run out of the Action Potential Fitness facility, but officially through the Centre for Trauma-Informed Fitness, a not-for-profit Harris and Dube-Lockhart established in order to be able to further develop programs for the trans and gender-diverse community and provide them at a low or no cost to participants. Having the not-for-profit designation helps in accessing grants and funding from other agencies and gives the pair the ability to partner with like-minded organizations who may be interested in hosting programs in their own facilities.
“Affordability is probably the biggest barrier besides safety and space,” says Harris. “Every time we run a program, we have a tiered pricing structure that goes all the way down to ‘I can’t afford to pay anything’. We don’t turn anybody away based on financial need.” Dube-Lockharts adds that services through the Centre are provided on a volunteer basis with all revenues being directly reinvested into program delivery.
There have been three cohorts and approximately 50 participants through the Fitness Trans Formed program since its inception. Seven out of the eight fitness team members who help run the programs are trans- or queer-identifying, and both Harris and Dube-Lockhart were recognized earlier this year as top Canadian fitness professionals for their work with diverse communities.
In the coming months, Harris and Dube-Lockhart are holding their first industry workshop for fitness professionals to help guide others in making their spaces more inclusive for the queer and trans community. The next Fitness Trans Formed sessions are set to start this month, with the first one being a youth program that incorporates both Fitness Trans Formed and DiversiFit—the centre’s program for neurodiverse clients. They have 15 participants enrolled in this new program, with 10 of them identifying as gender expansive.
Given the current climate in Alberta for the trans community, Harris and Dube-Lockhart are even more steadfast in their mission to provide safe and affirming spaces for trans and non-binary clients of all ages. Harris is also exploring a hybrid in-person/online version for people experiencing barriers accessing their facility or for whom being publicly out is not safe. “Ideally, we want our Fitness Trans Formed participants to feel confident enough to join any of our fitness classes and know they are an integral part of our fitness community.”
For Block, being part of that first Fitness Trans Formed group provided him with more than just motivation to get back to the gym. His new workouts have been mentally healing for him and when he finds himself in a space of hurt or anger, he returns to the mat to do some heavy lifting and recalibrate. “Up to this point, all of my fitness journey has been alone,” he says. But on a work trip to the U.S. this year where he experienced some direct transphobia, the Fitness Trans Formed group back in Edmonton had his back and was checking in with him the whole time. “Having had this safe space and a common goal around fitness was a really unique way to create a kind of lasting community.”
Fitness
'We need to be really concerned': How fitness influencers are creating 'a false sense of the world' for young boys
“Alright dumba**, welcome to lesson two here at fat f*** university.”
So begins one of the countless fleshy blurs of locally-produced fitness content pumped algorithmically into the feeds of Australian Instagram, TikTok and Facebook users.
It’s the sort of engagement-baiting approach that yields viewers and followers — designed to push men out of some apparent masculine malaise and into retaking control of their body and masculinity, usually via paid workout programs, products or supplements.
It’s also the type of content increasingly filtering into the phones of teenage boys.
While there is a more developed conversation about idealised images on social media and body image pressures on young girls, experts say research is less advanced when it comes to boys.
“I think boys are now objectifying themselves like never before and we do need to be really concerned,” said Danielle Rowland, Head of Prevention at national eating disorder charity the Butterfly Foundation.
“The intensity of training advice, nutrition and misinformation is greater than ever.”
Feeds serving up different diet
When Anthony Lee started high school in regional Victoria six years ago, social media had a different feel to it.
“In Year 7, it was just basically a way to keep up with your mates,” he said.
By the time he finished Year 12 last year, the feeds of his classmates had changed. So too, the surrounding culture.
“There is a growing problem with men having that feed of perfect body content,” he said.
“There are people who will see influencers on social media and say, ‘I’ve got to have bigger arms, toned legs, I got to have calves the size of mountains’.”
Linger on one Instagram reel showing off a set of dumbbell exercises, and you’ll likely get five more videos zeroing in on how to get “boulder shoulders”, or some protein-heavy diet advice from a shirtless influencer.
Josh Ward travels to schools in Sydney and around regional NSW, hearing from young boys as part of his work as a facilitator for men’s mental health organisation Tomorrow Man.
“There’s been a huge jump in the last two to three years in the amount of boys opening up in workshops around their body,” he said.
Mr Ward believes there’s no coincidence it’s occurred alongside a “big spike” in the amount of fitness and gym influencer content turning up in their feeds.
“If someone was in school walking around with a fitness mag in their pocket, bringing it out every recess or lunch, you’d think ‘that is some strange behaviour’. But that’s what [teenage boys] are celebrating now,” he said.
“The danger for young people is they don’t realise they’re actually the pioneer generation in terms of that exposure.
“In the last five years there’s been a crazy amount of fitness content, but that’s just what they’ve always been exposed to, so they don’t realise how strange it is.”
‘It creates a false sense of the world’
For many teenage boys on the path through puberty, working out in gyms has long represented an accelerated part of the journey into manhood.
Images of muscle-ripped celebrities and athletes serving as aesthetic inspiration, if not an unattainable physical ideal, is nothing new either.
But it’s the nature of that exposure — the type of content and the saturation of it — that has experts concerned.
“It’s that ‘in-your-face, all-the-time’ aspect of it,” said Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard from Flinders University.
“It’s seeing something on Instagram when we’re perhaps not in that frame of mind, making a comparison to this really fit person and have that influence the way we might feel about ourselves.
“We’re fed a whole range of things through those algorithms that we would never have had exposure to before and would never have sought out.”
Multiple experts the ABC spoke to reported seeing digitally-altered and even AI-generated images of supposedly naturally-fit bodies on social media.
Ms Prichard, a former fitness instructor whose research sits at the intersection of psychology, social media and exercise science, believes the constant barrage of perfectly sculpted bodies could destabilise the mental health of some teenage boys.
“For young people shaping their identity, it creates a false sense of the world,” she said.
Of the estimated 1.1 million Australians who had an eating disorder last year, one in three were male, according to the Butterfly Foundation.
For over a decade, Scott Griffiths has studied body image and psychological disorders, with a recent focus on male eating disorders, body dysmorphia and particularly, muscle dysmorphia.
“Muscle dysmorphia is a psychological disorder. It’s not just being a gym junkie,” said Mr Griffiths, an associate professor and lead of the Physical Appearance Research Team at the University of Melbourne.
“It’s a preoccupation. You are always thinking about food, training, your appearance. It’s on your mind all the time.”
According to the Butterfly Foundation, people aged between 15 and 19 are 2.7 times more likely to experience an eating disorder. It makes social media an animating and potentially potent driver.
“It can reinforce in your mind that your worth is very closely tied to, if not wholly dependent upon, your appearance, which is not the basis for healthy self-esteem,” Dr Griffiths said.
“[TikTok and Instagram] are more likely to feature influencer bodies you are extremely unlikely to be able to achieve without performance enhancement, or a level of commitment to dieting and exercise that would overcome most people.”
Blurred lines at the gym
Joshie Glover, 27, has seen just how profoundly positive a gym environment can be for young boys.
In his work at young men’s mental health charity Man Cave, he estimates he’s facilitated over 170 school workshops of more than 5,550 students.
In that time, Mr Glover has witnessed countless examples of the physical and mental health benefits that a gym can provide, as well as the connection between mates working out.
It’s when those workouts veer toward the obsessive that problems emerged.
“With gym habits, it’s very blurred lines, which is why it’s quite insidious,” he said.
In Man Cave workshops, boys often speak about being bullied over their weight, only to reframe it as a positive.
“A lot of them will say, ‘I’m actually really grateful that I’ve been teased about how [fat] I was, because it motivated me to get to go to the gym and get big’,” Mr Glover said.
“The line of when it goes from a positive social thing, motivating each other, doing something physically, to slipping into a pressured, coercive kind of motivation by ridicule, it’s really blurred.”
Andrew Tate and the problem with ‘discipline’
Another online fixation that routinely comes up in workshops is Andrew Tate, the disgraced misogynist content creator currently awaiting a criminal trial on allegations of rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.
Mr Glover said there was an uneasy through line between the much-discussed appeal of Tate, who used to be a professional kickboxer, and the growing obsession with social media gym culture.
“Many boys are so confused as to what it means to be a man, who are the role models?” he said.
“One thing they’ve really latched onto is that a man is disciplined. Whenever you ask, ‘what’s the good bits about Andrew Tate?’, they’ll say, ‘he’s disciplined’.
“The main way that discipline can play out is attending to your physical body. There’s not really much desire for discipline in schoolwork or discipline in any other areas, it’s manifested in the gym.”
The irony that past generations have decried a lack of discipline in today’s kids is not lost on Mr Glover — but he said the dangers lie in its interpretation.
“The toxic, maybe unhealthy, part of it is that there are so many different kinds of bodies that a teenage boy would have, and they’re all being channelled into this one kind of mould of what the body of a disciplined person looks like,” he said.
The influencer credibility gap
Where parents and teachers may try, often in vain, to ward young boys away from specific individuals like Tate, telling them to ignore an entire social media ecosystem is even harder.
Fitness influencers and gym content creators have argued they are merely promoting healthy physical habits and dieting advice.
Some accounts function almost as communities of collective support for people trying to reach their goals, while many frame workout content through the lens of positive mental health.
Recent studies co-authored by Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard have analysed the content and credibility of fitness accounts on Instagram and TikTok.
The research found two-thirds of the accounts audited on Instagram “lacked credibility or contained potentially harmful or unhealthy content”, while exercise and diet advice promoted on TikTok was often at odds with national health guidelines.
In late 2022, US fitness content creator Brian “Liver King” Johnston suffered an ignominious fall from grace after admitting to spending tens of thousands of dollars on steroids and performance-enhancing drugs.
The Liver King had previously maintained his improbable physique was the result of hard workouts and eating raw meat, and that others should aspire to do the same.
Ms Prichard recommended seeking out content creators with relevant qualifications or failing that, the accounts of athletes and those who emphasise physical performance over aesthetics.
“From a user perspective, red flags are anything that has quite a lot of skin on display, is sexualised or is hyper-focussed on the appearance of the body,” she said.
“I would definitely encourage parents to also just talk to young people about what they are viewing on social media.”
At a recent barbecue, Danni Rowlands bent an ear toward a conversation her 10-year-old son was having with a few boys his age.
“They were looking at each other’s calves and deciding who had the veins popping out,” she said.
“They ranged from 10 to 12. One was saying ‘here’s my six-pack’.”
Ms Rowlands, who played netball at an elite level and has her own lived experience with eating disorders, knows an obsessive focus on physique can affect mental health, school participation and relationships with friends and family.
“I think it gets minimised and oversimplified — that it’s just a teenage thing — but there’s a real danger for a young person’s self-esteem, their identity, their mental health,” she said.
“It’s not wrong to want to take care of ourselves, but the pursuit of perfection, because we think that is the answer to all of our problems, is really setting ourselves up in a negative way to move through adulthood.”
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Fitness
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Fitness
Creating Immersive Experiences at Your Fitness Facility
According to Fabiano, new clubs are allocating between 600 to 2,000 square feet to recovery spaces.
West Wood Clubs, which has six locations in Dublin, Ireland, recently opened a new recovery room with heated hydrotherapy massage and cryotherapy beds at its Sandymount location. At the Clontarf Club, the company gutted its existing spa to build a bigger space that includes two giant Jacuzzis, a larger sauna and steam room, an ice room, a salt room, heated loungers, and a cold plunge pool.
“Members absolutely love the new spa area, and usage is out the door,” says Karen Polley, the managing director at West Wood Clubs.
Longevity Club created a dedicated stretching and recovery area, and also now offers acupuncture, chiropractic, massage, and functional medicine in-house.
“We built our brand on hospitality, where people feel cared for,” says Jennie Brooks, the owner/president of the Longevity Club. “So, we offer convenience in as many ways as we can, including a variety of curated services that we know members appreciate having under one roof.”
Healthworks Fitness Clubs in the Boston area debuted the Restore Spa after refurbishing its 19,000-square-foot flagship facility in Cambridge. It features a cold plunge pool, infrared sauna, eucalyptus steam room, whirlpool, spa showers, and restorative massage services.
“Recovery and longevity technology and services are just as important as cardio and strength,” observes Mark Harrington, the president of Healthworks.
Because recovery also encompasses mental health, some clubs are incorporating meditation pods, quiet rooms, and spaces with a strong connection to nature to help members release stress and relax.
Accentuating Ambiance
In addition to recovery spaces, locker rooms represent a haven and are a frequent target for upgrades.
“Members now expect more spacious grooming areas, increased privacy, and larger showers, and upscale clubs are offering heated shower floors, full-body dryers, and private dressing niches,” Fabiano says.
Carter adds that unisex bathrooms with private showers are becoming more common among studios and smaller clubs.
Equally as important are club lobbies and reception areas, which today are viewed as places to showcase the brand and linger.
“Lobbies have become much more inviting and less intimidating,” Carter reports. “Rather than offering sightlines to a mass of exercise machines, these areas are being designed to make a great first impression that is welcoming to both new and existing members.”
West Wood also unveiled a new reception and café area in Clontarf, which Polley describes as “a bright, beautiful, and friendly hub of the club.” Healthworks likewise designed a new reception area and lounge where members can relax and socialize.
At the Longevity Club, Brooks focuses on sensory appeal and making a stellar first impression when members enter not only the reception area, but also each floor of the multi-story facility.
“Taste has a big effect on memory, so we offer amenity bars with complimentary mints, fruit, tea, and coffee at the entrance and exit of each floor so that members come in and leave with a lasting pleasant impression,” she explains.
Co-working spaces have been limited to large, multipurpose facilities to date, but some clubs are placing communal tables with charging stations in the lobby as a convenience for members.
“The integration of co-working areas reflects a broader, more holistic approach to member services, acknowledging evolving lifestyle needs that blend work, fitness, and wellness,” Fabiano observes.
Lighting, colors, and flooring all contribute to fostering a custom environment that differentiates brands, attracts customers, and encourages repeat visits.
“There’s a trend toward creating visually stunning and immersive environments through thoughtful lighting, color schemes, and overall design as consumers increasingly expect higher quality in fitness facilities,” Januszek says.
Return on Reinvestment
Design upgrades and remodels are an ongoing cost of stimulating growth amid competition.
“We are always busy, and the facilities get old and tired every few years,” Polley says. “It’s a constant cycle of reinvestment, which is essential to meeting the evolving needs of our members and keeping us ahead of the curve.”
Januszek acknowledges the worth of engaging spaces. “By offering a comprehensive experience that goes beyond traditional workouts, clubs give members more reasons to value their membership and return.”
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