5 minute read
MAKING DO IN LOCKDOWN
Alix Coe, trans fitness coach, looks at how people have adapted – and adopted –exercise regimes
) The past few months have been a weird time for the fitness world. Gyms closed, outdoor exercise became a divisive issue, and our selection of workout buddies became limited to the people we live with. As an online personal trainer, I’ve seen first-hand how the lockdown has encouraged people to switch up their exercise routines. And, if there is a silver lining to any of this, it’s that more and more people are embracing home fitness. Often when my clients approach me for the first time, they’ve never had a structured workout plan before, or much exercise experience at all. This is usually because they have been reluctant to set foot in a gym – an environment that has historically not been welcoming of trans people. ALIX COE The majority of my fitness coaching clients are transgender or gender non-conforming people – a deliberate decision on my part after struggling to get into fitness during the early years of my own transition.
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The combination of gendered changing rooms, often toxic attitudes and perpetuated stereotypes of gym bodies, can result in a lot of people, trans and cis alike, feeling excluded. Often the assumption is that if you can’t go to the gym to get fit, then your options are limited. And this puts a lot of people off when it comes to getting active.
Talking to a new client about how they can take control of their health and fitness without going to the gym is always an exciting time for me. It’s also a concept that I’m always exploring further myself. I believe your own body is one of the most powerful pieces of fitness equipment you can find. Through bodyweight exercises at home, people can develop their fitness, and also start to build up the confidence to enter other exercise spaces if this is something they want to do. Building strength and stamina are two things the majority of us can do without any equipment at all – and this is something that people around the world are now embracing amid the pandemic. In the first few weeks of the lockdown, all the new clients I took on were unable to buy exercise equipment online because of high demand across the country. Although this seemed like a hindrance to some, the lack of alternatives was actually great for encouraging people to embrace bodyweight workouts. We are all different when it comes to mobility, ability, and capacity. And, in a fitness context, these differences force us to be creative in order to stay challenged. The truth that we are all now discovering is that we don’t need expensive exercise machines or endless pieces of equipment. All we need is the space to move our bodies, the knowledge to reach our goals, and the motivation to keep at it.
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) Alix is a trans-masculine personal trainer and plant-based nutrition coach working in the trans/queer community. They offer their services on a sliding scale in order to help make fitness more accessible. I You can find Alix on Insta @alix_coe
A LETTER TO WOULD-BE VEGANS
Vince (he/him) is an autistic trans guy living in the south of England. He has had an affinity with animals since his childhood, and finally committed to veganism in 2016
) To my beloved fellow vegans, ‘self-righteous’, ‘preachy’, ‘judgemental’. Vegans hear these words a lot. “How do you spot a vegan at a dinner party? Don't worry, they'll tell you.” (More often than not, as we all know, the only reason we've said it is because someone insisted on knowing why we declined that piece of cheesecake or whatever.) “I hate vegans” isn't considered actual hate speech or even particularly controversial, and you know what? I don't care and neither should you, because this way of life was never about us or our comfort. We’re a minority of the population for sure, but we aren't a marginalised or oppressed group – the animals we advocate for are. We are merely allies – spokespeople for sentient beings who, while not voiceless, can't use words to express their pain and heartache. Beings who are still considered lesser because they were born into non-human bodies. We understandably get frustrated with hearing the same old excuses and the hackneyed ‘debates’ about iron and desert islands and personal choice tho’, and it's perfectly valid to express those frustrations, to vent about it to one another, and to do self-care things when it's all getting too much. But we mustn't make the mistake of imagining ourselves as persecuted for our beliefs in the same way as, for example, Muslims are. We, as privileged homo sapiens, must keep the non-human animals (for want of a better name) front and centre of this movement, just as cis-het LGBTQIA allies should use their relative privilege to draw attention to the issues faced by the people they ally themselves with.
VINCE
You may be thinking: “But this doesn't need to be said. Every vegan I know thinks this and lives it too.” You're probably right, for the moment. But as the Covid-19 pandemic, the resulting measures taken by governments and the reactions to those measures by certain individuals have shown us, there is literally no injustice or calamity in this world that can't be appropriated in the name of imaginary oppression. Veganism is not above being made about ‘vegan rights’ instead of animal rights. So I'm putting this out there, hoping that in some small way it might help prevent that detrimental shift in focus from ever occurring. As a trans person, I’ve been there while cis 'allies' have talked over us, pandered to transphobic views while claiming to be on our side, and taken our righteous pain and anger and made it into a joke or a personal affront against themselves. As a vegan in particular, I hold myself to a higher standard of allyship and I know that I am not alone in this. To wrap this up, I want to thank you all. Thank you for doing what you do for our animal friends. And if you aren't a vegan yet but read through to the end of this anyway, please join us. Most of us are nice enough, and we even have cake.
