Hurdle Health and Fitness Group

So this is the message I woke up to the other week on an app from a Toronto guy. "Aren't you too fat to be a trainer?" I didn't really react much. I'm used to toxicity online. He continued with a series of messages telling me I should have abs (like him) and that he could train me in the bedroom. Etc etc. (yes, I reported him for harrassment).... This isn't a post about that person (I hope you read this though). It's post about how I felt, how I feel, and how I think some of you are feeling right now. Covid has been hard for me. Really hard. Personal traumas and disconnections have had me eating my feelings - out of depression, hurt, and boredom. We joke about 'Covid bellies' but I think jokes are there to cover the pain some of us feel when we don't have control and use food as a way to cope. I think I'm a good trainer. I care about my clients, their progress, their health. But for all of us, and gay men in particular, I think we can take on extra stresses about body image. And that affect us all day, every day - its something I've struggled with my whole life. Now in the last few years that stress has multiplied because of my job. It adds another dimension of anxiety where I can feel like a fake and a fraud, where my body isn't just a personal issue, but a professional issue. I've thought about how that guy's message made me feel. I'm tired of this toxic relationship with how I think about my body. I am tired of feeling a hypocrite, when I'm not. Strength can mean so much yet we filter it down to so little. Strength isn't an aesthetic. It's building yourself up and pushing back on that which weighs on us (figuratively and literally). I do workout. And I am strong. And I use that strength to help the people around me. I still wake up, and go to work, and make myself available if people need to move boxes to a new apartment or need to talk. I'm strong because I care about my communities and my families and I make time for them. So to the guy who thinks I'm "too fat to train", I want you to know I have no response to you because I'm too busy writing this love letter to myself and my people and, if you want to get 'real' strong, I'm right here. Ryan Wolman Owner, Coach, and Unstoppably Proud lifter at www.Hurdlehigher.com