08/05/2026
Happy 6 years Catalyst!!
🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🩵🩷🤍
Someone once told me to keep politics out of fitness. They said, “Just focus on fitness.”
That sounds simple enough until you ask one question: Who actually has the privilege of focusing only on fitness?
If you are white, male, financially secure, and have reliable transportation, safe neighborhoods, free time, and disposable income, fitness can feel like a personal choice. You can walk into almost any gym and assume you belong there. You can run outside without worrying about your safety. You can pay your membership and drive yourself to class.
In writing this as a white female, I also acknowledge that some of my own circumstances align with those I listed above. I am also writing this because I want to be part of a community where everyone can belong.
Fitness has never existed separate from society because our bodies move through systems shaped by race, class, age, disability, gender, and sexuality. Opportunities are not distributed equally. Neither is access to health.
Take youth, for example. Kids cannot drive themselves to the gym. They cannot pay for memberships. Many parents are working multiple jobs or making impossible choices between groceries, rent, housing, and extracurricular activities. For many families, structured fitness simply is not an option, even if they know how important it is.
The barriers extend far beyond money.
For decades, housing policies, segregation, and unequal public investment have shaped who has access to sidewalks, parks, recreation centers, and safe places to exercise. Communities of color have often been disproportionately affected by these inequities, leaving fewer opportunities for movement and recreation close to home. LGBTQ+ people have often faced discrimination or harassment in athletic spaces. People with disabilities continue to encounter physical and social barriers that make participating in fitness more difficult than it should be.
These are not political opinions.
They are social realities.
When some neighborhoods have abundant resources for movement while others have very few, fitness is political.
When a child’s zip code influences whether they have a safe place to play, fitness is political.
When someone has to wonder whether they will be accepted because of their race, disability, body, gender identity, or sexual orientation before they even walk into a gym, fitness is political.
Ignoring those realities does not make them disappear. It simply allows the people who have never experienced those barriers to believe everyone has the same opportunities.
That is why I will never separate fitness from advocacy.
Show up for kids. Every single time.
Help create the conditions in which they can find joy and confidence. Give them a place where they know they belong.
A barbell is never just a barbell.
For some people it is strength.
For others it is healing.
For many it is community.
For someone else it may be the first place they have ever truly felt accepted.
Weightlifting improves health. It teaches discipline. It builds confidence and resilience. For some people it becomes the reason they believe in themselves again. For others, it becomes the reason they keep showing up when life tells them not to.
That is why fitness matters.
And that is exactly why fitness is political.
