The first episode of the queer fitness podcast, a weekly interview where QFP’s host, Elise, interviews queer people about their experiences in fitness and sports. On this episode, personal trainer Asher Freeman talks about their experiences beginning their journey in fitness and what nonnormative fitness means to them. Find Asher on Instagram @nonnormativebodyclub.
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Transcript
Welcome to the Queer Fitness Podcast. I’m your host, Elise, and every week I’ll be interviewing a queer person about their experiences in fitness and sports. This week I interviewed Asher Freeman, a personal trainer and creator of the Non-normative Body Club.
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This first episode of the Queer Fitness Podcast is sponsored by our Patreon. For just one dollar a month you can become a patron of the Queer Fitness Podcast. You’ll get access to bonus content from every episode as well as patron only perks, like polls and audience submitted questions or anecdotes. Become a patron and help support the show at Patreon.com/Queerfitnesspod.
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Elise: Could you introduce yourself? Your uh, identity, your queer identity, your identity otherwise, you know other words to describe you?
Asher: Sure, yeah. My name is Asher. I use they and them pronouns. I identity as queer and trans and trans masculine and non-binary. Um, I’m white, Jewish, um, yeah I live in Philadelphia and work as a body positive personal trainer.
Elise: Cool, cool. Where I thought we’d start would be at the beginning with childhood. What sort of sports did you play as a kid or you know, growing up through school or anything like that?
Asher: Yeah, I played soccer from when I was really little. And some other sports, like, I lived in the suburbs. I guess it was pretty common for kids to play like basketball and be on swim team. Um, so, I did that. I think I like, ran on track when I was in middle school. But definitely the sport that I enjoyed the most was always soccer.
Elise: Yeah.
Asher: And when I was a really little kid, you know, that was what I was going to be when I grew up. Was like a professional soccer player. Although I was never especially good at it.
Elise: Yeah.
Asher: So yeah, there’s that. Once I got to high school I kind of abandoned sports, um, and yeah, I was pretty depressed in high school. So I just, like, any sort of exercise, for the most part, with some exceptions was like, just really challenging and I just didn’t, I wasn’t something that Iw as pursuing then.
Elise: Right.
Asher: Um, and then at some point, a couple of years after high school, I got into riding a bike and I started um, biking everywhere, like being a bike commuter. And that has lasted until today, against all like very.
Elise: Right.
Asher: It’s one of my main forms of exercise and movement that I enjoy. And it’s also, like last year, I moved from Portland, Oregon to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and I like, got to complete my dream of biking across the country.
Elise: That’s so cool.
Asher: Yeah, yeah. So those are like some of the, I guess the types of physical activity that I was into like before getting into like, resistance training.
Elise: Yeah. Um, How has the transition from team sports as a kid changed to these individual sports as an adult. How has that been for you?
Asher: Yeah. I real, I think, I’m always like I’m going to join a rec soccer team. Like every year.
Elise: Yeah.
Asher: But I haven’t actually done that. But yeah I feel –
Elise: Or do you feel your adult personality is just more of an individual um, sport kind of person? I don’t know.
Asher: Yeah I’ve played team sports here and there, Like one off games and I think they are really fun. But I think just realistically, like, what works into my schedule is like, I know if I’m like a bike commuter then I’m going to get bike rides in ever where I go.
Elise: Right.
Asher: And I don’t really like, have to plan around anyone else schedules. And I really enjoy um, you know, that it’s kind of meditative for me. Both like, riding my bike and like lifting weights and doing different sorts of like resistance training activities at home. When I am doing movement at home, that’s when I feel like a lot of my processing is happening. Like, things are kind of getting figured out and sorted out in my brain. Maybe not like, consciously but I feel a lot better afterwards.
Elise: Yeah. Cool. You talked about, uh biking. When did you start doing the weight training, sort of um, and I think that I saw that you went to uh, PT college?
Asher: Uh-huh. Oh yeah.
Elise: Right. Is that in combination, or?
Asher: Yeah. So I did go to an exercise science program at the community college in my hometown. Um, but that was after a few years of just learning how to lift weights on my own. And I started weight lifting, I actually started like when I was unemployed and my ego was entirely deflated, um, and I made this like, employment bucket list.
Elise: Nice.
Asher: Of, like, all of the free things that I could do. To like, take my mind off of the soul-sucking job search. And one of the things was like, I’m going to get a free gym trial and I’m going to use it. So I did that, um and I wound up like during that unemployment, bouncing around from one free gym trial to the next. And I lived in a place with a whole lot of gyms.
Elise: Nice.
Asher: So a fairly large city, so I got to do that for a while. And that was, I think, probably the first time that I was seriously, like really trying to do any sort of resistance training or weightlifting in the gym.
Elise: Yeah.
Asher: And so I would get like, tips here and there from people at the gym as I started um, started the trial, you know.
Elise: Every new week there’s a person giving you a little nugget of advice.
Asher: Exactly, yeah! And some of it was totally terrible advice that was really just based in like, all of the oppressive forces working in spaces like that. And some of it was good advice and I tried to take that.
Elise: Yeah.
Asher: And I got, I got really into it. And it was around the same time, I was like, I had come out as trans pretty recently and I was pretty interested in figuring out how to use exercise like that as a way to kind of create a more masculine body for myself. And what found was I wasn’t very successful in that, but I was very successful in like, really changing my relationship to my body. So through spending like, an hour a day in the gym doing these very intentional movements, versus what I used to, like playing soccer or running, or going on bike rides, which are like big gross body movements. These were like, little like, what muscles do I feel this in? Like, I just, I had to like sit there and like, be in my body. Interact with it in a way that I had really been avoiding for many years. So, yeah it became this sort of, um, way for me to like, build an embodiment practice into my day.
Elise: Nice. That makes sense. And now I’m really curious since you said, what was some of the really bad advice? Not to like, totally turn around your beautiful phrasing about your body and all that, but.
Asher: I mean, it was like people telling me you know, like making me take body composition tests and telling me like, oh you need to like, lose this much percentage of your body fat.
Elise: Right.
Asher: When really like, that was not something I was at all interested in. Or people like, um, like approaching me with like, exercise advice that was like so far outside of what I was capable of at the time. Like, oh you should try this thing. Like, unsolicited advice.
Elise: What’s your max rep deadlift? Your first time at the gym.
Asher: Yeah. Things like that. Um, I’m not really here to hang out with you, or try this thing that’s that going to like, totally mess up my back because I don’t know what I’m doing.
Elise: Right.
Asher: But it was. It was kind of hard, early on. To know, like the difference between good advice and bad advice when I really didn’t know anything.
Elise: And your experiences at the community college, taking exercise science courses?
Asher: Yeah. I was really grateful that the program existed. And someone that really benefits from structure and enjoy like, self-research, self-study. I don’t think I really have a sense of really, well what are all of the topics that I need to study…
Elise: Right.
Asher: …to be successful as a personal trainer. And to be able to like, actually, um, help people meet their goals. And, yeah some of it was great. I really loved learning anatomy and physiology. It was the most, like, kinesthetic learning environment I’ve ever had. So we would like, learn about what sorts of movements different joints did and then like, get to like practice those movements in our own body. And loot at skeleton and muscle models while we were doing it. So it was like, very, for it me it was like, a really cool way to learn. It’s like, much more helpful for me than like, reading a book.
Elise: Yeah.
Asher: It’s also like, in a lot of ways, a microcosm of the larger fitness industry and they’re really invested in talking about weight loss and there’s a lot of fatphobia in the program. There was a lot of like, all of our, all of the data that we were given, the normative data um, that we were supposed to use for fitness assessments,
Elise: Right.
Asher: Something like, this how much x person should be able to like, bench press or something. So it was like, based on like. It was very binary. Like, this is how much women should be able to lift, this is how much men should be able to lift. If you’re lifting this much you’re in the 50th percentile or 75th percentile or whatever. So, that was very frustrating to me because, like A, my not, not just like my gender identity, but my body because I’mm like a female assigned at birth person who’s like taking hormones, like it’s not going to match any of these numbers. Like, I literally don’t exist on your scale.
Elise: Right.
Asher: And also like, I don’t want to compare my performance with anyone else’s, and that’s not something I want for any of my clients either. So, in some ways I learned a lot of super helpful information. And I learned a lot of information that I was like, alright I just have to remember this long enough to like, take the test and then I need to like, totally unlearn it immediately.
Elise: Right. And, do the opposite almost.
Asher: Totally.
Elise: So was your starting the exercise science program part of an idea to take fitness in a different direction? Or do this non-normative fitness?
Asher: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I was working as a community organizer at the time, and I had worked in non-profits for the prior like, ten-ish years. And I was realizing that um, I wanted to find a job um, that was outside of non-profit work. I felt like, I would have more to give to like, the movements that I care about if I had a job where I was able to like, redistribute wealth through my work, through like sliding scale personal training. To like make an income that could sustain me that doesn’t come directly from the movements that I really care about and want to support. And also, just being able to like, move my, move my body throughout the day and continue having like, um, valuable like, one on one relationships. Like, all of these things like, kind of lead me to the path of personal training. And then I wound up having a scholarship um that was expiring for the exercise program, like costs pretty much the same amount as the scholarship. I was like, alright, I have nothing to lose.
Elise: Right.
Asher: Like, I have this totally like, this is something that I would really benefit from. Like, if I had a body positive trans-competent personal trainer in my city, who I could afford, I would really love that. I’d love to be able to offer that to other people. Who knows how successful I’ll be, in this program, but there’s nothing lost if I just like, I did, I went to school while I was working full time. It was a lot of work, but it wasn’t like interrupting anything that I already had going on.
Elise: I love that. I think that’s one of my mottos too, is the, it doesn’t exist so I will become that or I will do the thing that doesn’t exist.
Asher: Yeah.
Elise: I don’t know a trans masculine uh, personal trainer, I’ll become that.
Asher: Yeah. And there were like, and are like, a ton of transmasculine personal trainer that do a lot of awesome work on the internet and in other cities and even when I um, white I was in school I did an internship at Sweet Momentum, which is a small studio gym in Portland, Oregon, where I was living. And that’s like a trans-owned gym, so I have like, a mentor who’s like a trans masculine person. So it wasn’t like, I don’t think that it didn’t exist,
Elise: Right.
Asher: But more like, I want to see more of this, and there’s nothing like right now, affordable to me and affordable to people in my community, or a lot of people in my community. So just like, this thing that’s happening, I see here there and I want to be a part of it, cause it’s really cool and we need more.
Elise: And so then, did you start your Non-normative Body Club right out of college, or? Talk about the start of that.
Asher: The start was an Instagram account.
Elise: Oh yeah?
Asher: Um and it was like, while I was still in school and and kind of like processing some of the information that I was taking. Especially that information that felt like really isolating and really oof. I wish, I had like, one really close and amazing friend in the program that has a similar lens in looking at fitness to me, but otherwise I think both of us could feel like, really alone in these classrooms being taught these things. And we were like, no, this, these aren’t facts, this is just oppression. And so the Instagram account I made was to find other people that were doing similar work and learn from them, and post what I was learning and the questions I was coming up with.
And I had, done like some informational interviews with personal trainers, um, who were doing like, anti-oppressive work and they were all like, you need to get an Instagram. Like that’s the number one tip I got from people in the industry was like, get an Instagram and start networking.
Elise: Yeah.
Asher: And it was a good tip! And it definitely like, there’s people that I never had internet friends before, and now I’m like, I have internet friends! There’s people like, when I don’t know anyone in my city or I don’t have any close friends that can answer certain questions for me like, you know there’s people I go to on Instagram who we have great back and forth and I learn so much from. So yeah, Nonnormative Body Club was just my handle on Instagram and then when I moved to Philly last November, I um, that’s when I started working full time as a personal trainer. And I yeah, I was starting to work with people and I was like, I need a website and I need like business cards, um, that probably means like, I need a name.
Elise: Right.
Asher: And I went back and forth and I king of just used my own name and then asked people for advice and then eventually just came to like, alright I have this, I have a name. I’m going to just roll with this like, cute Instagram handle. And I think it’s something that um, people then to resonate with because um, you know like, most of have bodies that are not-normative. Like most people are not like, white, cis able-bodied like, men.
Elise: Right.
Asher: You know that’s just like, and thin people. Like, all of those things combined those are, that’s who’s like really valued in the fitness industry. That’s like a portion of the population. I think, and that when people hear the name of my business, that they, the people who like need it, will identity with it. Um, and what it is today is like some group fitness classes, um, and those are just in the neighborhood, I don’t have my own space so I’ll like do them at the neighborhood park or I rent space from a really awesome studio in the neighborhood called Body Rock Bootcamp. And I also do a whole lot of personal training which I mainly do um, in people’s homes. So I like, assist people in like, coming up with a home exercise program. And then I also work out of bigger gym one day a week so if people really want to learn how to lift barbells, um, you know I can meet them there. Since I just ride a bike, so I can’t exactly like put a barbell and plates on my bike.
Elise: No.
Asher: Yeah.
Elise: Cool. Yeah I definitely got the. Understood, almost immediately from the Nonnormative Body, I mean, it makes a lot of sense.
Asher: Cool! That’s good to hear. Thanks.
Elise: So I want to talk a little bit about like your transition process and how that has changed your experience. I mean, you talked a little about your body how that changed when you started working out, and your experience in your body. But, being own testosterone, um, anything else that has sort of changed your relationship at the gym, or with fitness or whatever. How that’s changed.
Asher: Well, I can like, for the most part go in the men’s bathroom now that’s cool. There were like, many years where I would go to the gym and like, going home to shower or just like pee before going to work. And that was really inconvenient. So that’s like, a very logistical thing. But I think. I don’t know, I’m still read as male about 50% of the time and female about 50% of the time. And, how people treat me is really based on how they’re reading my gender presentation.
Elise: Yeah.
Asher: But I do notice that I’m read as male a whole lot more that I get so few corrections. Like, I’ll go to the gym with my partner who’s femme, and like also knows a whole lot about lifting weights and they get just like unsolicited advice from men who know less than them, pretty much 100% of the time they go to gym. And I think because I’m more masculine, and sometimes pass as a cis dude, I don’t get that. Yeah. I think, I do get these gendered expectations, which are really gross. Like, the gym where I work out of, the large gym I work out of, um, the manager who’s like my boss will kind of like, come by if I’m bench pressing and kind of like side-eye, like really stare at like the weight I’m lifting, which is not a lot.
Elise: Yeah.
Asher: So it’s like, oh but now I’m like, I am passing as male, which isn’t what I’m looking for, but now I like have to live up to these expectations of like, somebody who’s like in a cis male body that I’m not going to.
Elise: Right.
Asher: Yeah, so it’s, I don’t know. Gender is weird anywhere, but especially at the gym. Which is just like super high concentration on toxic masculinity.
Elise: Yeah, yeah. I terms of then positive experiences, like have you worked with any cool queer people as part of your personal train who have sort of lifted you up and made you feel like…
Asher: Yeah, totally.
Elise: this is something you want to keep doing? Or, you’re on the right track?
Asher: I love all of my clients. Most of them are queer, a lot of them are trans. Pretty much all of them have like, atlas one identity or experience from feel like, comfortable in like a traditional fitness setting. And it’s really fun to like, watch someone, like grow more confident and like, you know, be willing and excited to take up space in the free weight area of a gym. Or just to see someone, maybe the first few sessions, maybe the first many sessions we work together and I’m like, “where do you feel this exercise?” and they’re like, “I don’t know. I have no idea, I can’t tell what’s going on in my body” Or you know, say a muscle that maybe really shouldn’t be working during that exercise. Watch them go from that place of so little body awareness, which I can really relate to from when I started working out. To a place where, oh, I see that like their form is awesome, they’re looking really stable and they know like, exactly what’s moving, and what’s working in their body. So, it’s really a gift to get to work with people who are like, who are just like, beginning that journey of just like coming into their body and interested in using fitness as like a means for that.
Elise: Yeah, that’s really cool. I like that you use the word body a lot instead of, I don’t know, muscle-y or you know, or something else that seems way more of the fitness world.
Asher: Uh-huh.
Elise: Body is a great word. ‘Cause we all have bodies.
Asher: Yeah.
Elise: Is there anything you feel like I haven’t asked or you want to talk about more?
Asher: Well one thing that came to mind with that last question too, just about positive experiences.
Elise: Yeah.
Asher: Yeah, like one thing that I didn’t realize is just, or I didn’t think a lot about, is how intimate it can be to like go into people’s homes and do like exercise programs with them. And when I was working as a community organizer, that was something that I would do home visits a lot, when we were talking about specific campaigns, and meet people’s kids. And that was really like one of my favorite parts of my job, and it was such a gift to be like given that access into people’s private worlds. And so that’s something that has been really cool, has been a really cool perk of training people in their homes. And one like, story that I’ll share.
Elise: Sure.
Asher: Is that I’ve been working with this really awesome couple who live very close to me, they live in my neighborhood. And I was training them separately. Like, uh, they’re man and a woman, and I was training the man in the morning and the woman I would train, kind of change around from late morning to like early afternoon. But they’re really, they’re really so wonderful and they have two kids, like a two year and a four year old. And the kids would start coming down for the early morning workouts and like, hang out with me, and I got to develop a good relationship with their kids to the point that I’ve gotten to babysit their kids when they need childcare and I really love hanging out with them. And then when one of their dads was visiting, from India, like he was like, I want to learn how to lift weights, I want to learn more about lifting weights. And then he taught me, in exchange, Pranayam yoga, like this breathing technique,
Elise: Breathing technique.
Asher: Yeah. And it was so cool! I was like, wow, getting to work with like, five members of your family, three in terms of fitness and like two just like kids hanging out, it’s so different than meeting people at a gym and having this like very,
Elise: Narrow view of a person when you’re just at the gym with them, right?
Asher: Exactly, exactly. Yeah I had a client at a gym recently, she showed me this great picture of her, and I was like “Wow, you look really fancy!” And she was like, “Yeah, believe it or not I don’t always wear gym clothes.” Like, right, people have lives that look different outside of what I see!
Elise: Nice! Cool.
Asher: Yeah.
Elise: So where should people follow you? Do you have any events coming up?
Asher: So people can follow me @nonnormativebodclub on Instagram and Facebook, my website is nonnormativebodyclub.com, and I have a listserv there. Let’s see, In October I will still be doing a weekly queer and trans group fitness class that’s high intensity interval training-ish, in West Philadelphia and um, yeah I work with a really wonderful massage therapist to do trainings for people who bind their chests and people who are recovering from top surgery. And so there’s more about those trainings on my website. And yeah, always doing personal training and always happy to talk to other folks who are interested in taking down the mainstream fitness industry together.
Elise: Cool, cool. Thank you!
Asher: Yeah, thanks so much!
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This first episode of the Queer Fitness Podcast is sponsored by our Patreon. For just one dollar a month you can become a patron of the Queer Fitness Podcast. You’ll get access to bonus content from every episode as well as patron only perks, like polls and audience submitted questions or anecdotes. Become a patron and help support the show at Patreon.com/Queerfitnesspod.
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