Mummy Fitness

03/02/2025

When we learned about the slave trade, the whole class looked at me. Many, if not all, assumed it was my history. It was the first time we had learned about Black people in school.

We learned about Napoleon and his army, Edison and his lightbulb, Nightingale and her medicine, Darwin and his finches, Bell and his telephone. White leaders, white medics, white scientists, white inventors. Then we learned about the slave trade and the Civil Rights Movement.

Slaves. That's how my peers saw my history. Freed slaves. During the lesson, my peers directed most questions at me. At lunch break I was asked about the struggle of my ancestors; I was told how wonderful it must be to be free.

Slavery isn’t Black history. Slavery disrupted Black history. The transatlantic slave trade is the history of European colonization. It is white history.

“The conquerors write history, they came, they conquered, and they wrote. You don’t expect the people who came to invade us to tell the truth about us,” ~ Miriam Makeba, South African singer, actress and activist.

Hippocrates was not the father of medicine, Imhotep was. Hippocrates studied medicine at the library of Imhotep’s temple 2,000 years after Imhotep’s death and leveraged and built on his concepts. But Hippocrates, a European, is remembered while Imhotep, an African, is forgotten.

Henry Ford was not the first American manufacturer of the automobile, C.R. Patterson was. Patterson created the "horseless carriage" in 1860, 46 years before Ford built his first car, but Ford is given credit as the first manufacturer of automobiles in the U.S. and Patterson is forgotten.

We remember Neil Armstrong for being the first man on the moon but not Katherine Johnson for geting him there. Katherine Johnson was a mathematician whose calculations were critical to NASA's first crewed space flights including Apollo 11 and 13. Paul E. Williams was an American architect who invented the first helicopter, the Lockheed Model 186. Dr. Gladys West invented the first GPS. Carrie Best owned one of the first and most prominent publishing companies in Nova Scotia.

Black history is not slavery. Black history is world history.

23/01/2025

A while ago I was asked what I dreamed about being when I was a child. "I don't know," I remember saying. "I only dreamed about being married with kids, so I guess this is it. I'm living the dream."

That realization hit me like a ton of bricks. I was living my dream, and yet, I was miserable.

I'm not much of a dreamer. I've learned that about myself. It's something I'm trying to change. I worried there was something wrong with me until recently, when I read a quote by Nalo Hopkinson, a Black afrofuturism author. She said "𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗮 𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗕𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲."

The impacts of systemic racism have many Black people, Indigenous people, and people of colour just fighting to survive. In survival mode, there is no imagination.

I thought I didn't dream because I was a pessimist, but a truth is, not dreaming is a trauma response. I didn't dream because I was afraid my dreams were out of reach. Fear has crippled my imagination.

Part of my healing is learning to dream. And like everything new, it takes practice. You need imagination and creativity to dream. So I'm practicing imagining and creating the person I want to be.

I was thinking about how I wake up every morning and choose what I wear. But so often in the past, that choice was without intention. Today, I want to be intentional in how I dress. I want to imagine who I want to be and dress like her.

When I practice imagining on a small scale, I will learn how to imagine on a big scale. When I learn how to imagine, I can dream.

What are your dreams?

24/11/2024

The question was asked how to get white people to care about race equity when racism doesn't impact them personally.

The thing is, racism and white supremacy does negatively impact white people. Let's take diet culture, for example. Diet culture is rooted in racism and the colonial belief that "you are what you eat." This idea originated with Spanish conquistadors who were afraid of looking like the Indigenous people they were conquering.

Fatphobia is rooted in anti-blackness and the racial hierarchy that sought to distinguish the races by pointing to physical differences. Google Saartjie Baartmans' story: the South African woman dubbed the "Hottentot Venus" and exhibited in European freak shows in the 19th century because of her voluptuous body.

The problem I have with the concept of allyship is this belief that what impacts me doesn't directly impact you. Oppression is a double-edged sword. I want to dismantle systems of oppression, not simply because they hurt you but because I recognize the ways in which they hurt me, too.

Or in the words of Lilla Watson, "if you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together".

05/02/2024

When we learned about the slave trade, the whole class looked at me. Many, if not all, assumed it was my history. It was the first time we had learned about Black people in school.

We learned about Napoleon and his army, Edison and his lightbulb, Nightingale and her medicine, Darwin and his finches, Bell and his telephone. White leaders, white medics, white scientists, white inventors. Then we learned about the slave trade and the Civil Rights Movement.

Slaves. That's how my peers saw my history. Freed slaves. During the lesson, my peers directed most questions at me. At lunch break I was asked about the struggle of my ancestors; I was told how wonderful it must be to be free.

Slavery isn’t Black history. Slavery disrupted Black history. The transatlantic slave trade is the history of European colonization. It is white history. “The conquerors write history, they came, they conquered, and they wrote. You don’t expect the people who came to invade us to tell the truth about us,” said Miriam Makeba, South African singer, actress and activist.

Hippocrates was not the father of medicine, Imhotep was. Hippocrates studied medicine at the library of Imhotep’s temple 2,000 years after Imhotep’s death and leveraged and built on his concepts. But Hippocrates, a European, is remembered while Imhotep, an African, is forgotten.

Henry Ford was not the first American manufacturer of the automobile, C.R. Patterson was. Patterson created the "horseless carriage" in 1860, 46 years before Ford built his first car, but Ford is given credit as the first manufacturer of automobiles in the U.S. and Patterson is forgotten.

Katherine Johnson was a mathematician whose calculations were critical to NASA's first crewed space flights including Apollo 11 and 13. Paul E. Williams was an American architect who invented the first helicopter, the Lockheed Model 186. Dr. Gladys West invented the first Global Positioning System (GPS).

Black history is not slavery. Black history is history.

📸 Angela Gzowski Photography

31/01/2024

A lot of fitness psychology operates from the perspective that your body is broken. From this perspective exercise is about fixing what is broken.

I reject that premise. Your body is not broken and does not need to be fixed. Your body adapts to your environment, and change is achieved by altering the environment in which you exist.

If someone kicks me in the leg and it causes me pain, I do not blame my leg for reacting with pain, I blame the person for kicking me. I may respond by changing my proximity to that person. As such, when we experience pain in our bodies, we should not blame our bodies for reacting to its environment but should seek to understand the environment that created the pain, and adapt accordingly.

In the words of Alexander Den Heijer, “when a flower doesn't bloom you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower”.

It is important to decolonize our fitness practices because this premise of brokenness is born of the ideology of white supremacy. White supremacy is a political, economic, and cultural system in which white people overwhelmingly control power and material resources, where conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are re-enacted daily across a broad array of institutions and social settings.

Most studies relating to sports performance are done on white men by other white men. Any deviation from a standard determined by white men for other white men is considered abnormal.

A study published in July 2023 in The Journal of Sports Medicine found that gender research gaps in exercise science negatively impact cisgender women putting them at risk for injury, misdiagnosis, and mistreatment. An audit of official exercise guidelines found they were overwhelmingly based on studies written by white cisgender men about white cisgender men. More than 9 out 10 lead authors in fitness literature are men. Less than 25% of leadership roles in editorial boards in sports sciences are women. Less than 25% of first and last authorship on scientific publications are women. Less than 20% of team doctors in both collegiate and professional sports are women. Of these statistics, Black women account for less than 5% of people in sports leadership roles.

Your body is not broken, you just don’t have the body of a small percentage of college-aged white men.

27/01/2024

BMI is a racist standard and calling people overweight or obese pepetuates systemic oppression.

Weight categories feel oppressive because they were created to oppress.

25/09/2023

I don't do yoga. I stretch.

Yoga is a spiritual practice rooted in Hinduism. It is meant to connect mind, body, and spirit. Yoga isn't an exercise; it's a code of living.

When Kim Kardashian cornrowed her hair, what annoyed black women was, not that she was embracing a style of hair we have worn for milennia; it was that she called it Bo Braids, crediting the style to a white woman.

The name Bo Braids referred to the actress Bo Derek, who wore cornrows in the movie 10, a strategic move to garner attention. She copied the style from black women.

Cornrows are a hairstyle thousands of years old that originated in West Africa. The name is because the style looks like rows of corn in a field. Cornrows are a protective style of hair designed to help curly, coily, and tight-textured hair retain moisture. They became revolutionary during the enslavement of West African people in the global North as it was a way for those escaping slavery to hide food such as grains and rice for the journey. The food was hidden underneath the rows of hair.

The difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation is that appreciation means recognizing the qualities of something. It means understanding the context of an experience.

Cultural appreciation is studying yoga within the context of Hinduism. It means knowing the history and context of that practice, not just being a really flexible person.

Appropriation means the taking of something without honoring the owner or the qualities of the thing which you are taking.

Cultural appropriation is calling cornrows, Bo Braids. Cultural appropriation is whitewashing the history of West African people.

You cannot practice yoga without understanding the tenants of Hinduism. Going to yoga classes doesn't make you a yogi; it makes you someone who goes to yoga classes. Being able to hold difficult yoga poses doesn't make you a yogi. It means you're a person who is physically strong and flexible.

I don’t do yoga, I stretch.

24/09/2023

Your aesthetics don't determine your athletics. Or your efforts. Or the wholeness of your body.

I was watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix. It's a documentary that looks into social media and the intention behind it. Tech experts who worked for various social network platforms talked about how we, humans, have become the commodity. Social media is a tool not only to sell to us but to influence how we think so we can be sold to.

Companies began with mining commodities from the planet such as oil and minerals, but today, we are the commodity. They are mining us.

If we believe our bodies are whole, then we cannot be sold quick fixes. We must be first convinced that we are broken and then a solution can be sold to us.

Until this week I hadn't been to a gym in 2 months. In that time, I had done 2 workouts. My body at this moment is not reflective of my workouts this week. I've been strength training for 10 years. I'm leaner this week, but it's not because of a conscious change in diet. It's because of months of uncontrollable changes.

My dad died in April, and I have been grieving him since. The sadness has impacted my appetite. I was on vacation for 3 weeks and then displaced from my home for a further 4 weeks because of wildfires. I haven't had access to my kitchen or my usual snacks in months. The evacuation was expensive and impacted my finances significantly. As a result, I am making more frugal choices, which also affects grocery planning. I've been stressed. I've been sad.

My body has changed, but not because of willpower, a 6-week program, a supplement, or a shake. I have leaned out because of life. My body has responded to the changes I am experiencing. 

We often judge our bodies harshly for changing, but our bodies respond to situations. When I coach people, I look at the circumstances to which their bodies are reacting, and we make progress by looking at ways to adapt to these circumstances. Your body is not broken, but sometimes your environment is.

But you can't sell that.

Not everything that glitters is gold.

When you scroll social media, remember you're being marketed to. Your insecurities are the new oil.

08/05/2023

Join me Yellowknife Racquet Club for an Introduction to Kettlebell Fitness. Kettlebells are a versatile piece of equipment, ideal for a full body strength workout, low impact cardio, building core strength and stability, building grip strength, and developing explosive power.

This class is for all fitness levels.

The session will include a 10 - to 15-minute warm-up, a 45-minute workout, and snacks and socializing in the beautiful RC lobby afterward.

This entire event is free and is sponsored by NWT Recreation and Parks Association - NWTRPA.

Registration is limited to 10 people. Register by email to info@mummy-fitness.com.

19/04/2023

I shared a post showing my relaxed belly and stating that everyone's belly sticks out. I explained that the role of muscles is to respond to the demands of your body and they do this by relaxing and contracting. I got one of two genres of responses. The first was by those who felt validated by seeing another woman embrace a belly that sticks just like their own does, and one who also bears the signs of pregnancy just like they do.

The other side was of those who were somehow offended by me stating that healthy, fit and normal bellies distend, those confused that I could embrace my body as it manifests, those convinced I need a surgical intervention to keep my belly washboard flat at all times, and those that suggested I was just trying to normalise bellies sticking out because I was upset mine isn't flat.

The thing is, mine is flat. Sometimes. It also sticks out. Sometimes. Healthy, fit, normal bellies stick out.

My belly is flatter when it's empty; I have intestines behind my skin, so when I eat, my abdomen swells in response to the new content within it. My belly is flatter if I am wearing anything compressive because it pushes it in. A lot of fitness leggings today offer compression. My belly is flatter if I flex it and draw my muscles in. My belly is flatter when I am lifting a load.

My belly isn't flat when I eat. Or at certain times of the month because of the way estrogen and progesterone interact during my menstrual cycle. My belly isn't flat when I relax it. My belly isn't flat when I breathe in deeply. It isn't as flat as it was before I had 3 kids. Since then my abdominal muscles and skin have stretched 3 times to allow me to carry those children, and my body bears the marks of that.

There is nothing wrong with having a body that has adapted and shows that adaptation. The strength of our bodies is in its ability to adapt.

I exercise not to make my belly flat because it's appearance is influenced by so much. I exercise so I can achieve a level of fitness that allows me to accomplish the tasks I desire.

Fitness doesn't have a look. Your aesthetics don't determine your athletics.

11/04/2023

A trainer I used to follow once advised her followers to wear tight fitting tops so it would remind them to always suck their belly in. This trainer had thousands of followers and was often admired for her abs; Her flexed abs. And evidently, based on her advice to others, she flexed her abs all the time.

Abs are not designed to stay flexed. Your abs are part of your core muscles and a role of your core muscles is pressure management. Your core muscles do this by relaxing and contracting.

When they relax they help lower pressure, when they contract they help increase pressure.

When you breathe in you increase the pressure in your body by adding content (air) to it. Your abs respond to this increase in pressure by relaxing. This lowers and thus stabilizes intra-abdominal pressure. When you exhale you remove content from your body (air). This lowers the pressure. Your abs respond by contracting thus increasing pressure and stabilizing the body. This muscle response helps your body maintain a constant level of intra-abdominal pressure. Your abs can either respond to pressure changes or you can train them not to.

Your body adapts according to your habits. Constantly flexed muscles adapt by shortening. Shortened muscles cannot expand as easily. Muscle shortness and tightness and the inability to respond to pressure changes can lead to a variety of issues including incontinence, hernias and pain.

I don't know if this trainer experienced this but what I do know is that the images she shared of herself were flexed. It was not a relaxed body staring back at itself in the mirror, the way we do when judging our bellies. Her body as she presented it online was not her body as it was when relaxed.

Your body is not supposed to look one way; it can look many ways depending on what you are doing.

Flat bellies are not synonymous with strong bellies.

Your aesthetics don't determine your athletics, or your value as a Trainer.

22/03/2023

After finishing an 80lb deadlift my client told me, "my doctor finally gave me permission to lift 30lbs." She laughed. "I told him to talk to my trainer."

She had been told she shouldn't lift above 10lbs because of a hernia repair. Much like with diastasis recti, the concern about lifting with hernias is around pressure management.

A hernia in adults is the result of abdominal weakness and increased intra-abdominal pressure that leads to a tear in a weak spot through which abdominal tissues protrude.

The concern with hernias post surgery is that an incision creates a point of weakness, and high intra-abdominal pressure to a weak area can cause herniation.

The problem is, high intra-abdominal pressure is unavoidable, and generic guidelines like "don't lift more than 10lbs" don't consider the pressure generated when someone screams, or coughs, or pushes a trunk closed, or forces a gate open, or runs across a street after a fleeing child. I worked with a client who had no issues benching 100lbs but struggled getting up from her back. The pressure that bothered her wasn't the pressure of the weights, it was the intra-abdominal pressure generated to allow her body to sit-up.

You cannot avoid situations where your body will generate high levels of intra-abdominal pressure and these situations exist 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 of weight lifting.

What you can do is train your body for it. You can learn different pressure management strategies. You can build strength. You can give your body options.

Your aesthetics don't determine your athletics.

Recorded for Fit2B Bits, Bones & Booties Conference