Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 40 - Race and Accessibility in Health and Fitness

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

In the wake of recent events, a greater, needed discussion about racial injustice and inequality is sweeping across the united states.The same way there are racial inequities in society, there are race-related accessibility in health and fitness.This podcast is an attempt at creating a dialogue and making fitness, nutrition, and preventative health care measure more accessible and enticing to people of color and varying socioeconomic statuses. We can do a better job as a space of making room to educate, involve, and inspire people of all different races, colors, and creeds to start their own fitness journey. Even though it may look different than our own.Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS: Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

You guys, welcome back to the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. If you are listening into this episode right now, it is June 3rd, and we are living in a very, hopefully transformative time for this country. I'm creating this podcast, we're curating today's topic because I think it's important to talk about, and I don't think that people are going to listen better than they will listen right now. And this is an attempt to virtue signal. This is not an attempt to gain clout. It's an attempt to extend the greater conversation and the greater goal of this podcast, which is helping everybody optimize their health, their performance,

their longevity. And there are certainly some disparities in the health and fitness space that are very much aligned with some of the disparities we are dealing with societally as well. So there will be a lot of crossover. But what I really want to talk about today is making fitness accessible for everyone. And we may end up talking about race, we may end up talking about religion, we'll certainly touch on some of the things going on, but we need to first talk about accessibility. So understand that fitness looks very different for each and every individual. Fitness, as a definition, is essentially survivability and ability to reproduce. It's kind of morphed now into a general sense of well-being, physical shape, quality nutrition, and a healthy mind, healthy body.

Right? When you think of fitness, you think of somebody who is likely lean, likely strong, has muscularity, and is fit. And that's not a reality for everybody. A lot of people are working towards their fitness and don't exhibit some of those more physical traits, and it muddies the waters. But overall, accessibility to fitness is not equal. Now, accessibility to fitness is not equal. Now, the reason I feel qualified to talk about this is I'm not your average Instagram fitspo. I have a degree, and a lot of the time and a lot of the energy I spent getting that degree was actually taking classes about ethics and inclusion in sport, race relation in sport, coaching practices in sport as it pertains to coaching men, women, people of different races and ethnicities. And this made up a large portion of my undergraduate work and really enlightened me into, like

I said, issues of race and accessibility. So let's consider that not every American in general can afford high quality, locally sourced, non-GMO organic food. Let's consider that not every American can afford a gym membership. Let's assume that not every American can relinquish enough time between what they may or may not be doing to go to the gym and do a really high quality resistance training based routine that we might look at as optimal. So when it comes to accessibility culturally within this industry, we need to do a better job of lowering that bar, lowering the barrier for entry,

changing the narrative away from you have to eat perfect, you have to train perfect, you have to look perfect, to you have to do the best with what you have available, and we're going to make more content, more education, more opportunity, so that more is available to people of all different races, colors, creeds, ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses across this country. And we would be casting a blind eye on reality if we said everybody has an hour to go to the gym. Not everybody has a car. Not everybody has access to public transportation. Some people don't understand the basic fundamental tenets of resistance training,

and going to the gym might not even be the best option. So in terms of increasing accessibility, making sure everybody has access to fitness, we just have to broaden that term as we look at it as an industry. Whatever you may be into, whether it's bodybuilding, powerlifting, CrossFit, all these things are fantastic exercise modalities. And if that's the area you want to emphasize in, fantastic. But pretending that accessibility starts there is a little bit silly. Accessibility starts with things like, do I have access to a park? Do I have a grocery store close to my home? A lot of people live in what's called a food desert, where the greatest accessibility they have to food are things like quickmarts, rest stops, and 24-hour gas station quickmarts.

They're not going to be able to walk into Whole Foods and get organic free-range chickens. They're not going to be able to walk into Whole Foods and get pastured eggs. free range chickens. They're not going to be able to walk into Whole Foods and get pastured eggs. These are not a reality for a lot of people in this country, not just geographically, but also economically. So we just need to broaden our narrative as an industry and make fitness more accessible. And I talked a little bit about this earlier, but instead of focusing exclusively on, hey, you need to eat this superfood and you need to eat this crazy restrictive diet that requires you to spend a hundred plus dollars a week on your grocery bill, we need to at least make space for a narrative around how to live a

more healthful life if you do face the constraints a lot of African American, Latino American, white American, Asian Americans face in different pockets of this country who may not have the geographical accessibility or the socionomic accessibility that many of us have, or someone like myself has here in a certain part of California. So that dialogue turns into, well, here are some things we could eat, or we can assume most people can afford to eat that are better options than fast food, that are better options than highly processed foods. You might not be able to get grass-fed meat, but maybe you can get lean ground beef. You might not be able to get free-range pastured eggs, but maybe you can get eggs.

Maybe you can't get full organic locally grown vegetables, but maybe you can incorporate more vegetables into your diet. We need to extend the wavelength, broaden our reach, and make things more accessible. That is really, really important. about race and how race is integrated into the fitness space and how we can nurture people of all colors with something that can be incredibly impactful no matter the color of your skin, that's fitness, right? We need to at least acknowledge that not all of us start on the same playing field. Yes, certainly some of it is geographical. Where you live, what you have access to in your immediate space is really going to influence heavily your ability to create a healthy life for yourself. areas in food deserts who have very low income or exist on a lower tier of that socioeconomic continuum, and it's harder for them to do the things that may be more easier for others.

So we just need to be honest about that. For example, obesity tends to disproportionately impact the Latin American community, the black community, and the Native American community. And we can have a discussion about why that is. A lot of that is cultural, right? It has to do with the cultural integration that foods, certain foods, certain traditions have with each of these cultures. And those cultures are really important. Those traditions are really important. And, you know, the preparation of those foods, eating them together, that is a big piece of what makes those communities unique and what makes them so special. But we also have to understand that those communities need help. They need education.

They need food education and they need food accessibility. This is a top down opportunity, right? We need to integrate nutrition, hopefully we can, and physical fitness more so into compulsory public education so that we can, wherever people may live, ensure that they have access to quality nutrition education. Healthcare is an entirely different issue. We can't really talk about healthcare, or I should say we can't really talk about fitness without talking about healthcare. There are disparities in healthcare accessibility as well. And this is in the research, right? While we could talk all about how our healthcare system works, how it's broken, how we need to fix it. If you look at data from Blenden et al in

1989, Hoag et al in 2000, the National Institute of Health's report on these things, we can see, and again, this hasn't changed a whole hell of a lot. We have tried, but blacks, Hispanics, and Asians generally, when compared to whites, have lower levels of health insurance and are facing greater barriers. Anything from language accessibility, again, to geography, it's not easy to be insured in America. And a lack of health insurance or not having health insurance means less exposure to medical professionals that might be able to give you, albeit biased, nutritional or at least physical fitness advice. And again, doctors aren't perfect, but I've worked with a lot of people and going in for

a checkup and your doctor telling you you need to lose weight, diet and exercise is a really profound turning point for a lot of people that are the people of color in this country might not be experiencing on such a high level. And so again, there's that push and that accessibility to healthcare from healthcare, I should say, that a lot of people of color just simply do not have access to. And that's really, really unfortunate because many people get that first inclination of changing or pivoting how they're going to look at their health from a medical professional. This, again, is systemic, right?

According to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services from 2000, in the U.S., whites and those who have a higher level of education, which tend to, again, be whites or non-whites who don't grow up in some of these socioeconomic situations, they're more likely to be physically active than blacks, Hispanics, and less educated individuals. Why would we allow ourselves to create a world where education was a barrier to fitness? These are things we can teach at the level of public education, at least at the level that people have access to. But that goes to show you there's a systemic disparity. There is a gap between where we are at as a nation, what we value with our health and fitness, and how those things

are made or not made accessible to different people of different race, color, creed, and socioeconomic status. You shouldn't need to be wealthy to have access to quality fitness and nutrition information. To me, that is a fundamental piece of healthcare. It should exist at the base of the pyramid, and we need to do a better job as an industry of creating space for people of color to come and learn, creating space for high level accessibility content to be created so that people in a variety of different spaces and locations can get their fitness on, quote unquote, can get after it, can work on their nutrition. We should move a little bit away from the hyper-attuned performance focus, or at least the majority of our space, and run. That is not a realistic or representative look at how we can really create change.

Because when you look at the data, even from as recent as 2017 from the CDC, you'll find that morbidity and mortality rates predominantly will show whites as living longer than minorities. And again, this isn't just healthcare. This has to do with accessibility to things that keep us fit enough to live. And all of these minority populations are disproportionately affected by metabolic syndrome and things like diabetes. And it's in our best interest as a population to keep these people healthy. We want everybody to live a healthful life.

It's good for the economy. It's good for just general human experience. Everybody wins when we're all fit. But to make this happen, we need to stop pretending like we all have equal accessibility to things like gyms, healthy eating, and it's a simple decision of, are you going to eat healthy or not? Because that's genuinely not the only decision. That's not, it's not that cut and dry. Oh, how I wish it were. And to think it is, is simply foolish. Because again, like I said, things that impact our accessibility to food beyond race and socioeconomic status are things like geography, are things like education, things that take a little while to change. And we do need to do a better job of ensuring companies who produce clothing, who produce supplements,

who are big players in the fitness space, whether they should be or not is a completely different question. And I think I lean more towards that they should not. But I'm not going to change the industry. It's already on their trajectory. It's on. Unfortunately, these clothing companies, these supplement companies

are some of the loudest voices in our space. Are we making sure that people of color are represented proportionately? I'm not saying that you have to have a one for one, but about 62% of the United States is white. So for every six white fitness personalities, influencers, we should have four of color. If we're purely going to break this down on a basis of pure percentages, I'm not saying it has to be one for one, but I do believe we would do a better job given that, and like I said, this isn't my opinion. I don't know if it should be this way. Influencers, people who are affiliated with clothing companies like Lululemon, like Gymshark, like Alphalete or supplement

companies like, you know, all of the various supplement companies that are out there. Would we do a better job as an industry making sure that we have a relatively consistent representation of the U.S. population? Should we have six white fitness models and then four fitness models who represent people of color? I think that's a beautiful way to say we understand that these people have a platform, we understand that these people have influence, we want to support them. Because as a white person, growing up, when I looked on the internet, and I saw a white male who looked like me, who was fit, who was healthy, who was active, I said, hmm, that's encouraging, that's inspiring, I might be able to do that. I might be able to look like that man. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that a black female who goes on her Instagram and only sees white women might go, wow, well, clearly fitness is way more accessible to white people, or I'm never going to look like that because I'm black.

Or I'm never going to look like that because I'm black. Whereas if she stumbled across a page of a black female fitness personality, there's a chance that might resonate more. I'm not saying that inspiration is tied to skin color and we can't source inspiration from people who have a different skin color than us. But relatability is really important. And what we see in the world in in many cases, influences what we believe we can accomplish. And as an industry, we can do a better job, like I said, of making fitness more accessible to people of various races, colors, creeds, and socioeconomic status, regardless of geography. And the advertisement space and sales space of our industry can do a better job of making sure that what people see

is representative of the country that we live in. And again, it doesn't have to be one for one, but I think it's very reasonable to say for every 10 fitness models we have, if six were white and four were people of color, we'd be doing a better job than just having a bunch of white fitness models or a bunch of white fitness influencers. And I understand that different communities value different things. And it might be the case that white people more or perhaps disproportionately value fitness, the way they look and their aesthetics. But that raises a question as to why we have the luxury of even being able to focus on that. And again, this isn't a conversation or an attempt to virtue signal. It's simply my attempt at highlighting some of these things that are certainly, certainly here and that we like to look away from and hide behind things like you choose to sit on the couch and be lazy. You choose the food you eat. You can work out and make the change if you want. Yeah, no shit. All of that's true. But how has that really advanced the narrative? It hasn't,

and it completely overlooks the fact that not every human being in the United States of America has equal access to the same foods, the places to buy them, the places to train, the safety to go outside and train. There are a lot of people in this country who live in geographical areas where going outside might actually present a danger to your health and well-being, right? We don't all live in super safe neighborhoods. So again, these myths persist because we refuse to talk about them and we refuse to acknowledge them. And this isn't to say, hey, there goes Danny. He's virtue signaling and he's trying to give everybody who's non-white like an excuse as to why they're not in shape. The recipe for success is still the same. White, black, Asian, Latino, you still want to eat largely healthy foods. You still want to resistance train if you

can. You want to do some type of aerobic fitness. You want to make your fitness fun. That's what I'm saying. But how do we get people in the door on this when we're not starting from an equal playing field? That's where the discussion has to go. That's where the industry can improve. We need to do a better job of inspiring people, like I said, by creating a better representation, in the same way the modeling and fashion industry has tried to do this, of what we see in the supplement advertisement and fitness clothing space, because those are some of the loudest voices that we have.

While there's a tremendous number of black bodybuilders, for example, who have achieved the highest pinnacle of the sport, jeez, I could name five right off the top of my head who have won the Mr. Olympia. Phil Heath, Ronnie Coleman, Sean Roden, Brandon Curry, Lee Haney. There's five right off the top of my head who have won the Mr. Olympia. Phil Heath, Ronnie Coleman, Sean Roden, Brandon Curry, Lee Haney. There's five right there. But the representation on things like magazine covers seems to be skewed. If you go to the grocery store and you look at the fitness magazine covers, you might see one with a black person and ten with a white person.

And if that's what you see across your whole life and you never see a Latino person, you never see an Asian person, you just see white people with the rare occasional black person, that sends a message to people who are influenced. And I'm not saying that we need to practice this tokenism and this idea that we need to force the issue

on including more people and tokenizing people of color to like just check boxes or make sure that everything's cool. We can be inclusive in a natural, organic way that I think just makes so much more sense than what we're practicing right now. And it seems, in my opinion, pretty easy to make this happen, pretty easy to say it needs to happen, and we can find ways to make it happen. And, you know, something I can speak to as somebody who used to work in a commercial gym and somebody who used to hire a lot of trainers, there's certainly no absence of people of color who want to be involved in our space. I hired a tremendous amount of Latino

trainers. Some of the best trainers I ever hired were black. Some of the best trainers I ever hired were Asian. And there are tremendous people who are equally inspired to make an impact in our space to help people live a healthier life. But one of the things I watched was it was harder for those people to get clients. It tended to be more difficult because these disparities exist. Racism does exist. There would be people who were not comfortable training with a black male when in fact this person is very passionate about health and fitness and very qualified, but they wanted a different person, even though I recall these discussions being predominantly surrounded around timing and scheduling and the trainers of color had the schedule that

matched, but the client, for whatever reason, didn't want to train with them. Not saying that that was racist, but what I will say is it happened enough for me to at least raise an eyebrow and go, hmm, what's going on here? And again, my point with the trainers is the ability for these people to make a dent in our space and become a force and become a successful trainer and entrepreneur is good for their community. It lets that light shine and people can go, wow, there's a trainer in my hometown that has a lot of clients and changes a bunch of people's lives and they look just like me and they train people of all different colors and that's the way it should be.

And predominantly, I believe that is the way it is. But I'm telling you what I have seen from being in the industry this long. And there is a barrier that some people still have around entering into a training relationship with a person who does not look like them. And that's crazy. But I guarantee there will be trainers who are listening to this who will go, yes, I know for a fact there have been people who did not train with me because the color of my skin made them uncomfortable. I have seen it. I know it exists. It's incredibly unfortunate that it exists, but it's out there.

So we've covered some of the biggest ways in which we have racial disparity in this industry and some of the ways that we can go about making it better. And I think to summarize this in a really easy and digestible way that still leaves space to take action and make change, we have to understand that accessibility to fitness and nutrition education is very different. And it's very, very much relative to your socioeconomic status and your geography and if your parents had access to this type of education that makes a really big impact as well and unfortunately where we're at as a country we cannot say that people of all races colors and creeds have had equal access to the education and the time to pass that education down and the ability to focus on it based on geography, we cannot say that that's

been equal. It has been disproportionate. We can also say that the representation of fit bodies and fit quote-unquote influencers has also been disproportionate. And for those of us who are people of color, I am not, but for those who are, when you look at a magazine, when you look at TV, when you look on Instagram, when you go to the store and you see a model, I imagine that it's a lot easier to look at somebody who is of the same color, maybe has the same hair, maybe has the same hips, maybe has the same body. That might be a really relatable and inspiring archetype for you to say, I want to do that. And when you're a young kid and you see that, that can be very impressionable. can also create a situation where you go, fitness isn't for people who look like me. Fitness is for people who look like that. And that is perhaps the biggest mistake that we have made as an industry. And I'll close with this. Nothing is more devastating and heartbreaking to me than the

idea that fitness is only for people who are wealthy or educated. Fitness has the ability to improve every single facet of your life, your personal career, your professional career, your relationships, your productivity, all things that make everybody better regardless of the color of their skin. And doing a better job as an industry of being honest about accessibility based on things like race and socioeconomic status and looking at how we can enhance and improve accessibility for those people, improve what they look at and what they see in media, not so that it's skewed or we're playing the tokenism game, but so that it's at least representative of what this country and the rest

of the world actually looks like, I think that's the first place to start with making the fitness space more accessible for everybody. Because right now, if we are being honest, it's another space that is dominated by largely white people that is relatively inaccessible, or I will say at least more inaccessible for most people of color. And that's not most, but many people of color. And fixing that in the long run is really important. All of us being healthier is really important. It lowers the burden on the healthcare system. It helps people live healthier, more enjoyable lives. It helps keep family units together. healthier, more enjoyable lives. It helps keep family units together. It helps change tradition while still keeping culture intact in a way that's really, really important. And so hopefully this at

least opens eyes to how these things exist in our space. This isn't an attempt to virtue signal. It's just an attempt to say, hey, if you are somebody who's watching what we're going through in the world right now, and you can only wrap your mind around the fitness space because it's a really touchy topic, you're really sensitive, you don't want to go there, you don't want to talk about race, this is perhaps a conversation that you will listen to that might open your mind and might allow you to say, hey, we're really going through something here that could be transformative and this is how I can help or this is where I'm going to start my journey of educating myself on how we can create a better world for everybody. So if you guys enjoyed the episode, do me a favor and share it. I will do my job to make the world a better place by using my platform and my voice. But I want to make the fitness space really, really accessible. That's what I'm passionate about. And I know that if we're all healthier, it'll be a better world for everybody.

So if this resonates, please share it. I hope it does. And again, I'm going to move on from this after today's episode, but I sat down today and I thought that it was really important that we let the national dialogue about accessibility and equality permeate the fitness space for once. So again, we'll move on from this. If this wasn't your cup of tea, I completely respect that. Do send me an email if you disagreed with any of it, danny at coach dannymatranga.com.

If you want to continue the dialogue, do the same thing. If you enjoyed it, please share, tag me so we can chat about it, and leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes. I'll catch you guys later.