I started getting into fitness, strength and conditioning just before I had top surgery, as a way to prepare my body for being inactive and to get more core strength to manoeuvre around after surgery.

I had a trans trainer, who would maintain a workout diary with me for about six months, and it was really nice to have a clear trajectory for my fitness and to know that I had a certain amount of time to achieve certain goals before surgery. I struggle with eating and maintaining weight, and it was a good way to track calories to make sure I was getting enough protein to be able to keep up with the kind of activities I was doing.

Having someone who's trans was really cool. I would have a weekly check-in with him, and he'd be like, "Oh, you didn't do so great this week, what's happening for you? You didn't drink much water, and you didn't manage to get out to do that run. How are you doing?"

And I could explain that I had dysphoria, or that something was going on for me. The fact that he was a trans person as well meant that he was focused on building shoulders and chest muscle for the surgeon to be able to navigate and identify muscle tissue that they wanted to keep, and to increase my healing time after surgery.

It was all-encompassing when it came to my care, and what I needed for that period of time, so I really appreciated that. It was a bit expensive and I had to just put that towards surgery costs. But it was part of my rehabilitation, recovery and surgery needs.

It was nice to be thorough, and I felt really confident — I had muscles and I could measure my arm width and measure my chest size. Even though I was dysphoric about my chest, I was able to see the progress and the underlying shape and sculpture of what I would hopefully be achieving after surgery.

Running stimulated a response similar to anxiety, but by giving me control

In school, I used to hate locker rooms and I used to hate the genderedness of everything. Around the age of 13, I stopped doing physical education at school, which was sad because I enjoyed the movement. But I couldn't really overcome the gender and social difficulties that came with it.

With the organisation I’m working with now, we’re trying to create a chance for young trans and nonbinary people to get another go at having a physical education – learning how to race each other, how to endure, how to pace oneself and practice breath control.

It’s really helped with anxiety for a lot of young people and for myself as well. I found that running stimulated a similar response to anxiety for me, where it would increase my breathing and make me feel really uncomfortable. When I was anxious, I would not be able to breathe, make eye contact, and would struggle to communicate. All these things happen when I’m running too, but I’m in control of it.

I can run until I feel those things and then I can stop, or I can push through it, and keep running to see where it goes and realize that I'm not going to die.

Nothing is actually triggering my anxiety, nothing is triggering my brain to release these responses other than the physical activity of running, and that is in my control.

That really helps my brain by giving it a good reset. I've continued with the strength and conditioning stuff, and that's been great as well.

A lot of cisgender spaces – even if they're LGB — are heavily gendered

It's really good to connect with other trans and queer people to move my body with, especially when I feel like my body is so 'other'.

When I’m in a space where I don't feel so othered I can say things like, "Oh my scars are aching today; or I don't have the full range of motion because my t-shot hurts; or I'm on my period and my body doesn't feel great".

I don’t have to deal with someone saying, "Oh, that's so weird, but you're a boy" or other gender stuff that happens in some spaces.

My group was passing around an article about how the marathons have just opened up a new nonbinary section. My local park run has a nonbinary section too, which is a big step forward. It's not perfect and they're not inclusive of the whole spectrum of gender. But they've got some feedback on how trans and gender nonconforming people can better access mainstream sports and activities.

It's been really good to find services that provide that access and are able to pass that on.

I found that a lot of cisgender spaces — even if they're LGB — aren't necessarily that inclusive and you will get a lot of gendered language. The sports equipment is the way they categorize people for achievement and the race finish times are all very gendered.

By being so heavily gendered, these spaces become inaccessible and unsafe for you to move around as a queer person. I've definitely experienced that before transition and before having top surgery — running in binders and not feeling like I was able to tell the person that I was running with, "Oh, do you mind if I take an extra long break here, or adjust my binder".

Because even though it was restricting my breathing, I’d feel I was outing myself if I communicated about it.

Running helped my confidence and my self-esteem

After top surgery, I started running as a volunteer for a youth organization, where I suggested that we should have a mechanism for helping trans youth with their mental health.

Running really helped my confidence and my self-esteem. It made me feel more productive and better overall so I thought it'd be really good for young people to have a chance to engage with that as well, and it's been going really well.

My understanding of this comes from when I was a teenager, and many of the young people that I work with have mentioned similar experiences — that being in school is really hard because of how everything is gendered.

If you have physical education, you have the girl’s room and the boy’s room, and usually that means that you will get split by what sports you're allowed to do. When I was at school, girls couldn't do javelin, rugby, contact sports and baseball.

The school was like, "Oh, you can't do that. You can do rounders, and you can do tag football or indoor basketball."

It was just weird.

So I thought we could work with some young people who would benefit from spending some time outside, getting some fresh air and being able to communicate with people about their needs while learning how to run safely in a binder.

A year and a half later, they still meet and run every week. It's done a lot of good for them to have access to sports.

Growing up as a Black person, I had such a negative attachment to sport

A lot of the joy and euphoria I experience through running has been secondhand – seeing the young people that I work with achieve even basic goals of just starting to run and hearing their feedback, has made me proud.

I used to hate running and had such a negative attachment to sports and physical education, especially growing up as a Black person. My mom had always been like, "Don't do sports, don't be running for the school, don't be getting into that."

Because that's something they like to push Black people into doing and it's something that isn't necessarily as challenging, I think for Black folks, sometimes.

I was able to do sports but didn't have access to it, and then gender took over and it became such a negative thing. It's nice now, to have a positive understanding and a positive connection with sports in a way not all trans people do.

Even accessing a gym is very gendered. You have to find somewhere that's safe and trans-friendly, where you're not going to get weird looks, or someone saying something funny or asking you if you're in the right bathroom.

This stuff can really just knock your confidence and make those spaces inaccessible. So it’s cool now, to be able to do this on my own at home and to feel confident in myself about following a routine, coming up with a routine, and achieving things on my own.

There are certain things for trans people that we put on the backburner, and a lot of those are really fundamental — getting married or having children is not on the list for most of us; having diagnoses of mental health is often on the backburner; fitness and body mobility is another one that gets sidelined because we have so much other everyday stuff.

I'm really grateful that I've had an opportunity and chance to practise and learn these skills. I hope to be able to pass on to other people.

Finding connection to our bodies outside of dysphoria

I’d want my younger self to know that "It's okay that you feel uncomfortable."

I’d love to give my younger self the language to express the discomfort. I don't know necessarily that my teachers, the adults, or peers around me would’ve been able to navigate it very well. But to have the language to say, "This is my experience, this is what I'm going through, and this is what I would like to happen in order for me to be able to join these activities” — that would’ve been great.

I guess that speaks to me now, where I'd love to advocate for those young people who are in similar situations, and help them explain what they’re experiencing to schools and education centers. I hope to give them access to language to navigate, communicate and defend when it comes to their access to sports and sport education. I think it’d be great if we could get trans kids and trans people in general to have some kind of connection in a different way than dysphoria to their bodies.

For trans people with dysphoria, the relationship between one’s body and brain is often about being disconnected or disassociated. Sports and fitness can challenge that by bringing almost every muscle and internal organ into play, along with dietary stuff, sleep ability, posture and physical ability.

If we really hone some of those weirdly gendered things, it can give us a completely different outlook on sports and dysphoria.

I've met so many trans girls who are like, "Oh my gosh, my butt is so round and good from running." And I'm like, "Yeah, exactly, you can feel gender euphoria from doing something that isn't necessarily what it's advertised for doing."

I would love to say that to my younger self, that "In the future, these are possibilities and you will have the body that you need, and you'll be able to use it for all the fun things that you'd like to do."