This Sacramento gym creates a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community and allies to work out

Queers and Allies Fitness isn’t your average gym.

The business is the first and only one in Sacramento that provides an exercise and wellness space specifically for the LGBTQ+ community and its allies.

Owners Hayden Glenn and Sarah Serbic have created a space where even the most gym-wary people can feel comfortable starting their fitness journeys.

“I don’t want people to feel like anyone’s judging them for where they’re at on their journey,” Glenn said. “This is a supportive space where no one is looking at you or your body. Just express yourself how you want.”

Glenn estimates that of their approximately 50 members, nearly all of them identify as “queer.” (The term, originally a pejorative word for “gay,” has been reclaimed by many LGBTQ+ people.) For more than half of the gym’s patrons, Queers and Allies Fitness is the first gym they’ve ever joined. The space feels safe, clients say, and everyone can be their authentic selves.

Members of the gym who spoke with The Sacramento Bee said that gyms and fitness centers have a reputation within the LGBTQ+ community as places where the gender binary is clearly felt, especially in areas like locker rooms, weight rooms and cardio areas. As a result, Queer and Allies Fitness members said they can feel uncomfortable going to traditional gyms.

A queer-focused gym also gives the community a gathering place that, unlike Sacramento’s many gay clubs and bars, isn’t centered around drinking or night life.

“I’d never had any experience at a gym before. Never!” said Stephanie Haskins, 76, a transgender woman who first started working with Glenn about three months ago. “They looked so intimidating.”

Haskins, a former broadcast news veteran at KCRA and a spokesperson within state politics, is one of the oldest known people to have transitioned.

With Glenn’s guidance, Haskins works out six days a week, doing a combination of weight machines, cardio and circuit training. She’s never felt more comfortable in her own skin.

“It’s so fun being me,” Haskins said. “It’s just been a great process, going from this chrysalis to being a butterfly. Or at least a moth.”

A lifetime of coaching and a hunger for a safe space

Glenn started coaching long before he’d obtained a certificate in personal training and a master’s degree in sport psychology.

“I came from a town that was really unaware and uneducated” about gender transitions and transgender people, Glenn said.

Growing up in Redding, Glenn often found himself informing his own health providers — such as his therapist and endocrinologist — on what he needed in order to navigate his transition.

“I had to really, like, coach them,” Glenn said. “Like, ‘Here’s what I need you to say and do so that I can move forward with this process.’”

For a long time, Glenn mostly stuck to body-weight exercises and home workouts to avoid going to the gym. He didn’t feel comfortable working out in public. When he did go to the gym, he would wear a special “binder” and wear extra shirts to make his chest appear more masculine. That made working out — particularly cardio and heavy weight training — even more difficult.

The dream of opening a queer-friendly gym started as more of a joke than a fully formed idea.

After Glenn completed his transition, he was working as a personal trainer at a fitness center in Humboldt County. He was popular among the staff, as he recalls, until one day when someone outed him as transgender to the rest of the gym.

“I went from being the favorite to being like, everything is getting written down,” Glenn said. He remembers thinking to himself, “This isn’t really a safe space for queer people.”

That’s when Glenn decided to leave. Shortly after, he started toying with the idea of starting his own queer-friendly fitness center.

“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we could have a gay gym,’” he said. “It would be so fun to have a queer space.”

Eventually, at the suggestion of a close friend, Glenn moved to Sacramento and started training clients out of his garage gym at home. His schedule filled up completely, and that’s when he realized there was still unmet need out there. He knew he could meet it if only he had the space.

Around that same time, Glenn started working out regularly with Serbic, a full-time hair stylist who dove into fitness to stay sane during the pandemic. The first time they worked out together, Serbic recalls, Glenn mentioned that he was looking for a space where he could open a queer gym. As a salon owner, she knew what it was like to hunt for commercial real estate. She offered to tag along with Glenn as he visited properties.

After touring a number of places together, Glenn finally asked Serbic if she’d want to be a co-owner.

“Hayden was like, ‘Yeah, I mean, it would be great if, you know, if you wanted to just do this with me,’” Serbic remembers. “I mean, just kidding,” Glenn continued, “unless you really want to…”

Serbic thought about the offer. Then, she said yes.

Eighteen months later, after finding and passing on at least three different properties, Serbic and Glenn set down roots at their current location on 36th and R streets in East Sacramento. They soft launched the business in late January and hosted their grand opening in March.

“It was kind of a long journey. It was a little over a year of looking for space and going through the process,” Serbic said. “It’s crazy how fast time has gone by, I can’t believe it.”

Physical and mental wellness go hand in hand, especially for LGBTQ+ community

The LGBTQ+ community faces an out-sized risk for poor mental health outcomes, California experts say, largely due to social exclusion and discrimination.

The National Institutes of Health designated “sexual and gender minorities” as a “health disparity population” in 2016 for research purposes. LGBTQ+ people are at higher risk for anxiety and depression and some chronic health conditions, but they also face the challenge of finding respectful medical spaces, said Matthew Mimiaga, director for the UCLA Center for LGBTQ+ Advocacy, Research & Health.

Queers and Allies Fitness provides a first line of defense against LGBTQ+ health disparities. Giving people a place where they can reap the benefits of exercise, such as decreased stress and reduced risk for chronic disease, without worrying about stigma and scrutiny is “certainly a good idea,” Mimiaga said.

Glenn works closely with many transgender and non-binary people as they go through their transitions. He even designed his own workout program to help clients prepare for and recover from “top surgery” — a procedure where surgeons enhance or remove breast tissue to make a person’s chest appear more masculine or feminine. Glenn knows how challenging it can be to figure out how best to care for your body during a transition.

Best case scenario, Glenn said, clients would have at least a year to build up strength before going under the knife. More realistically though, he usually starts working with clients about six months in advance.

His chest masculinization program, designed for people who are transitioning from female to male, focuses on building up strength before surgery. Some clients won’t be able to lift much weight for a few weeks post-operation, which makes building the chest muscles difficult. Workouts are tailored specifically for each client, but common movements include overhead shoulder presses, dumbbell bench presses and also some pulling movements to build up back strength. Post-surgery, Glenn has clients use resistance bands and body-weight exercises, such as push-ups, to maintain that strength and shaping.

Glenn also uses his training in sports psychology to help clients work on their relationship with health and fitness, nutrition and self-image.

Mari Morgan, 30, started working with Glenn last November after a work-related injury left her with chronic back pain. Sometimes, the pain was so bad that she couldn’t walk. Morgan didn’t want to undergo complex back surgery to implant rods in her spine. Instead, she and Glenn worked on strengthening her back muscles to take pressure off her herniated and slipped discs.

“I have a lot of gym-related anxiety,” Morgan said, “because in the past, it was kind of used as, like, a punishment by my parents. They’d force me to go to the gym and be really mean about it.”

Since Queers and Allies Fitness feels more like an intimate personal training studio, rather than a commercial fitness center, Morgan feels more comfortable working out there.

“It was a lot of mental training to reframe how I thought about my disability and how I thought about myself,” Morgani said. “It really helped a lot, kind of getting more comfortable just being in that space.”

Overcoming gym fears, one client at a time

In the gym, Haskins worries less about fielding unnecessary or intrusive questions. A Sacramento resident who lives a short drive away from the gym, she knows people here are “up to speed” on one another and don’t need to question their belonging.

“I feel like I can do whatever I want to and Hayden (Glenn) is going to support me,” Haskins said. “This is my place.”

Community feedback about the gym has been all positive, Glenn said. He’s even received calls from people who don’t live in the state anymore, but said they wished the gym had existed back when their children were in high school and coming out for the first time.

Now, around four months out from their grand opening, he said business has also been moving in the right direction. The wave of positive responses have quelled some of Glenn’s fears that the gym might receive hateful messages or blow-back.

“It’s just been very validating, it’s been a really good experience,” Glenn said. Since trans people do not always get the spaces they deserve: “It’s cool to be part of the dream and mission of providing that space.”