Hey friends! I have a great interview to share with you today: I spoke with my friend Francesca Piccioni, a queer personal trainer here in Brooklyn, who works through a body neutrality lens. It’s actually kind of a funny story: Francesca was our family’s pandemic nanny, and while we worked together, they began studying and training to become a personal trainer. Now it’s their full time career.
Francesca and I have become an important support system for each other as we navigate the wild world of working in fitness while sticking to this non-diet approach. With this interview, I wanted to give you all a sense of some of the inside baseball conversations that Francesca and I so often have as we deal with all this stuff. I also wanted you to hear from them about how useful a tool a body neutral movement practice can be for those who are non-binary, trans, or just simply navigating their gender identity and wanting to care for themselves along the way.
If you're interested in learning more about Francesca, you can find them on Instagram at @allmovementisgoodmovement or at allmovementisgoodmovement.com.
Anna: Tell us who you are and how do you describe your work.
Francesca: I'm Francesca. I use they/them pronouns. I'm a queer personal trainer. I actually hate calling myself a personal trainer. I've been working on trying to find other words to describe what I do because I really hate it; I like to work in an anti fitness lens. There's so much shame and torture and punishment in fitness. And I don't like that. So I try to be easygoing, and then trick people into working hard.
Anna: The word fitness can be very fraught. Is that kind of what you mean when you say, like, anti-fitness?
Francesca: Yeah, and it's like a shortened way of saying, like, anti–fitness industrial complex. Like, the whole system is rooted in diet culture. Even though we do need exercise, and we do need movement, and it's important for us and we benefit from it — we have studies that prove that — but it's all so wrapped up in, you know, trash things.
Anna: Yes, absolutely. How did you arrive at this profession and how did you arrive at this ethos?
Francesca: It's a weird journey. I was an actor. I am, was primarily an artist and then changed careers during the pandemic, but I started working with a trainer in my early twenties. Who was a queer trainer, and was the first person that I felt safe with to exercise with. I had joined a gym, I was running, I was like 23, and I was like, Oh, maybe I'll run, it's supposed to be good for anxiety, and that worked for a little bit.
And then I joined a gym, and I did small group training with a trainer who was really cool, also queer, and then I was trying to lose weight. I was trying to be thinner, I was wanting my body to change and look a certain way and when I started working with this other trainer he really pushed me and he made me stronger and I started reconnecting with my strength And I got really into using the barbell.
It became fun in a way. I pressed 100 pounds for the first time and didn't know that I did it. He didn't ever tell me what weight I was pressing because I would get so anxious, I had this story in my head that I wasn't strong and that I wasn't able to do anything.
And so he would just, all right, we're going to set the bench and then you're going to press this. And I'd be like, Oh, how much is it? He's like, Oh, I'll tell you after. And so that's the first time I pressed a hundred pounds was by just trusting him. And you know, he taught me how to trust myself and to identify my own strength and power.
And I became detached from what my body looked like. I started to learn how to accept, Oh, like this is the body that I'm in. This is what my parents look like. This is what my mom looks like. This is what my grandma looks like. I'm going to have bigger legs. I'm going to have bigger hips. Like I'm always going to have those features.
The body neutrality that I practice now came much later when I was studying fitness and knowing that, Oh, the reason I exercise and that I'm connected to exercise is not because I want to look a certain way. I enjoy being strong. I enjoy throwing a barbell over my head. I enjoy being able to jump around and play with kids when I'm taking care of kids.
I discovered that just in doing research. I looked at like Health at every Size, I read a lot about that and the Body Neutrality book was this tiny little book and it's almost like a manifesto in some ways. That really helped connect me to my queer identity as well because I was in a body that I was assigned female at birth.
I tried very hard for a long time to be a woman and look like a woman and identify like a woman and in meeting more queer people and being in cities and places where queer people were more vibrant, I learned, Oh, no, I'm not, this isn't what I am. I am non-binary. I'm genderfluid, and body neutrality helped me in accepting and stepping into my own identity.
I'm looking at my body with respect, and taking care of myself and valuing my mobility and my strength.
Anna: That's so beautiful. I never thought of body neutrality as a path toward self acceptance or peace with yourself as part of your gender identity journey. But that makes so much sense. I love that.
The other thing I wanted to explore with you this idea of, as a trainer who wants to take this body neutral approach, especially when we're working with people who maybe have a complicated history with movement, complicated history with the fitness industrial complex.
We want them to feel at ease, we want them to feel comfortable, we want them to feel confident. We also want to push them. So I wanted to poke at that a little bit with you, like thinking about your history with your coach who was pushing you to try to lift heavier and heavier, get stronger.
How do you figure out the right way to push people out of their comfort zone, while still keeping them feeling safe and at ease?
Francesca: It's really challenging. I think it depends on the energy that they're bringing in. I try to respect where they're at mentally that day. If I have a client that's coming in that didn't sleep, I'm going to treat them way differently than when they came in if they were full of energy. And I really seek consent when I'm pushing people. So if I'm looking at somebody move and I can see, it's like, they got five more or they can do more weight. What I think that they can do is irrelevant.
If they're not up for it that day, I'm not pushing them, like straight up. If they're having a, if they're emotional or if they're like, they're scared. Fear is also a thing. There's a lot of fear around doing certain movements like deadlifting and pressing. And if they're, if they just don't feel like they have it in them, then I will never say no, but I'll always give them the option.
I'll say, hey, it looks like you can do more. Do you want to do more today? Do you want to try doing it heavier? We can do less reps. We can do, you know, giving them so many options to, cause I want them to choose to push themselves.
I'm trying to teach people to respect their own capacity, what they're coming in with.
“I'm trying to teach people to respect their own capacity, what they're coming in with.”
—Francesca Piccioni
Anna: Just to emphasize something you said, the answer, it depends. I think that's such a mark of a great trainer. Somebody who is going to take, the individual person, but also the day, and the energy level, and the mood, and, what happened this morning to maybe set them off on the wrong track or whatever. Somebody who says “it depends,” and who really taps into what that individual is going through, that is an amazing sign.
So you work at a couple of different gyms and total different facilities, and I know some of your clients are queer, some are not, some kind of maybe come to you specifically because they want to work with you specifically, and some are kind of like randomly matched up with you.
When you're working with a queer client, what is that like for you as a trainer who had that experience, as a client in the past? And then, what kind of space are you trying to create?
Francesca: I think the biggest thing is safety. Just being in the gym, being connected to the gym, saying, this is a safe space for you to be. Like, this is a place where you're going to be respected, and you're going to be able to work out and feel like you can be yourself. It's like the visibility and the safety, I think, are the two important things I think about a queer person training a queer client.
Because so many people that I train that are queer identifying hate gyms. And don't like, want to be in a locker room or want to be around a bunch of dudes, cis men, you know, just taking up space. And so I was really lucky that I'm a part of a gym in Ditmas Park that it's not, you know, out front a queer space, but it is a community space.
There are people that represent the whole community and it's a very diverse neighborhood. It's diverse enough that me as a queer person like oh, I can come in here and feel safe. So if I can come in here and feel safe, hopefully other people will be able to do that.
And I think body neutrality is really helpful because I have people with trans bodies or who are gender fluid or trans or, you know, in some point of transition and they don't want to talk about their weight. They don't want to focus on aesthetics and they're actually relieved when they come to me. Because they're having a different journey with their body and how it's transitioning and how they want it to be. They don't want to also come to a gym and then be told that they're fat or, not strong or whatever.
So I really focus on, with everybody, really, just telling people how strong they actually are. Because a lot of people come in thinking they're not strong, when the reality is, if you walk around all day, and you pick up kids, and you move things around, like, you're strong, you can use your body. I think about just respecting them, consent is a big part of that, I rarely touch people when I train them, I don't like to, and if I do, I'm always making sure I'm checking in and saying like, Hey, is it okay if I do this, before I just, you know, do anything to them. I think that's really important because queer people can be more sensitive about that. Anybody with trauma history, not just limited to queer people, is sensitive about different parts of their body and being touched, especially by trainers and health practitioners.
Anna: The other end of the spectrum in terms of the people that you might work with or encounter, and this is something that we do talk about a lot, as trainers who take this body neutrality approach, is when you're paired up with somebody, or you get an inquiry, or even just somebody random at the gym asks you about weight loss, and somebody comes to you with that goal.
Something that we talk about a lot is like, everybody's body is their body, right? They get to choose what they want to do with it. But we're always like, oh man, it's so great on the other side and we want to try to help people understand that there's a different way, but it's really tricky.
So I'd love to hear from you about how you are navigating those kinds of conversations now in your work?
Francesca: Yeah, and full disclosure, I've asked Anna a lot of questions about how to have these conversations because I instantly get so angry when I hear people just, just disrespecting themselves.
Anna: And that's not to say I ever have a good answer, but we talk about it and those are great conversations.
Francesca: I will say I did have a, I think, probably like the most confident conversation I've had about this, where I had a person who was my age, coming to me talking about wanting to lose weight.
And I felt really good about how I answered, and I'll try to remember what I said, but I mainly have been kind of leading with, “Just a heads up. I don't use weight loss as a goal. Like, I don't take anybody's weight. I don't focus on weight loss. I don't focus on nutrition. I leave that out of it, and I'm very upfront with people about that. Like, this is not how I, I train people. This is not a barometer for health. It is not a measurement that is, I think, practical.” And then I try to switch over to, but what I do is, I focus on strength and mobility, and increasing your strength and endurance for the things that you do in your life. What activities you like to do in your life that you enjoy doing and how can we support you through them?
I've been really starting to invite, and I've learned this from Jessie Mundell's fitness program, just holding space for people to be unhappy with their bodies or want their bodies to change and acknowledging, yeah, sometimes our bodies change. We have no control over if we're taking new medication or if we have a baby or, there's lots of reasons why our body will change throughout our lifespan. So I just try to hold space for them to tell me like, oh, I want to fit my clothes, or, oh, I used to look this way, and I just say it's hard, it's hard when our body changes, and, we can't really control it, we can do a lot of things to take care of ourselves, but, our weight, our body's gonna change throughout our lifespan, and I just keep reminding people of that, a lot of it is genetic, I remind people of that, it's, there's a big genetic component, what do the people in your family look like.
If you work on, resistance training, if you do your cardiovascular work, like your body will change. I can't tell you how it will change, but it will change. I just try to make them no promises, I never promise them that they're going to lose weight or anything, I try to like take weight loss out of it entirely and try to focus on the grief that they may feel for their body changing and, just reminding them you don't always have to love your body or be happy in your body, but you need to respect your body and take care of your body, like that's, that's your responsibility.
Anna: That's such a great set of talking points, and I think it's similar to what I do as well. I think I even sometimes take it a little farther with like, what I can and can't promise you, because if you've looked at the research, you know that intentional weight loss, it doesn't usually last, it often backfires, it often causes a lot of additional health problems downstream.
And so, I will sometimes point to that and just say, like, my goal is for you to feel really safe and comfortable moving in your body. And I don't believe there's like really a safe way to pursue intentional weight loss. So it just doesn't like fit into my approach. I can't promise it, it's really, really hard to achieve, and I don't know of a safe way to go there.
Francesca: It's really challenging. I have clients that take Ozempic for, you know, diabetes. But they were in bigger bodies and now they're losing weight on Ozempic and the thing that gets me frustrated is that even if I've been training with somebody for two years, they'll attribute the weight loss to why their joints feel better and not the strength training and not the programming that I've been giving them to make their knees stronger.
I do know that people in large bodies can be strong. And I do know that, weight does not determine how strong or how mobile you are, et cetera. So that is a frustrating thing that I'm up against right now.
Anna: It feels like maybe in the age of Ozempic and Wegovy like, we've taken a little bit of a backpedal into a world where like, Oh yeah, of course, everybody's trying to lose weight, you know? It's hard to see that we want to keep these spaces as open and free of that kind of pressure and talk as possible, but sometimes it feels like a battle that's going well and sometimes it's more challenging.
Just to switch gears a little bit, something that we've also talked about is, for anybody, regardless of body or identity or background, some of the, the places where people get stuck .
For somebody who's navigating a gym for the first time or a new gym, as somebody who works at a couple of gym facilities, what do you recommend: like, you walk in the door and what do you do?
Francesca: I'm also a person prior to being a trainer that didn't like working out in a gym. If you've tried a few gyms and a gym is not for you, you can order weights, if you have the means, you can get weights on your own and work out in your house. Like, you can make any space a gym. You can work out outside. There's so many great outdoor spaces where you can do things. But if you are trying to commit to going to a gym, I think it's important to get to know the people that work there. I think that they're there to help you.
And I think a smaller gym is better than a big box. Like the bigger the gym sometimes, the more intimidating the space can be. I motivate people when they start training with me, and they want to come to the gym on their own, to just do anything.
To not be so stringent on, I have to do this to equal a good workout, right? It's like, if you're trying to build a habit, you want to just carve out 10 minutes, go in there for 10 minutes. Do some squats, walk on the treadmill, like do anything in that space, in that allotted time and just say, Hey, I showed up and I did something.
And then as you continue to build that habit, maybe you stay longer. Maybe you get more confident, maybe you add more challenging movements to your practice.
Anna: I love this. This is exactly what I always say is like, you know, if your first few days or even weeks at the gym are like, you're walking on the treadmill for 10 minutes and you're just kind of looking around and understanding like, Oh, that's the area where people go to stretch. That's the area where people go to use the free weights. There's all these machines. Let me kind of watch some people using them. Like, that's a great use of your time. You showed up, you're starting to get more comfortable, and like, maybe you stay on that treadmill? And maybe, you're like, actually I kind of want to try some of this other stuff.
Like, it's great either way.
Francesca: I think just being curious and being compassionate are the two best things you can do walking into a gym. I used to have a care plan because I used to have a panic attack almost every time I worked out in a gym, prior to being a trainer. I'd have a plan, I had my thing I wanted to do, and then I would go into a gym and I had no space to do it. There were dudes everywhere and I would have a panic attack — I would plan to be anxious or I would be like, okay, what am I gonna do if this happens? You know, what are my options? I can just go back to the locker room, take a deep breath and go home or I can be curious and try a different modality.
“I think just being curious and being compassionate are the two best things you can do walking into a gym.”
—Francesca Piccioni
It's just like setting yourself up for success if you're a person that's prone to getting overwhelmed in public or being afraid or anything. It's like, how are you going to take care of yourself, to give yourself permission to leave? If you go and you try and you're like, this isn't for me, then get yourself out of there, or go sit in the locker room or find a quiet space to breathe, you know?
I think it's important because when we start working out for a lot of people, they're motivated, they're excited, but that wears off. And some days you're gonna have to, you're gonna need to go to the gym because you know you have to take care of yourself or you're working on something and you need the habit and you're not going to feel great about it. It's not going to be fun, right? It's not going to be like, I'm so excited to come to the gym today. So then how do you honor that feeling or honor that capacity you have? And being adaptive to your workout in that moment. Maybe you're having a really bad morning and it's like, you know, you should be doing squats and presses and all this stuff, but maybe you just want to hang out on the elliptical, you know?
I use the moniker All Movement is Good Movement. And I think we can't push ourselves, we can't get stronger, we can't actually take care of our bodies if we're not honoring how we're showing up to something.
Anna: What do you wish that more people knew about exercise or movement?
Francesca: I wish people just had more respect for themselves, that they knew their own worth is not attached to how they look. I wish people realized how individual it is, how movement is so, so intimate and so personal. We all have individual capacities and levels and abilities and strengths and weaknesses. Um, and I think people come in with an idea of what they should be doing rather than actually listening to themselves and figuring out what do I need to do for me, what's going to make me feel good, what's going to make me stronger.
But I also wish people knew it wasn't so scary to move. Like weights are not scary. I think so many people are intimidated to lift things. There’s a lot of stories about people hurting themselves and there's so much out there about what is the right way to do this exercise, what is the wrong way, and what's the most effective. Moving is not as complicated as we've made it out to be.
Anna: I think that's really important too, because especially if you're like a person on social media, there's many well intentioned people, even really great experts, who are like, everything you've heard about this is wrong or like you're squatting all wrong and it's just it's really intimidating and I think whether it's about the squat or not it can rock your internal boat a little bit in terms of like, am I even doing what I should be doing? It's like gatekeeping almost for who gets to exercise because it feels like if you don't know all this stuff you're not doing it right or you're not getting anything out of it. So I love the idea of just like it's not that complicated.
What about you and your movement practice these days? You're so busy training people, but like, how do you move?
Francesca: Yeah, I'm very admittedly very bad at routine. And mostly because my schedule's never the same. So I can make a nice little plan and then it will never happen because I'll have a cancellation or my things will get moved around.
I've struggled my whole life with finding routine and setting expectations for myself that are reasonable. I'm in a season now of my life where I let a lot of things go. I was so stressed out about perfectionism and I wanted to do everything perfectly for so long, but that really didn't work for me.
I used to work out consistently three days a week and I was just kind of a rage machine. I was very anxious and it didn't really work for me. Um, the stress of like, I need to be in the gym now and I have to do it this way. So I let that go. Now that I am a trainer, it's nice because I know a lot more. I have more access to different exercises. And so I consider myself an intuitive mover. I set a goal of strength training twice a week, cause that's a pretty reasonable goal for me right now.
And I show up when I can and do what I can. And I try to give myself permission to take it really easy or push myself hard. Like if I have 20 minutes, I'll do something. If I have an hour, I'll take my time. I'll do a lot more. But it changes.
And there's some weeks where I have more energy. And then there's other weeks where I'm really tired and I'm really sore and I focus on my mobility. So I'm just constantly trying to be intuitive. What does my body need today? What do I know that I need to do? I think it's really hard to have that kind of body awareness. It's something I've worked on for years to be able to, it's how I eat food. I try to be really mindful of like, what does my body need? And I'm also recognizing that I could benefit from more consistency, so I am trying to get myself in more classes and actually be a little bit more disciplined.
I'm trying to invite discipline back in now, after letting it go so that I could heal a little bit — the mental aspect was very unhealthy around it.
I think it's also important to know that I bike every day. So, I've changed a lot of the way I work out so that I can, my goal is to bike until I'm 80. That is like my long term goal, like I want to be an 80-year-old person on a bike. So, everything I do now is to be supportive of that, cause that's the thing I actually do consistently. That's not a great answer, but it's, it's very, uh, it's very intuitive, I guess.
Anna: No, I think that is a great answer. And just that, that journey and like, things will shift, and there will be moments where you're doing things a certain way and moments where you realize you need to shift things for a certain reason.
And, and none of it is one size fits all. So like Francesca sharing what they're doing right now, that doesn't mean that like you as a listener or reader, that's exactly the right thing for you, right? Anytime we're talking about somebody's routine, I think, some of us who see that might be like, Ooh, that's what I need to be doing. And that's not necessarily true. It's just why we want to show these things is, just to show the range of what people do and how they think about their approach. So I love that. And I love the idea of having this goal in mind, biking until you're 80. Is that something that you talk with clients about?
Like, goal setting, how do you discuss that with clients?
Francesca: I don't actually do a lot of goal setting, especially short term goal setting. I try to encourage people to think about themselves as they're older and just like for the lifespan.
Like, how do you want to move for the rest of your life, so how do we get you to move consistently over time. I'm always trying to like, let's take the pressure off of this situation and recognize, oh, you're in your forties, you're in your fifties, you have so much time left. You know, if you have a week where you're doing really good, cool, if you have a week where you get too tired to move that much: That's okay. Cause you have a long, you've like 30, 40, 50 years of moving left. Right.
Anna: This trainer I love, I think you might follow her too, Jamie Carbaugh, fitragamuffin.
Francesca: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's great.
Anna: She's another one of my voice memo pals. She often says something like, if I'm going to be doing this when I'm 80 or 90, I'm going to miss a lot of Mondays. It's okay.
Francesca: Yeah.
Anna: You just have some grace.
Francesca: And post Covid, life and routines have changed a lot for so many people. I would say, 95 percent of the people I've started working with in the last year have come to me saying like, Yeah, since Covid, I haven't been, you know, or before Covid I was doing this, that, and the other thing.
We need to all accept that we're in a new world. And life is way more chaotic now than before COVID where our work schedules are different. Our lives are just so different. We value things differently. We see things differently. And in some respects that's brought a lot of people to the gym, but just kind of like putting this kind of past self onto you as you're entering this new phase of your life.
It's like, just make every day, day one.
Anna: Yeah, and I think it goes along with the idea that like, with our bodies, change is the only thing we can really anticipate.
Francesca: Octavia Butler, baby! The only thing constant is change.
Anna: The only constant is change with our bodies and with our lives, too. So like, expecting that you can get into a routine exactly, that you'll sustain exactly the same way forever is, you know, as we've learned in the past few years, like, life And the world are just very, very unpredictable.
So being open minded about making shifts and checking in and adjusting and giving yourself grace when you need to, it's like, that's, that's the game.
Francesca: Yeah.
Anna: Anything else?
Francesca: Be kind to yourself. Be good to yourself.
Anna: Thank you, Francesca. You're the best.
Francesca: Oh, thanks.
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On another note, I’m working on a post and would love to know: What kind of movement serves you best when you’re feeling super-stressed out, and why do you think it helps? Let me know in the comments or via DM, or reply to this note!
More soon.
xo
Anna
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A queer personal trainer on compassion, curiosity, and biking in your 80s