When it Comes to Breaking Down Barriers in Sport, Creating a Safe Space Just Isn’t Enough

By David “Dirk” Smith, M.Sc., SDL (He/Him)

The most common element when it comes to developing grassroots inclusive sport structures is building a “safe space” type of culture that is free from judgement, prejudice, and discrimination that LGBTQ+ people, especially trans/nonbinary and POC experience.   

Sport has long been an institution that is founded and centered around the ideals of cisgender, straight white men. Women were banned from all but the most feminine sports, and PoC often relegated to segregation era leagues and organizations that were completely underfunded. Even today, the debate about professional women’s sports is often centered around funds and popularity for which many of the same arguments from 50+ years ago are still being used today.

The term “safe space” is a bit of a misnomer here, because in sport you’re not necessarily making a “safe space” within sport. Rather, the coach and/or sport group leader has the responsibility to build safety and inclusion overall culture and environment in which the sport takes place. Ensuring that every person, be it athlete, coach, athletic supporter, or anybody else who enters within this environment feels safe. Safety is paramount because feeling safe allows the athletes to free themselves to focus on the sport itself without worry or stress.

But is creating safe and inclusive sporting environments enough? Grassroots inclusive sports are thriving right now, with new clubs, teams, leagues, and organizations popping up all over the place eager to welcome new members and create positive change. Unfortunately, though, many of these new groups, despite their best efforts and intentions, just aren’t able to retain the people they attract. Furthermore, when it comes to different levels of sport, include youth sport, school sports, college sports, elite and professional level sports, there is still a strong lack of LGBTQ+ representation within those safe spaces. Even when said teams and organizations have gone through DEI training and initiatives designed to create DEI safety within their environments, there still isn’t as much representation as one might expect.

While these organizations have made a proactive effort in removing these barriers centered around inclusiveness in sport, they fail to recognize other barriers still in place. Barriers rooted much deeper into the foundation of a cisgender, heteronormative, white supremacist culture.  

• Gender conformity.
  • Kids may show intrinsic interest in doing a specific type of sport but is discouraged because said sport may not be consistent with the kid’s gender.
    • Girls wanting to play football, basketball, hockey, etc.
    • Boys wanting to take up dancing, figure skating, etc.
  • This is driven both by adults who insist on gender norms, but also other kids who might engage in bullying behaviors.
  • Many states passed legislation banning trans/nonbinary kids from participating in sport altogether.
  • Others have passed laws requiring kids to participate only in gendered sport divisions that align with their birth certificate.
    • This makes it impossible for any kid to participate in a sport where their gender division doesn’t exist. Such as if a girl wants to play football but no girls’ team exists, she will also be banned from the boys’ team.
  • The lack of autonomy for the kid to select the sport of interest for them creates a barrier that inhibits their future relationship with sport/exercise altogether.

• Out of date and poorly structured PE programs.
  • Modern PE programs still embody much of the out of date and archaic methods used to teach kids about sport and exercise. PE classes grade kids based on objective performance standards that do not reflect the diversity of body types, conditioning levels, interests, or personalities that a typical class represents.
  • PE programs judge and grade children based on arbitrary fitness standards, while teaching them sport skills that frankly are not useful nor relevant to a vast majority of students.
  • With constant cuts to education budgets and resources, PE programs are further being cut and schools are left without proper resources to develop and modernize their curriculum.
  • With children and youth becoming increasingly sedentary, there is a clear indication that PE is more necessary than ever, yet is failing to help students learn, establish, and maintain a healthy positive relationship with exercise.
    • Bad experiences in PE from being held to arbitrary and unrealistic standards sets a bad relationship between student and physical activity from the start.
    • PE programs often have students standing around or sitting around more to learn and practice arbitrary and irrelevant sport skills rather than moving and being physically active.
    • A divide grows between the “athletic kids” and non-athletic kids based on ego-oriented and performance based developmental standards.
    • As a result, the “non-athletic kids” don’t even bother to engage and participate, even when they have strong potential.
  • Kids are left feeling a lack of competence within themselves that teach them from a young age that sport and exercise are “not for them”.

• Lack of diverse racial representation.
  • Just like there are more “masculine” and “feminine” sports, there are sports that tend to lean heavily toward mono-racial representation.
  • Often this is driven through income and class inequality, including lack of resources, training spaces, accessibility to local organizations and teams.
  • Even when there are athletes who try to break through this barrier, they are often faced with prejudicial and discriminatory attitudes and behaviors from within the different structural levels of the sport itself.
  • This also leads to dangerous stereotypes that only further inhibit participation from diverse groups.
  • Without social support or representation to be treated as equals within the realm of the sport, on all levels, athletes are more likely to quit altogether.
    • Further driving the imbalance of representation.

These major barriers only scratch the surface and there is so much more to unpack here. But simply having these barriers, especially at the youth level, is keeping people out simply because they build bad relationships with exercise and sport and thus, never learn how to exercise or play sport on any level. When these kids grow up into adults and start to reconsider and find themselves motivated to pursue exercise and sport, they are level without any foundational knowledge of where to start! When you spend your whole life learning that exercise and sport is not for you, only to come to find out that it is and should be for everybody, the lack of basic knowledge alone becomes a barrier.

Our modern fitness culture pushes gyms and workout programs that make a lot of promises, primarily around aesthetics, and push unrealistic body image standards onto us that only do more harm than good. These programs push people into exercise at intensities well above and beyond what is appropriate for people just starting out. TV weight loss shows like “The Biggest Loser” show dramatic results in short periods of time as a result of high intensity exercise and extreme diet programs, but the majority of contestants only gain the weight back. Every personal trainer and fitness influencer on social media emphasizes how to cut fat, build muscle, shape, and tone your body, etc. Some even publish books on things like “how to build your chest muscles”.

So unfortunately for adults, things don’t get much better. Modern fitness culture latches onto this lack of basic knowledge and utilizes it to manipulate people into buying into extreme programs. Leading people to jump into workout programs at too high intensity and without learning the basic skills and techniques to exercise safely. Further creating bad experiences through injuries and overwhelming intensities that become more off-putting than anything else. It’s no wonder why our modern society is facing a health crisis. Our relationship with exercise and sport is so toxic and otherwise undeveloped, it’s impossible for people to step forward on the right foot.

Thankfully there are leaders in the field of exercise and sport who are working to make a change. Myself (David Smith) through my work with SC Janus, the LGBTQ+ sports club in Cologne, Germany to coach several different aspects of sport and exercise, specifically designed for dismantling these barriers. The underlying themes of my coaching philosophy within these groups and all the sports teams and exercise groups I work with is built on the fulfillment of three psycho-social needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

• Ü100- A fitness class specifically focused on exercise and physical activity for larger people.
  • Creating the safe space through representation, community development, and social support.
  • Doing exercise at an appropriate level of intensity relative to each person’s own conditioning level.
  • Emphasis on developing good exercise technique and skill rather than training volume.
  • Encouraging a fun, positive, energetic, and empowering motivational climate.
• Swimming – Technik und Kondition – A swimming course (part of the SC Janus swimming program) focused on basic water safety and swimming skill development.
  • Creating a safe space through representation, social support, and community development.
  • Focusing on swimming and athletic development, starting from water safety basics, rhythmic breathing, ability to relax in the water, and then developing swim skills.
  • Helping swimmers establish feelings of competence within the water from the initial stages along with a sense of social support to help create feelings of safety.
  • Utilizing appropriate training techniques and practice intensities to build competence and confidence in swimming.
  • Offering active feedback on techniques to improve upon swimming skills.

In these two examples David has employed coaching techniques and strategies designed to enhance a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Three psycho-social needs that influence motivation and drive active engagement within sport, rooted in Self-Determination theory. As a result, attendance in both ü100 and Technik und Kondition has quadrupled, with both sessions pushing the limits of their capacity. This is a nice flip from 1.5 years ago when attendance was barely enough to justify not cancelling the courses. This is particularly important for my openly trans and non-binary swimmers since the sheer thought of wearing a swim suit can be a barrier in its own right. I am very happy and grateful to have quite a few openly trans swimmers who regularly attend the practice and feel comfortable in doing so.

With these barriers broken down, attendance is bursting at the seams with more interesting growing every day and helping people mend their relationship with exercise and sport, one step, rep, and breath at time.