“Even though Morales was fairly healthy, he told Mic, the surgeon “recommended that I start going to the gym to really work out my upper body.” The doctor said it would help make Morales’s chest more masculine-looking. Morales was already taking testosterone, which would help develop muscle and burn fat.

Morales was up for the task — but he’d need to find the right gym. That’s when he remembered a gym from a couple of years back — the one he would pass every day on his way to the coffee shop near his then-girlfriend’s home. It was called the Perfect Sidekick, and it advertised itself as an “LGBT gym.”

“I remember right around the two- or three-month mark of going to the gym, I started to feel really good about my body,” Morales said. “That was phenomenal. As a trans person, to feel really good about your body before you’ve had any surgeries — that’s amazing.”

But one of the best parts, he said, was the culture. “At my first or second class I took at the gym, as part of the introduction, they started asking people for their preferred gender pronouns — that was amazing,” he said. He felt safe to introduce himself as Xavier, even though it wasn’t his legal name, and to say that his preferred gender pronoun was male.

“I thought it was so significant,” he said. “I think it made me feel really safe. It made me feel like I could be exactly who I envisioned myself to be.”

That sense of safety is exactly what Nathalie Huerta, who founded the Perfect Sidekick around 5 ½ years ago, works to create for her members — around 80% of whom identify with LGBT communities.

At the Perfect Sidekick, group classes begin with participants sharing their names and preferred pronouns. Instead of gender-segregated change rooms, there’s one big locker room open to folks of all gender identities. The gym’s staff is required to attend regular sensitivity training.”

Read the full piece and see more photos here

Nice work Nathalie Huerta! Here’s hoping that other gyms follow your lead!