Trainer Matt Boyles Wants Queer, Bi & Trans Men to be Fitter

Out fitness trainer Matt Boyles works primarily with gay, bi, and transgender male clients for a simple reason: "This is a population that can need something different from the typical gym experience, which – as he noted to EDGE – can be "intimidating."

Friendly and warm, Boyles works with all sorts of people, but it's through his online site that the London-based personal trainer – who is out himself – welcomes men who love men of all ages and body types. Clients can work out at home or, if they prefer, at a gym, initiating their experience with a custom-made 12-week workout regimen that can serve as a springboard to a lifetime fitness journey, all supported by a suite of resources: Hundreds of illustrative videos, an app, a nutritional guide, a podcast, a blog, and even personal feedback.

So novel is Boyles' approach that he's written a book about it, "The Fitter Confident Youniverse: An LGTBQ+ Guide to Wellbeing on Our Terms," in which he draws connections between the personal and the historic, helping to contextualize the LGBTQ+ experience, past and present, in a larger cultural setting and exploring how the repercussions of the past can affect our lives and even now.

EDGE caught up with Matt Boyles for a lively chat about having fun, achieving goals, building "gymfidence," and, of course, getting fit.

EDGE: You said that you were inspired to work with LGBTQ+ clients because you know what it's like to be intimidated in the typical gym environment. Would you say a bit more about what that meant in your case?

Matt Boyles: It's similar to a number of people I work with, in that it can be intimidating for lots of different reasons. There's loud music, there's people who seem to instantly know precisely what to do and how to do it perfectly, there's people lifting heavy weights, there's lots of flesh exposed, there's grunting. There's that element of imposter syndrome, like, "Oh, I don't belong here."

As an LGBTQ+ person, you also factor in how, "These environments I've experienced previously have been hostile in some regard." We often associate more masculinized spaces as being more homophobic, biphobic, transphobic, misogynistic, so there's this underlying "need to be wary" feeling that people have about gyms. Once you get through that – and it's a journey that everyone goes on; I call it "building your gymfidence" – you'll find that most gyms are actually really lovely, and the people who often look the most serious and the biggest are the nicest. They were once like all of us; everyone has to walk in for a first time at some point.

EDGE: Did you have a sense from the start what your clients were going to need, or was it more of a learning curve than you would have expected?

Matt Boyles: For the most part, I knew what people needed, because I had made the mistakes on my own journey. I knew that if I could make it fun and make it more like bite-sized workouts [people would be liable to respond well]. There's a thing called decision fatigue; you have to decide at the end of your day when you're tired from work, "Oh, what am I going to do at the gym?" The more you can make it as streamlined and personalized, the more it makes it easier for it to just start happening.

EDGE: From your experience as someone who practices fitness, and also instructs it, what would you say is the most important factor in becoming fit?

Matt Boyles: I think the most important thing is, life can be so serious and we have serious stresses with work and deadlines and family stuff and friends and all of that. The more you can see [fitness] as something fun, more you can find a way to do it that you enjoy. If you only get into fitness for reasons like, "I must lose weight," for X, Y, and Z, then it will always feel like a chore and it will never be sustainable. We don't prioritize things we don't enjoy. Fitness and wellbeing can absolutely work on that same level. The more you can do it on your terms, the more it will just start to slot into your life and be something that you do because you want to do it.

I think it's crucial that we take when we can responsibility for our own fitness because the stronger, fitter, more confident, healthy we are, the more we can show up for our friends and family. Also, as we get older, balance, coordination, bone density, heart health, lung health, brain health, circulation – all of these things are quite crucial. I don't believe aging is a reason to slow down. You can keep lifting weights into your 70s and 80s, and that will do so much for you.

EDGE: What is your method for making it fun for your clients?

Matt Boyles: Helping people take that step back and start to experience all the amazing ways that it's helping them. Maybe your sex drive's higher, or you've just got a bit more spring in your step. You have better relationships because you're more confident in yourself and who you are. All of these things have this positive ripple effect across all of the different parts of your life.

What I've done is build a lovely, supportive community. What that does is level the playing field because people then realize, "There are guys just like me doing what I want to do," and it makes them see it's possible.

And we have fun challenges. I've built a book club into my training program just to add a completely different dynamic, and to give us these connections and realize that, actually, the gay community is really welcoming. My groups are growing, and it's because it's all about motivation and support for this tribe of people who love what they're doing. I love cheering people on; I love being cheered on.

EDGE: I don't think I've heard this particular philosophy about fitness from anyone before. Is the sort of thing you'd like to put into a book?

Matt Boyles: It's funny you mention a book, because I wrote a best-selling one last year. It's called "The Fitter Confident Youniverse: An LGBTQ+ Guide to Wellbeing on Our Terms." It's a modern handbook to help people get started with fitness and understand how it works, but it also looks at LGBTQ+ history and my personal experiences and why sometimes our community struggles to get into a routine with their fitness.

In the '80s, when I was growing up, gay people were second-class citizens. They were only presented on TV as either predators or camp game show hosts – there was nothing in between. Of course, that leads to a certain amount of self-loathing. I've done a lot of work on to free myself from that. But that still can linger for a lot of people; obviously, you can't be blind to what's going on in the world, the attacks on any minority. Our personal responsibility to build our own resilience of fitness, strength, confidence, health, all these things, helps us deal with what's going on outside our front door. I really believe that that starts with us at home.

EDGE: Speaking of which, you mentioned many of your clients are working with you remotely, from home. How does it work? Is it you on the laptop calling out, "Now lift with the right, now lift with the left, now do a jumping jack!"?

Matt Boyles: No, nothing like that. I create programs that people go off and do in their own time, and I have a brilliant app. I build workouts in there, everything that I would want them to do. There's the short video of me showing them precisely how to do it, plus instructions I've written. I have 600 different videos, so I'm precisely curating and building people's plans, and if anyone wants me to double check their form they can film themselves in the app and it pings it to me remotely. From my office in London I can give that feedback.

But equally, I'm not gonna give someone something that's new or dangerous or untested. I want people to feel comfortable with these workouts. I'm very grateful to say quite a few clients have worked with me quite a lot of times. As we progress together, I know that they're learning and we can test and see what people are comfortable with.

Workouts are ten to a penny on YouTube; it's the knowledge, the personalization, the accountability, motivation, and community that really powers what I do and makes it stick. It's about making sure people feel heard, encouraged, and listened to throughout.

For more information about Matt Boyles, visit Fitter Confident You