Meet SELF’s Newest Group of Everyday Athletes
Get to know some of the folks you’ll see in our fitness content all year.
Katie Thompson / Amanda K Balley. Courtesy of Self.
This article was originally published on self.com by Christa Sgobba, C.P.T. It has been shortened here for length.
At SELF, our goal is to help bring fitness to everybody. We strive to make our exercises, stretches, and workouts feel inclusive and accessible, whether you’re a new exerciser or a seasoned exerciser; whether you’re working toward a specific goal or just browsing for new moves. We’re here to help guide every step of your fitness journey—and so are our Everyday Athletes.
The lack of representation in most fitness media (including its photography) is staggering, so we set out to change that. After all, it’s hard to feel like fitness is for you if none of the people modeling the moves look like you. So for the past several years, SELF has held open casting calls and scoured social media to find trainers, experts, and real-world fitness enthusiasts who bring their own specific joy to their particular facet of exercise to serve as the faces of our fitness content throughout the year.
Our Everyday Athletes are powerlifters, dancers, yogis, runners, and frequent gymgoers. But they’re also more than that: They represent what we hope is the future of fitness. Many of our athletes are trainers who are actively involved in making fitness more inclusive, more welcoming, and straight-up more fun. When we meet our athletes, we often hear the same story: They know what it’s like to overcome a feeling of being unwelcome, and they want to be a face for positive change.
Fitness has always been about so much more than nailing a perfect push-up or picking up a heavier dumbbell—it’s a metaphor for everything else that’s difficult or challenging. It’s a reminder of how resilient you can be, and the ways in which you need to be gentle with yourself. When you’re looking at the GIFs and photos in SELF’s fitness content, we hope you see a community of badass athletes who exemplify all that and more.
We’re proud to announce our Everyday Athletes class of 2023, and we hope you’ll take some time to get to know them before your next workout.
Landyn Pan
Katie Thompson / Courtesy of Self.
Social: @fitlandyn
Age: 26
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Occupation: Online fitness and nutrition coach
Favorite thing to do outside of fitness: Go to theme parks and roller coasters, restaurants, live shows and concerts, and museums
Favorite workout song on repeat: Anything by Earth, Wind & Fire and Janet Jackson
Landyn Pan remembers being active as a kid, but after they hit their teen years, they started to pull back. “I would avoid exercise and sports due to gender dysphoria and not feeling like I belonged in fitness and sports spaces as a non-binary person,” Pan says. “I didn't see a lot of active queer and trans people anyway, and I felt like fitness just wasn't ‘for us.’ When I rediscovered fitness, it blew my mind and changed my perception.” Now, after reclaiming their athleticism, they’ve been back into fitness for over four years and coaching professionally for the last two. These days, Pan especially loves chest- and shoulder-strength workouts, and is a huge fan of the bench press. They want people who are just getting started and may be struggling to find their own space to understand that they belong there too. “Fitness should be for everyone,” Pan says. “Don’t let anyone stop you from doing what you want to do.”
Christa Sgobba is an ACE-certified personal trainer, writer, and editor who joined SELF in 2019 and is now SELF's director of fitness and food. She graduated from Wilkes University and earned a certificate from New York University's Publishing Institute.
