Why Studio Gay exists.
Studio Gay expands how fitness is designed, experienced, and taught.
Studio Gay designs strength training programs and coaching systems for individuals, gyms, and wellness spaces. Its mission is to queer fitness by creating more inclusive, adaptable, and enjoyable training experiences that challenge the idea that there is one ideal body, one right way to train, or one definition of success.
Drawing on expertise in sport science and sport sociology, Studio Gay builds systems that develop strength, improve mobility, and help people grow confidence through movement.
Studio Gay creates fitness programs and training communities that center and celebrate queer people. Through 1:1 training, small-group fitness and hybrid coaching, Studio Gay helps people build strength, move with joy and feel great in their bodies.
It's a cold, hard world out there. Too often, we're made to feel insufficient – not big enough, not thin enough, not buff enough, not fit enough. Studio Gay is all about celebrating what you've got while helping you work towards what you want. The point is to get fitter, yes, but also to experience more pleasure in your body. Blending sport science education with lived queer and trans experience, Head Coach Nici creates workouts that are playful, sexy and accessible while building real strength and sustainable routines. And it wouldn't be called Studio Gay if the playlists weren't 🔥
Beyond helping clients figure out and achieve their individual fitness goals, Studio Gay offers queer folks a chance to sweat together outside da klerb (or the sauna 😏). Through hybrid training communities that blend in-person and online interaction, it allows people with different needs, schedules and lifestyles to connect, motivate, bish and dish. Studio Gay wants you to celebrate yourselves – and each other.
Also on offer are queer-coded training plans, fitness retreats, workshops and more. In addition to its own programs, Studio Gay also shares knowledge and tools with other coaches, gyms and companies, helping to create a fitness culture that is truly inclusive, accessible and empowering for all.
Our values
Queer joy & pleasure
Training should feel good. We build strength and unlock more confidence, sexuality, and joy in your body. Movement is playful, serious, and unapologetically pleasurable.
No binaries
We reject gender binaries, rigid programming, and fitness dogma. Hard workouts with compassionate coaching. Evidence-based training that adapts to real, messy queer lives. We meet you where you are.
Community is everything
Hard workouts, cute crowds. We sweat together, hype each other up, and hold space for struggles and wins. Online, in-person, hybrid — you're part of the Studio Gay fam.
Make fitness fun and accessible.
Studio Gay emerged from my desire to make fitness fun. To make it affirming, sexy, and cute. However you define those words, I want you to feel them in your body. The one you have now and the one you're working toward. Because no matter who we are, our bodies are always in transition. Why not enjoy the ride?
At Studio Gay, I want to help you achieve the change you want while also embracing the process of change itself. Having goals can be motivational, even inspiring; but it can also generate pressure and produce feelings of failure. I want you to grow – without obsessing over outcomes. To challenge yourself – without destroying yourself. To explore your body – without judging it. And I want you to do it all in a way that lowers the stakes a bit – a way that feels fun, relaxed, and chill.
My focus is strength training, but I always incorporate breathwork, mobility, and stretch. Together, we'll define goals, leverage data, and chart progress. But we'll also celebrate where you're at in the present. Vibes are energetic, communicative, and earnest. Music is clubby. Coaching style is a mix of pushing you hard and building you up. The ultimate aim is to help you feel more confident, flexible, and joyful in your body.
Also, of course, to gay up your workouts 🍑
As a bisexual trans masc coach in a dude-dominant industry, I know all about the policing of genders, bodies, and sexualities. At Studio Gay, we throw the scripts out the window. I want to empower people, especially queers, to invent their own unique visions for physical joy, then help bring those visions to life. To that end, I always hold space for real talk about gender and sexuality – the stuff that actually shapes fitness culture, but rarely gets said out loud. How are your fitness goals related to your (or other peoples') ideas about femininity, masculinity, attractiveness, and desire? How do certain movements make you feel? What is actually driving your desire to get fit? We definitely don't have to talk about this stuff – but I strive to be a trainer you can talk to about it if you want.
The person behind it.
Coach Nici is a sport scientist (M.Ed.), coach, and founder of Studio Gay. Their work combines strength training with a coaching approach centered on inclusion, (queer) joy, and helping people build strong, capable bodies that support the lives they want to live.
Alongside coaching individuals and groups, Nici collaborates with gyms and wellness spaces to shape training programs and coaching systems that make strength training more accessible, engaging, and enjoyable for everyone.