Feedback Corner
Welcome to the feedback corner, where we take the anonymous feedback we receive, and share answers and action items so you know what's going on behind the scenes!
SPRING 2025
Q: [Paraphrased] Why is Fat Fitness just reusing Group Fitness workouts? Fat Fitness athletes want specialized programming, not Group Fitness programming.
We appreciate this important feedback regarding Fat Fitness (FF) programming. We understand the desire for specialized workouts that are distinct from Group Fitness (GF), and we appreciate the opportunity to clarify our approach to ensure FF athletes feel seen and supported.
Our Commitment to Specialized Fat Fitness Programming:
You're right, FF athletes deserve programming tailored to their specific goals and needs. Initially, we explored direct alignment with GF workouts, but based on your feedback, we've evolved our strategy to be more intentional:
FF Specific Interpretation and Focus: While some workout structures or movements will be the same between GF and FF, FF classes now interpret the entire workout in ways specifically designed for FF athletes. Our coaches are trained to deliver the "spirit" of the workout with a distinct FF focus, offering modifications, progressions, and coaching cues that prioritize the needs, biomechanics, and goals frequently expressed by FF participants. This isn't just scaling GF; it's reframing the workout through an FF lens.
GF Now Mirrors FF on Sundays: To further emphasize the value and distinct approach of FF, our Sunday Group Fitness classes now adopt the Fat Fitness workout as written. This shift highlights FF programming as a core offering and allows GF members to experience its unique benefits, rather than FF simply adapting GF.
Empowerment and Inclusivity: This intentional alignment aims to provide the best of both worlds:
Comprehensive Training: It ensures FF athletes cover the same breadth of movements and fitness domains we believe are beneficial for everyone at Solcana.
Flexibility: It empowers FF athletes to confidently attend any class on any day, knowing the underlying weekly structure promotes balance, while still receiving an FF-specific experience in dedicated FF classes.
Inclusivity and Affinity Are a 2-way Street:
In our mission to effectively coach a broad variety of people, we offer affinity spaces that serve different groups. We also strive to learn how to make all our classes more inclusive by incorporating the coaching strategies of the affinity spaces.
We are constantly tending to the balance around our affinity spaces. There is the task of creating boundaries to our affinity spaces that help people have a safe space to gather. Then there is the task of lowering the barriers around our communal workout spaces to increase access for everyone.
With Fat Fitness, we are bringing the wisdom learned by our FF coaches to our entire coaching staff so that effective and safe workout options are available for all bodies in all our class offerings.
Ongoing Dialogue:
We are continuously listening and learning. This balance between offering truly specialized FF experiences and ensuring a cohesive, beneficial structure for all Solcana members is a priority. We will continue to discuss this as a coaching staff and community to refine and optimize FF programming, just as we do for all our programs. We value your voice in this process.
Q: [Paraphrased] The Fat Fitness Description on the website or from the admin team is not clear enough, and it's hard to know who should go to that class and who shouldn't.
This has been an ongoing challenge for our team behind the scenes for a number of reasons. One is that fat celebration, and fat identity are actively evolving, so our description and for the website has needed to change as well. The other reason is that there are so many people using fat as a perjorative for themselves and others, and misunderstand what it means to be part of the fat community.
After many conversations with the FF team and leadership, we have identified a better description to make it clear who exactly is meant to be served in FF; which is people who have limited accessibility to the world, and/or are actively oppressed or excluded because they are fat.
This could look like: having to call ahead to a theater to be sure the seats are appropriately sized before attending a show, booking more than one seat on an airplane or buying a seatbelt extender, having to order clothes online because very few stores carry your size, experiencing harassment both online and IRL.
The FF class is not meant to police who identifies as fat. There may be people in our community who identify as fat, experience some challenges as a result, but aren't the primary target for the FF class because they can still shop at a straight-size store, do not experience limitations in public, etc. We are not the arbiters of who is and isn't fat, but we are actively creating a space that centers our fattest athletes who are most excluded in fitness settings.
Q: "I was wondering if there has been any consideration given to implementing an auto-waitlist system? So folks who join the waitlist would be placed in a queue and automatically added to the class when a spot becomes available/and notified."
This is something we have talked about too! Wodify DOES have a feature that allows waitlists to automatically pull people into the class. We had this in place a few years ago though and we ended up with a bunch more no-shows because people didn't realize they had gotten into class. What we could try is to implement it in one class and see if it felt better or worse for those people. We will play with this idea over the summer.
Q: "Can we get more Sunday morning yoga with Dina sometime soon? Or yoga for beginners in general? :)"
Absolutely! Dina is the best. We are planning to continue offering times with her this summer.
Q: It would be helpful if the coaches could write their names on the whiteboard at the start of class, because sometimes I forget, or miss the check in portion, and it would be helpful to just have it written on the board.
This is a cool idea and we are going to bring it up at our next staff meeting!
Q: Can you please remove the work “preferred” on the pronoun section of the Open registration form? Pronouns aren’t preferred, they just are. 🌈❤️
We fixed this right away, thank you!
Q: I would love it if there was a simple way to suggest music for the workout playlists :) If one exists already, sorry about that, I haven't seen it anywhere!
Ah great idea, thank you for wanting to share. We always say as coaches that the music becomes a blur in the background to us and sometimes we dont even notice what is playing.
We use Spotify, so you are MORE than welcome to make a playlist that we can follow on spotify. We would love that so much!
Q: Hoping for more styles of merch soon? Please?
You asked and we answered! Cute tanks, fun hats and merch from a different queer vendor. We plan to order more tanks soon as well.
Q: Let's stop holding a bathroom/shower door open with a kettle bell that people will eventually use! thanks for considering!
For a time there, the lock on that shower door did not have an "occupied" symbol, so no one could ever tell if it was empty or not, hence the kettlebell. We got that fixed about a month ago and have since stopped propping that door open. (this feedback was received prior to that change).
Q: I would love to see bigger sizes consistently included in Solcana merch.
I want you to know that when it comes to merch, our rule is that if it can't be ordered in a wide array of sizes, we do not order it. That sometimes makes sourcing more of a challenge (preaching to the choir I know). So when we do place orders we are always looking for something that offers XS to 4X, and we are delighted when we can find something that goes to 6X.
However, the thing I continue to struggle with is how much of each size to order. So when this feedback was submitted for example, I hadn't ordered enough size 2X and 3X and we ran out super quickly. If you ever notice we are out of a larger size or dont have enough in an order, please feel free to email me directly [email protected] because then I can place an order for more. After we got this feedback we ordered a bunch more of the larger sizes and put them out. I will continue to work on refining my ordering process to have enough of each size on the shelf. Thanks!
Q: Walking around the building in the dark is a little sketchy. Can you invest in some lighting for the alley or maybe we can use the back door or offer for people to create walking groups?
We do not own any building space in the alley really, just our parking pad, which we have lights on. We did notice some of the lights were out along hook and ladder so we emailed them to ask them to be replaced. We also harassed the city a ton until they cut open the other gate to the parking lot, so we have a more direct line to the lot. If you're still feeling unsafe feel free to grab a buddy and walk out the back door at night.
