When Beck Strauss and Julie Lopresto heard about Ohio House Bill 68, they were immediately concerned about themselves, their friends and their family.
Determined to make a difference, the two Cleveland-based friends immediately turned to a favorite hobby to raise funds for the TransOhio Emergency Fund. The avid weightlifters, who work out together each week in Lopresto’s basement gym, set up a GoFundMe with ambitious goals to hit personal records on their deadlifts.
Their idea was simple: supporters contribute to funds that will be distributed to trans folks and the families of trans kids in need of medical care, relocation assistance and other resources upon passage of the cruel legislation. Contributors will also get to watch video of the duo’s attempts to hit personal records for their deadlifts (which will take place after the April 23 implementation of HB 68).
The fundraiser quickly exceeded its initial goal of raising $600 ($1 per lb. lifted) and was raised to $6,000 ($10 per lb. lifted).
The Buckeye Flame talked to Strauss and Lopresto about weightlifting and why they used it as a vehicle for fundraising.
What are your backgrounds in weightlifting?
Beck Strauss: I really consider myself a strongman lifter. That’s my primary competitive sport. But I do some powerlifting as training for that, as well as to find competitions that are a little bit more frequent than strongman.
Julie Lopresto: Beck has been doing this for a couple of years. We’re friends from college, so when they moved to town, I just decided, “You know what? I’m gonna start going to their basement gym to hang out and to learn some stuff.” And I found that I really enjoyed it. Since then, we’ve built a home gym in my basement. And we hang out a couple of times a week and lift and it’s really fun.
How does lifting tie into your gender identity and/or your identity as a member of the LGBTQ+ community?
Beck: Transitioning is what made me start to feel able to try things and one of those things was lifting. I got access to gender-affirming care in 2018–2019. After that, a coworker of mine posted a video of her pulling a truck across the parking lot. I texted her and I said, “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” And she said to me, “You know, you could do this if you wanted to. If you started training.” I said, “I have been sedentary basically my entire life. I think I might die actually.”
But then another friend of hers who owns a gym in Pennsylvania posted that they were going to run an all-gender, no-weight-class strongman competition, raising money for a couple of LGBTQ+ charities in that area. It included a truck pull. So I started going to the work gym and then signed up for a local chain gym in a strip mall somewhere and did all of the steps that you do to get started in these sports. And at the end of 2019, I went and participated in this competition and I pulled a truck across the parking lot. Having access to these tools and resources and medical care that let me be my whole self are what got me to walk into the gym in the first place.
Julie: As for me, growing up a closeted queer kid who’s kind of chubby and nerdy, all exercise was the devil for me growing up. I think that all queer women in some way have to go through that journey of realizing that they’re at odds with hetero femininity and the heterosexist idea of what a woman is and how she should look. Part of it for me is part of my journey of doing feminism and decoupling my idea of my body from those ideals. This is the first exercise that I have enjoyed since high school. I’m just having a lot of fun.
Why did you choose to use deadlift goals to raise money for TransOhio?
Beck: The thing that got me excited about strongman in the first place is theatricality. It’s exciting, it’s showy, it’s entertainment and it gets a lot of attention, because it sounds like something that people want to be a part of. So we wanted to use deadlifting, something that we do all the time and both of us really enjoy. This is a way to get more attention for this cause as people who want to donate can feel like they get a little something in return. They get to see a video of us trying to do something really ambitious and a little bit silly.
Julie: We are both Leos. And we love putting on events and themed parties. Beck does an open gym at my house every Friday and we’ve had a couple of friends who’ve never touched a barbell ever in their lives come and hang out with us to try some new stuff. With this event, we’re hoping to have people come over and join in virtually as well.
Beck: Because there was so much initial excitement, we’ve started to talk about bringing in other weightlifters, other powerlifters, other people who deadlift around Ohio to help drum up support. And this is very much in the spirit of Pull for Pride, which was an event that was organized for several years in a row, but is unfortunately no longer running. We’re hoping to channel a little bit of the spirit of Pull for Pride in a smaller, more targeted way. And maybe we can use that to get a few more eyes onto a really important charity.
What are you doing to train for this?
Beck: We have kind of a chain of coaching. I work with a coach named Gabby Brost who does online programming, and she has a lot of experience working with people of marginalized backgrounds, including trans people. The stuff that she has me doing to prep for strongman and for potentially a powerlifting competition this year is a custom program. I’m sharing parts of that program as well as a more popular program called Stronglifts 5×5 with Julie and with other friends of ours who are coming to the gym with me. I love working with beginners. I love learning to coach. I learned a lot about lifting by sharing this knowledge and by helping friends who are all built different from me in a variety of ways to figure out how to get their best lifts in.
Julie: Beck’s a great coach. I’m primarily doing the Stronglifts 5×5 but I’m always interested in trying new ways to wiggle my body. I’m 5’2″ and Beck is not. (Beck: I’m 5’10”.) So, we have wildly different body types. I’m shaped much more like their coach than them. So it’s actually been really helpful to have occasional videos of Beck’s coach doing stuff. It’s been a fun journey of exploration. I definitely never would have done any of this in any sort of public setting.
Beck: Going to the gym is a social experience. Before I moved out to Ohio, I was lifting primarily by myself in a chain gym just kind of grinding. But for a lot of the folks that I know here, especially my queer and trans friends, getting into fitness spaces can be really intimidating and scary. And over time if you are consistent with it, you’ll get stronger. But the real goal is we go and hang out with our friends at the basement gym a few times a week.
Our gym has two rules. The first rule is no negative body talk. The second rule is nobody goes to the emergency room. And establishing that kind of floor in a weightlifting-focused space–especially one that in other communities and gyms and spaces can be dominated by really toxic and genuinely dangerous attitudes–has been a great way to make it welcoming for people who would otherwise never have thought to try it and make this something that is accessible and fun. And honestly, we’re in our 30s, so this is functional fitness. We’re all just trying to not throw our backs out. Keeping that social environment and the positive attitude is a really big part of keeping it up.
Why is your fundraising team called “Zoodle’s Gym?”
Julie: My household has four cats. And one of my roommate’s cats is named Zoodle. Her full name is Zucchini, but we call her Zoodle because she’s a very long, skinny cat. She always wants to get into any place that she’s not allowed. She always tries to get into the basement, especially when some of her favorite people are there.
She will sit at the top of the stairs leading into the basement and scream and howl because we’re down there and she wants to hang out with us. So we’ve started saying that it’s her gym, and the price of admission is two kisses to Zoodle. And so when you leave you have to pay your gym fee because she’s usually hanging out near the door. 🔥
IGNITE ACTION
- Support Deadlifts for the TransOhio Emergency Fund by visiting their GoFundMe.
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