Currently, Hardy teaches classes at RYDE Indoor Cycling and Method Pilates, where she has filled her classes with diverse groups of people who share in the joy of movement together. (Courtesy Sherilyn Hardy)
When Sherilyn Hardy was growing up, her introduction to fitness was through sports, specifically volleyball and lacrosse. Lacrosse, a sport she played competitively, filled her schedule in high school, and even determined which college she chose—joining Baylor University’s women’s lacrosse team on a partial scholarship in 2015.
“ I loved playing sports, but there were definitely times where it didn’t really feel fun to me and it made me think that I didn’t love and enjoy exercise and movement,” she said.
Though the sport ushered her into an active lifestyle, it also became the reason why she stopped enjoying exercise. She quit the team two years later.
(Courtesy Sherilyn Hardy)
After college, Hardy moved to Houston to work as a product manager for ExxonMobil. She worked during the day and began to teach fitness classes at night and on the weekends. Balancing the two worlds was difficult. Once she discovered that she could earn enough money to turn fitness into a career, she quit her corporate job and has taught classes full-time for the past two years.
“I know this is a job, but now this is fun,” Hardy told COURIER HTX. “The movement is fun. It feels free. It feels like I’m a little bit more in control and I’m doing it for me.”
And if student to teacher seems like a big leap, Hardy also had a brief stint as a bodybuilder. After prepping and competing in a bodybuilding show, Hardy joked that she became “allergic to weightlifting,” and that it became hard to want to step into a gym.
Bodybuilding prep can be extremely demanding on the body, and can include being in a caloric deficit, extensive food preparation and tracking, muscle fatigue, and dehydrating the body right before competition to increase muscle definition. After prepping for two years for the competition, Hardy didn’t go to the gym for six months after, and kept asking herself, “How do I get my mojo back? How do I keep moving and keep momentum?”
The intensive training and preparation process is where she got the idea for MOMENTUM, her own personal fitness brand. It’s a popup series of fitness classes where Hardy takes traditional mat pilates movements and puts them into a club-like environment. Afterwards, attendees eat, drink, and hang out.
(Courtesy Sherilyn Hardy)
More popups are currently in the works, with the next one happening Aug. 23. While she plans more events, Hardy can still be found teaching classes at her two home studios and encouraging her students to keep coming back—even if they fall off the wagon at times.
When considering how she wanted to shape her fitness brand, she considered an obstacle she encountered when getting back into exercise—representation and inclusion.
The fitness spaces she enjoyed, like pilates or spin classes, were mostly made up of white participants and instructors. Despite living in Houston, which has consistently been ranked as one of the most diverse cities in the US, Hardy, a Black woman, was attending exercise classes and not seeing anyone else who looked like her.
“I kept going because I loved the movement and even when I didn’t always love the music or I didn’t see myself in the room, I knew that I could make this space my own,” she said.
According to a 2022 study by DataUSA, Black fitness experts and personal trainers make up only 9.3 percent of the market, while their white counterparts made up 74.5 percent. Stepping into workout spaces like these can sometimes feel unattainable and intimidating for those interested and, more importantly, uncomfortable when someone doesn’t fit the mold of a thin, upper-class white woman.
Despite these statistics, this did not stop Hardy from not only taking up space in these classes, but eventually going on to teach her own.
(Courtesy Sherilyn Hardy)
“In the time that I’ve been teaching, I have seen a lot of growth in diversity,” she said. “That’s always been my goal, is to take this space and turn it into something where I see more bodies like mine.”
Currently, Hardy teaches classes at RYDE Indoor Cycling and Method Pilates, where she has filled her classes with diverse groups of people who share in the joy of movement together.
(Courtesy Sherilyn Hardy)
“When I took my first class, I was like, oh, this is something that I could make so fire and get people who look like me in this space.”
Every Monday at RYDE, she hosts Twerkout Mondays at 7:30 p.m., which combines movement with rap and hip hop music to make a high-energy environment that attendees have responded enthusiastically to.
“Since I’ve been teaching, I have now filled classes with entirely Black men and women,” she said.
While Hardy acknowledges that stepping into a workout class for the first time can be intimidating, the benefits outweigh the discomfort. She hopes to share those with others.
“ If you can find a space where you feel welcome I feel like you have to nurture it. When you fall off, it’s okay. The community will be there for you to pick back up.”
