As Nicole Steele got her music playlist ready on a recent Tuesday night in Inglewood, she reflected on how far the area’s fitness scene has come in the past decade or so.
Steele was getting ready to lead her weekly “trap Zumba” class, which she described as “a cardio dance workout where people get down to hip-hop, reggae and R&B.”
It’s not the kind of class that existed in Inglewood seven years ago, when she started Trapz*mba. It was a risk, but Steele hoped that reviving the 90s-era Latin dance cardio craze with an Atlanta-born rap subgenre would bring in people from her hometown.
“[These workout routines] have been helpful to me over the years,” Steele told The LA Local. “I wanted to share those things with people because oftentimes folks don’t know where to start.”
Back then, seeing people working out in public, biking or walking in Inglewood wasn’t very prevalent. A 2019 American Heart Association survey of Inglewood residents found that 67% said sidewalks, park grounds and gym facilities were poorly maintained. About half of them said that was a deterrent to being active.
But these days, “The City of Champions” is helping define LA’s community-first wellness movement.
A big part of what’s fueling the shift is generational. According to a 2025 study by McKinsey, 30% of Gen Z and millennials in the U.S. say they’re prioritizing wellness “a lot more” than they were a year ago. But something else is different, too.
Steele said the goal isn’t to look good for the algorithm; it’s to feel better, stay healthy and to hang out with people from your community.
“People are willing to try new health and wellness experiences because we are all looking for ways to unite us around being our best selves,” Steele told The LA Local.
In places like Inglewood, that shift is showing up as the community infrastructure that was lacking in 2019: new facilities, free workouts, accessible mindfulness spaces and neighbors moving together in public.
We can all grow together
Alli Simon opened the yoga and meditation studio Black Being in the heart of downtown Inglewood in 2023 to create a space where the instructors were locals.
“We wanted a space that was local to the folks who live in this community,” Simon told The LA Local. “A place where people could feel like they are seen and reflected by the people who are teaching. People who represent the community.”
It is a sentiment that many of Inglewood’s fitness and wellness enthusiasts share.
After Ashley Reed got laid off, she turned to yoga for some relief.
“I fell in love with the practice,” Reed told The LA Local. “I knew one day I wanted to be an instructor.”
When she acquired her certification in October 2019, she took note of the lack of yoga studios in Inglewood and began to map out her own plan. Then, COVID happened.
“I didn’t know that my first two years of teaching yoga would be all online,” Reed said. “But it was a good time to start teaching.”
She opened her studio Body Art Noire four years later at 409 West Arbor Vitae Street.
“I wanted to make this practice accessible, so I teach mostly to beginners,” Reed explained.
But it’s not just a yoga space. The pandemic lockdown created a need for third spaces, which Reed thinks is an important part of the community-first wellness movement Inglewood is leading.
“I wanted to give people an opportunity to connect and make friendships,” she said. “I’m really impressed by the amount of people that have met over the last year and how many bonds have been created.”
Fitness instructor Paris Coleman Smalls told The LA Local that she also saw the need in her community. So she started hosting community yoga classes in her parents’ backyard before opening her wellness company Black Om a few years ago.
“I was excited to see how we can all grow together in a healthy way,” Smalls said.
Smalls discovered yoga when she was a junior at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
“I absolutely fell in love with it,” Smalls said. “Initially I liked it because of the physical challenge.”
When she moved back home 13 years ago, yoga was not popular in Inglewood.
“As I kept practicing it, I received so many other amazing benefits: mindfulness, self-awareness, flexibility, as well as using the power of my breath to get through things.”
Smalls felt like this was something her community could benefit from.
Meeting people where they are
Community fitness is not just an independent movement in Inglewood.
For nearly 12 years, the L.A. Care and Blue Shield Promise Community Resource Center has provided free health and social support services to people living in the city.
But four years ago, as the interest in community fitness began to percolate, the center moved to a brand new facility on West Imperial Highway, the center’s director Kelli Robinson explained.
It was built as an investment on the idea that the community would come.
“We strategically put ourselves in areas where we know the residents are underserved and low income to meet people where they are at,” Robinson told The LA Local.
The new center is 6,000 square feet larger and provides free health education and fitness classes like line dancing, hip-hop step and pilates.
The gambit worked.
“We have seen an increase in foot traffic,” Robison said. “Every year the amount of participants we serve grows.”
The center goes beyond movement to nutrition, explained Jennifer Schirmer who is vice president of Medi-Cal growth and community engagement for Blue Shield Promise.
At a recent healthy cooking class, the instructor demonstrated how to make a quinoa salad with lime-chipotle vinaigrette. The class aims to answer questions about how to grocery shop for healthy foods on a budget.
The woman who started it all
The fitness movement in Inglewood is growing and evolving all the time but it all may have started with Claudine Cooper.
“I moved to Inglewood 25 years ago and immediately fell in love with the community,” Cooper told The LA Local recently.
She was getting ready to lead her free weekly outdoor workout at Hollywood Park — the kind of community-focused wellness program that didn’t have a home here back then.
“As a fitness professional, there were few fitness studios and places to work out,” she said. “Instead of complaining, I said, ‘let me create something where we can move our bodies.’”
Cooper didn’t know it back then. But 25 years later — as she watched Inglewood residents of all ages, shapes and sizes move around her — the shift felt undeniable.
“I am happy to be part of the foundation that has brought wellness into this community,” Cooper said. “I am thankful to be one small part of that fabric.”
