At Ryderwear we believe that fitness isn’t just about healthy muscles, but also a healthy mind. We want your weights to be heavy, not your head, which is why we’re making moves to be a mental health ally, and a brand that normalises being open and honest about how you’re feeling.
For us, the first step in doing this was to look internally at what we were doing at Ryderwear HQ, and see how we could serve our staff and athletes better, to support their mental health and lighten their mental load.
That’s why for Mental Health Awareness month we created Highlight Real, a small initiative designed to get our Ryderwear family talking about mental health, removing the stigma, normalising self-care and encouraging powerful conversations. We don’t just want to lift weights, we want to lift each other!
Sure, we know we have a heap of work to do. But just like we all started on the small dumbbells and slowly levelled up our lifting, we saw this as the first step to moving to where we want to be as a brand - a leader in the mental health space for our Ryderwear community and beyond! Here’s what went down at Ryderwear for Mental Health month.
TAKE A LIFE DAY
We wanted to ‘walk the talk’ internally with our staff, which is why we gave everyone a Life Day in October for them to prioritise their mental health and self care. We encouraged our staff to take the day to do something that would fill their cup - whether that was catching up on those lost zzz’s, or catching sunshine at the beach (we’re about to hit summer here in the land of AUS).
womens gym wear and leggings
#HIGHLIGHTREAL
We wanted to empower and encourage our Ryderwear staff & athletes to be leaders in the movement that normalises talking about mental health on social media - highlighting real, rather than sharing highlight reels (something we’ve done our fair share of - we’re by no means perfect). We asked our RW family to share their experiences with mental health, and how they’ve used fitness to help manage or overcome these challenges. We wanted to do this to encourage and empower our staff to feel comfortable talking about how they’re feeling - nobody should have to suffer in silence, as well as making our HQ a more supportive place. By sharing these on social media, we wanted to also empower our wider Ryderwear community to do the same. Here’s a few of the candid responses we got from our staff and athletes. 
SELF-CARE
Self care is what you do to preserve or improve your wellbeing and mental health, in particular during times of stress or when faced with challenges. We knew we had a few self-care gurus at Ryderwear, which is why we reached out to our staff to ask what they do to fill their cup when they’re feeling overwhelmed. Hopefully by doing this, we’re passing on some real life, practical tips for our community to use themselves, while normalising the act of prioritising yourself and taking the time to do the things that give you peace & positivity. Check out what our staff do to lighten the load here.
Ryderwear HQ is your lifters library of the latest training, nutrition & mindfulness insights (as well as inside looks at our latest collections).
Read More: Ryderwear HQ | Ryderwear
If you or anyone you know needs help
AUS
-Lifeline on 13 11 14
-Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36
-Headspace on 1800 650 890
-MensLine Australia on 1300 789 978
UK
-To talk about anything that is upsetting you, you can contact Samaritans 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on 116 123 (free from any phone), email jo@samaritans.org or visit a branch in person.
-If you’re experiencing a mental health problem or supporting someone else, you can call SANEline on 1300 304 7000 (4:30pm - 10:30pm every day)
USA
-If you or someone you know is in crisis, you can call 1800-273-8255 to reach a 24 hour crisis center, or text MHA to 741741 at the Crisis Text Line
-You can also call 1800-985-5990 or text ‘TalkWithUs’ to 66746 at the SAMHSA Disaster Distress Helpline. Trained crisis workers will listen to you and direct you to the resources you need.
