Grammy nominated singer-songwriter Syleena Johnson has been turning heads lately not just for her music, beauty and gift of gab as seen on Cocktails With Queens [on FOX Soul, where Let’s Talk Hair also appears] but also for her amazing fitness journey and bodybuilding achievements chronicled in One Stage to the Next, now on TV One.
Let’s Talk Hair hosts Del Harrison and Rhavin ‘with a V’ were delighted to get the scoop from Syleena on her fitness journey and the surprising ways it related to her hair care regimen and style options.
Del: Please tell us how that passion for lighting weights grew on you.
Syleena: I’ve been wanting to compete for a very, very long time. I used to play basketball in high school and I was on the track team and I would play tennis when I was younger so I’ve always been an athlete and I’ve been missing that competitive edge. Competing in fitness … you compete against your best self. You work towards your best body. I just got the courage to do it in my 40s. I was like, I’m sick of not doing stuff I want to do… so I was like ‘Just do it just do it’ and I just did it.
Rhavin: How do you deal with working out and keeping your hair together?
Syleena: Well, when you decide that you want to go on a weight loss journey – because there’s a couple of different kinds of weight loss concepts – so let’s say you’re the type of person that just wants to work out three four days a week just to maintain, you just have to figure out ‘What is going to be my hairstyle?’ Do a protective style like this which is tree braids. It looks like hair but it’s braids so I can do any type of [activity in it], my talk show Cocktails With Queens and still go places and look glamorous. But it’s a protective style so I can go to the gym; I can go to the steam room and not have to you know worry about my hair. Or, if you wear natural hair and you have a certain kind of texture you can do twist outs; you can do wash-and-go’s and still not worry about your hair. I think nowadays society is more receptive of [black women’s] texture of hair, so I think that we actually have lots of lots of options — not like we used to back in the day! We can wear braids and be professional now when that wasn’t the case before.
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Shout out to Syleena for sharing her journey on Let’s Talk Hair TV show! For more on Syleena’s riveting documentary One Stage To the Next, visit http://tvone.tv.
Watch our interview with Syleena here:
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