Power Ranger

Beloved singer-songwriter Jully Black is dedicated to bringing empowered women together across Canada and beyond, one sweat session at a time

- Ingrie Williams

BEING A POWERHOUSE SEEMS TO COME NATURALLY to Jully Black. Propelled by a soulful, heavy-duty voice, she has achieved platinum-selling status, industry accolades and chart-topping pop, R&B and dance hits.

But it was the pursuit of emotional strength and the creation of a movement called 100 Strong and Sexy that has most recently transformed her life. “My mom passed away in 2017, and the grief [was like] I’ve never had,” she says. “It was next-level grief.” Somewhere in the tides, though she had stopped working out, neglected her clean-eating diet for six months and was feeling terrible, Black’s athletic upbringing acted as a current. “I remember a really clear thought of how exercise made me feel,” she says. “Positive motion equals positive emotion – that just kept coming to me, over and over, like a mantra.”

Inspired by popular workouts like P90X and driven by her ongoing curiosity with nutrition, physical activity, and brain health research, Black decided to dedicate herself to 100 days of daily 45-minute workouts. She reached out to a close friend to join her and then decided to cast the net wider.

“It just came to me: I was looking for women to do this with me and 57 women said ‘yes,’” she says of the spontaneous invite and the Instagram account (@100strongandsexy) she created. “We went on this journey, from August 1 to November 8, last year. It happened to end on my birthday, and I couldn’t have planned that – that’s the universe.” Intent on accountability, Black wove in rules, too. Participants have to post photographic evidence (a sweat selfie) and share progress via email – otherwise, they’re out.