Paralympic snowboarder Brenna Huckaby is opening up about body image issues with an inspiring new Instagram post. Huckaby, 28, shared a video of herself wearing shorts and a cropped tank top, talking to the camera about recent weight gain. “Right now, celebrating myself and my body as it is feels both healthy and healing. I hope that by sharing this vulnerable moment, l can inspire you to embrace self-love, too. To be clear: We don’t need our bodies to do ANYTHING for us to love them. We deserve love because we exist. BUT sometimes loving my body takes a moment of work & this is my moment 🤭,” she captioned the post. Huckaby is in training for the 2026 winter Olympics—here’s what that looks like.
1. Winter Olympics
Brenna Huckaby/Instagram
Huckaby is in training mode for the next winter Olympics. “My big goal is [the Paralympic Games in] 2026,” she told Sports Illustrated Swimsuit. “My goal is to claim two gold medals at those games. And then we have World Championships next year and I feel like if I can perform well there, it’s gonna just set me up for success in 2026.”
2. Training Regimen
Brenna Huckaby/Instagram
Huckaby hits the gym five times a week. “I wake up at 5:30 a.m., and then I get to the gym at 6 and I have a trainer [who I work with],” she told Sports Illustrated Swimsuit. “He gives me programming [that includes] a lot of weights, a lot of power [moves], getting my stability muscles really strong because in my sport, you crash hard, and if you’re not super fit, you’re going to get injured. So it’s just a lot of focus on injury prevention and power. You need to be strong and fast.”
3. SI Model
Brenna Huckaby/Instagram
Huckaby is thrilled to be an SI model. “When I first shot with Sports Illustrated Swimsuit way back, I wanted it to mean something for women with disabilities, or who don’t fit the standard of beauty,” she told the publication. “It was really scary to put myself out there in that way, but seeing the ripple effect of change within the beauty industry has been amazing; to be able to celebrate that moment and all the other moments of growth within the industry has been amazing.”
4. More Than Just My Body
Brenna Huckaby/Instagram
Huckaby is rightfully proud of her achievements. “There’s no wrong way to be,” she told Tonal. “I bought into this narrative that my body needed to be a certain way so that I could be worthy or enough, deserving of anything in my life. And the second I decided to take a refund on that, and say ‘I don’t accept this. I don’t want this,’ was the moment that I started to see myself as more than just my body.”
5. Using Her Platform to Help
Brenna Huckaby/Instagram
Huckaby wants to use her voice and platform to help others. “I never started this journey to be an icon in adaptive sports or body positivity,” she told Tonal. “When I was going through cancer and amputation and journeying into sports, I was always looking for that person to guide me, to be a voice to get me to where I wanted to go. But that pool and that visibility was so small that I just started to feel isolated and alone… Luckily, through social media, I started to evolve and realized that with the use of a platform and with the use of a voice, I can be that voice for somebody who doesn’t have it.”
