Category: fitness

I did a rather informal poll on my Livejournal to check on something.

Just about every site I see on women’s weight training is shouting out, “No, no, you don’t need to be afraid of getting too big!”

Why?

The poll asked if the women who read my LJ strength trained. If they did, what sort did they do. If they did not, did they feel like they should, didn’t because they weren’t interested, didn’t because they were afraid of getting too big, or if they had a medical condition that contraindicated it. (Yes, there are some).

About 45% the women who responded do strength train.

Of the 65% that did not, about 65% of those felt like they really should, a the rest said they weren’t interested with one for whom it’s medically contradindicated.

Not one person expressed a fear of getting too big as a reason not to strength train!

It might be that my results are skewed. My LJ readers are mostly an erudite lot, and few of them buy into what I’d call the classical “Cosmo” stereotypes.

Still, it’s interesting that on most sites about women’s weight/strength training, there’s the obligatory explanation that women don’t have enough testosterone to build big muscles. I’ve never run across anyone in the gym telling me not to lift heavy because I “might get too big”, though I’m already fat, so maybe that’s it. In fact, if there’s more than five people in the weight room, chances are good that I’m not the only woman. One of my fellow swimmers is also a faithful weight lifter. I do mostly see very fit women (fit as opposed to necessarily lean. I mean strong and good muscle tone) in the weight room, but not always. Sometimes a woman will come in with a trainer and once it was even a woman who had to use a walker. Well, she used to use a walker, anyway. She’s stopped. I figure she was rehabbing some injury or surgery.

But there are definitely plenty of women who are weight training – call it 40% of the people I see in the weight room.

Now, the spinning classes and the cardio room seems to be much more popular, but it’s entirely possible that plenty of the women who lift just are on an opposite cycle from me and lift on days I’m in the pool, so I’m not seeing them.

I had something a little weird happen in the gym today — was totally internal, and I couldn’t tell you what prompted it, necessarily.

I was working out very hard and just something inside cracked open emotionally and I just wanted to cry. Not in a bad way, but sort of “release” type crying. I’ve had that happen before, but not from working out alone. Usually it’s dancing or sex or a rather intimate sparring match that will do it (yes, sparring can be a very intimate form of communication). It startled the hell out of me, and I would have given in to it were I not in a weight room. That’s just not the place, you know.

It wasn’t that the workout was bad — rather the opposite. It was hard, but a good hard. Maybe that’s what triggered it. I dunno. I’ve never considered weights any sort of self-expression or communication the way dance or sex or martial arts can be, so it just seemed weird.

Maybe it’s the utter lack of pretense or mask that does it. When you have that bar across your shoulders, or are straining to move a weight, it’s impossible to pretend anything. You can either do it, or you can’t. Henry Rollins talks in his famous essay, The Iron, about the inherent honesty of the weight.

The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.

Maybe at that moment, I was getting into a very deep communication with myself. I get what Rollins is talking about, that the Iron is your friend, and a very honest one.

I worked out every day I taught this week.

I know, to those of you who manage full-time office jobs and still work out every day and have great self-discipline, it sounds corny.  Though for the record, I tended to find it easier to get in my swim when I did work in an office a block from a pool.  Just hit the pool every day on my lunch break!  I don’t have that option when I teach, so I must choose some other option.  I chose getting up at “Oh my God, it’s early!” and getting it out of the way before I have a chance to make excuses about how I’m “too tired”.

I’m trying to get my mind into a “No Excuses” mentality for working out.  This doesn’t mean I’d try to squats on a broken ankle or swim the crawl with a torn rotator cuff.  That would be breaking Rule One in new, appalling and exciting ways.

But honestly?  I’ve been working out hard for the month before I had my teaching week.  The result: I am simply not in agony at the end of the teaching day now.   That’s become a big motivator for me.  It got me into the pool this morning, boy howdy, let me tell you!  While I’m a morning person, I’m a morning person.  At 5:30 it’s still night at this time of year, dammit, and I can’t bounce out of bed singing Zip-a-dee-do-dah until the sun starts coming up.  I’ve often blown off working out the week I’m teaching.  You know, “I’m tired” and “Dammit, I’m doing enough today!” and all sorts of other excuses.

This week has been a real eye opener for me about how the excuses are shooting myself in the foot.  Well, more like creating a situation where I feel like a scalpel is scraping the inside of my hip joint, and some uncouth soul is stabbing at my ankles with a pike, but you get my drift.   Oh sure, I’m tired at the end of the day. I’m an active, animated teacher.  I don’t care how damn fit I get, I’ll be tired at the end of a day.

But “tired” and “shaking from fatigue and limping from pain from being on my feet all day” are two different things.    The simple and direct benefit means a lot to me, and it’s really motivating me to keep it up in a way that “you need to exercise to get skinny” never could.

If you have pain issues, ask your doc if he thinks it’d work out for you to try a couple of months of strength building.  Might help.   No, it doesn’t erase the pain, dammit, but for those of you who live with this crap you know the difference between “contant ache” and “Kill me now!”

I actually have a contract to do a fitness book. No, not Screw Skinny, Get Fit! This is something else.

But it does give me a professionally justifiable reason to surf the net reading fitness sites and articles!

I woke up this morning feeling better than I have all week. Ya! I can tell this damned cold is going away.

I’m going to get to the gym earlier again (weights today) and avoid the Beefy Idiots Social Club. That seems to work for me. I’m gonna shower at the gym, though. I notice that procrastinating about my shower and getting into non-gym clothes is a way I often cut into my own work time. Bad Freelancer! No Monies!

Okay, to all your female personal trainers who (correctly) believe that women need to pump some iron, especially if you’re figure competitors yourselves:

Please stop calling women in their mid thirties “girls”. While you’re at it, the use of the word “ladies” to build camaraderie is kind of goofy. God, you sound like a cheerleader! Stoppit with the diminutive. You can squat 200 lbs. You’re bench pressing around 150. You’re stronger than a lot of guys. It’s okay. You can be a woman and be better than a guy at something, really. It’s really sounding like overcompensation or that you’re apologizing for it. The guys aren’t apologizing for being better than you at something. Step up to the plate and be a grown-up, dammit. Set a good example. I know you want to convince women that they’re not going to grow a penis and get a deep voice if they lift weights. I get that part, but there is such a thing as going overboard, ‘kay? For God’s sakes, don’t sneer at the pink dumbbells and then turn around a create a new version of the pink dumbbells mentality to attract customers…

Oh wait.

Okay, sorry. I get it. My bad. Carry on.

If you don’t feel well, you shouldn’t work out, right?

Well, yes and no. (Surprised?)

If you’re coughing up green lung butter, are on antibiotics, or your doctor told you not to work out, get your butt on the sofa, have some chicken soup and get well. If you’ve got an injury where it hurts to do that; for goodness sake stop doing that and recover!

Active recovery is for other situations. Lets say you have a bit of a cold and congestion and feel a little run down. That is not the time to do speed interval training or start trying for a personal best in the squat cage. It might be the time to do a much smaller workout.

As an example, I broke Rule One yesterday and lifted far, far too hard. There’s been a cold running around, and being stupid is bad for the immune system. I woke up with the beginning symptoms of a mild cold. Today’s cardio day for me. Did I go swim my mile? Nope.

But I was hurting from overlifting. One of the worst things you can do when you’re experiencing DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) is to sit in a chair for 12 hours writing. And what is Noël’s job, boys and girls? Heh, right.

Fortunately swimming is the King of active recovery exercises when done right.   I walked (slowly!) to the gym, got in the pool and swam about half the distance I usually do in about three quarters of the time.    This stretched out my muscles and got the blood flowing without taxing anything much.

That’s what active recovery is for — to prevent issues from lack of use.

I actually learned this back when I was recovering from ACL surgery.  You heal better when you’re moving gently within your fitness level.  Note what I said — within your fitness level.  My active recovery workout today, that gentle light workout, was a hard-core badassed swim a little over a year ago.  My hard-core badassed swim now might very will be a nice active recovery workout in another couple of years.   Back when I was really sedentary, a good active recovery workout would have been some gentle stretching or a slow walk around the block.   It’s all about perspective, and not breaking Rule One.

I’d say a good active recovery workout is about 40-60% of  your usual workout and is pretty subjective.  However, if you know you’re not entirely well, but start feeling great when you’re working out, you’re working too hard.  That’s the endorphins talking, so slow that Mustang down, Sally.

And try not to break Rule One.

10 Tips to Change Yourself From a Dedicated Couch-Potato to a Gym Enthusiast

This article has some interesting points. The basic gist of the article, and it’s a good one, is that you should never let perfect be the enemy of good. You’re not up for your rocked out hard, drive yourself into the ground workout? Fine. Go for a walk and be done with it.

I do take issue with a couple of points, though, and this is from my personal perspective on fitness.

I wish to God fitness professionals would stop telling people stories about how damn energized they are after a workout. Yes, yes, yes, when you reach a certain level of (relatively low) fitness, that really, no kidding does happen. And yeah, it feels great. True enough.

If we’re going to rate fitness levels from one to ten and you’re at a one, you’ve got about a month or so of working out regularly (and intelligently within your proper fitness level) before this happens¹. That’s okay. I mean, it really is. Anyone can grit their teeth through a month to get to something good. But let’s not lie and say that month isn’t needed. You’re convincing people who don’t feel great after workouts that they must be Special Snowflakes for whom movement does nothing.   But at the fitness levels where adding another minute or two to your walk is a genuine achievement, you’ve got awhile before that workout makes you feel good.  And yes, if you’ve been struggling to walk for ten minutes and you add another minute, it is something to be proud of.  You did something hard even if the person next to you doesn’t get that.

She also talks about workouts where you don’t work up a sweat on the theory that people don’t work out because they don’t want to take the time to shower.  She advises yoga, walking, weight training…  Weight training?  Weight training?  Well, if you’re going to use the “something is better than nothing” rule, sure.  But, there’s another catch.  As you fitness levels increase, you start to break out in a sweat faster.  Hell, I’m not all that damn fit and it only takes one set of squats before I’m red in the face and my shirt starts getting wet.  I do drive up the body temp swimming, but it’s not as noticeable.  If you’re a bit fit, chances are slim that you can work out without sweating.

¹Perspective: If you’re going to call a one completely sedentary and a ten some sort of elite multi-sport athlete, I’d put myself at about a three.

I’d talked about doing a fitness book that focused on getting fit and not skinny.  Yeah, I’ve started and even have a good story to start it with!

I’m looking for some people who are willing to fill out a survey to get some ideas about fitness and what “being fit” specifically means to you.  The first chapter is going to talk about fitness and personal choice.

If you’re interested in participating, comment with email info and I’ll send it on to you.

Danke!