Category: fitness

Sore today, most specifically mah butt.

Laugh all you want.  When you do Stiff-Legged Deadlifts with proper form, it works da bootay, which is more or less why I do them.

Believe it or not, this is not a vanity thing.  Women, listen up.  A significant discrepancy between your quad strength[1] and hamstring strength[2] can have a destabilizing effect on knee strength putting you at risk for knee injuries, such as an ACL[3] rupture[4].  This strength discrepancy is a bit more common in women.

Now, I don’t know that my own ACL injury was in any way exacerbated by a strength incompatibility.  I expect in my case it was considerably more of a Rule One issue.  If you’re 35, short and around 200 lbs, it might be that a flying side kick is not the best activity choice for knee health.  Just sayin’.

But be that as it may, if you’re considering strength building work, don’t neglect the butt[5].

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[1] That’s the muscles in the front of the thighs.

[2] That’s the muscles in the butt to the knee.

[3] Anterior Cruciate Ligament.  It’s a twisty little ligament in the front of the knee that’s critical to knee stability.  You CAN rupture it and then compensate by working out to strengthen the muscles to stabilize, or you can get the surgery.  I’m not an athlete and could have gotten away with not getting the surgery, but I’m here to say I’m glad I did.

[4] B.-O. Lim, Y. S. Lee, J. G. Kim, K. O. An, J. Yoo, and Y. H. Kwon. Effects of Sports Injury Prevention Training on the Biomechanical Risk Factors of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury in High School Female Basketball Players. Am J Sports Med. September 1, 2009 37:1728-1734.

[5] Admirers of the female rear, you may give me tokens of gratitude for this wisdom in the form of chocolate, flowers, books, or very good vodka.

Normally when I do my swim, I’m fixated on getting a certain yardage in.  Today I tossed that and went for time rather than distance.  You see, I have a bad habit of swimming mostly with my arms, kicking mostly for balance and not getting the propulsion I could if I used my kicks properly.

So, I did some kickboard drills for the first time in at least 30 years and am beginning to see why the woman who passed me on my lifeguard cert all those many moons ago made me promise I’d work on my legs.   No wonder I am such a slow swimmer!

Do I really need to bother with this, what with being a lap swimmer rather than a competitive swimmer?  Well, no, not really.   All I’m really worried about at the end of the day is challenging myself a bit physically and getting an endorphin fix so I’m as mild-mannered as a little lamb.

On the other hand, there’s no harm in drilling to become a more balanced swimmer and getting the benefits of a proper full-body workout.  I do get my heart rate up kicking!

There were several aqua-joggers in the pool today — from a woman recovering from a marathon last weekend to a woman stubbornly resisting having to use a cane due to arthritis.   I find the range of fitness levels in the pool and the different fitness goals incredibly comforting.   To me, it’s cool what you can get out of a water workout.

I’m wondering, though, if anyone else does something that’s as flexible as water workouts on dry land, and how do you like them?

I lifted weights for about eighteen months before I got up the guts to step into the free weight room.  I had been reading a lot on the Internet with posts of people (mostly men) sneering at women whose bodies did not meet their criteria.  I was afraid of being mistreated or people acting like I didn’t belong there.

I was thinking about that this morning when I was lifting.  I was having a hard time with something, and was offered help.  Now, I work at the gym in the mornings, so I knew every one of the guys up there in the free weight room.  I like ’em.  They’re decent people.

The thing is, these people were plenty nice to me long before I worked at the gym.  (I went there for about a year before I got to cheap to pay for a membership and started working there instead).

I say this because if you like lifting or are interested in trying it out, don’t let fear of not belonging  stop you.  I’m even going to get myself in trouble and give you the Secret Gym Rat Initiation to the Cool Kids Club:

1. Go to a gym.
2. Go into the weight room.
3. Pick up something that feels kinda heavy to you.
4. Put it down.
5. Pick it up again until you feel a little tired.

That’s it.  You’re done.  You belong and are One of Us.

I actually used the weight room rather than do body weight stuff today.

For all that I’m in favor of body weight exercises and really think that there are dozens of paths to fitness, I gotta say I like freeweights better.   Oh yes, body weight exercises travel well, what with only needing about six feet of floor and no equipment.  But having that bar across your shoulders is cool.  Well, it’s cool to me.

That’s important.  What do you like to do?

I think that in our chasing fitness (or sometimes just waving cheerfully from our chairs and getting on with our blogging), we get too into the perfect workout, or what we thinking we “should” be doing.

If you’ve decided being more active is important to you, finding something that makes you feel good is important.  I don’t swim and use free weights because they’re The Ultimate Exercise.  I swim and use free weights because that’s what I’ll do.  Sure, sure, I can come up with a million reasons why I’m Right to Do What I Do in terms of great exercise and Why People Who Do It Different Are Wrong. But,  I have a friend who hates exercise for the sake of exercise.  Oh, she’ll paddle twenty miles in a kayak.  Show her a mountain and she’ll hike on up it chattering cheerfully all the way.  Don’t try to put her in a gym.  She’d be miserable.  And I’m sure if it were her way, she could come up with a million reasons why she is Right to Do What She Does and Why People Who Do It Differently Are Wrong.

Both of us would be wrong, too.

So, if you’re into being active, what do you like?

Hey, you gym bunnies?  I have a heads up for ya.  Some day you may wind up seeing a fat chick in the gym.  No, really.  I know that the media says we don’t exercise (because exercise magically melts the pounds away the second you step on a treadmill, dontchaknow?), but some of us do.

Now many of you are thinking, “Oh hey, cool.  She’s decided to work out.  That’s great!”

You know, you’re right.  Choosing to be active is a great health choice in many cases.  That’s why we do it, right?

Since chances are good that you prefer to be benevolent and supportive, I’d like to offer a few little tips.

• Unless you know her really, really well, don’t say “I’m proud of you” the second you see her in the gym.

Yes, there are people who need the strokes and the hand-holding. Do you know that person well enough to know if she needs it? Be sure before you say something like that. The whole “I’m proud of you” thing can come off just awfully condescending from a stranger, even if your intention is to be benevolent.  When she’s done her first pullup, though, feel free to throw confetti and blow horns.

• Be aware that body consciousness exists.

It may be the custom to parade around in the altogether in your locker room, regardless of age or body type. (It is in my gym!) However, it might take awhile before any new person (fat or not!) is necessarily comfortable with chatting with someone they don’t know well totally naked.

• Unless asked, don’t monitor her progress.

Again, I know people like to be supportive of positive life choices, and that’s cool. There’s a difference between having someone be supportive and finding that someone has tried to make a project out of you.  The latter is a real pain in the butt.

• Do be inclusive.

While I’m sure you know the rule about not bothering someone in the gym with headphones in, if she’s not wearing them, being friendly is good. You and I know that all it takes to be a member of the Cool Kids Club in a gym is showing up, but it’s not common knowledge among the uninitiated. Let ’em know they belong.

• Don’t make assumptions about her fitness goals

She might be trying to take fat off. She might be working on her strength and not bothering with body fat percentage. She might be rehabbing an injury. Unless you know what her fitness goals are, your advice is probably useless. Wait to be asked.

Do I blame social gaffes on chasing someone away from the gym? Not entirely. If you really aren’t into being there, you’ll probably find just about any reason not to.   Still, if you want to make sure your gym is a welcoming, inclusive place, it’s a good idea just to be matter of fact about people being there rather than making a big deal of any one particular class of person showing up.

Technically what I really should be doing as far as workouts it swimming three days a week and doing a full-body weights workout twice a week.

I, uhhh… Well, I haven’t been doing that.

I don’t think I’ve ever dropped below two workouts (usually a 1000-1500 yard swim) a week, but I have a sedentary job, no yard to take care of that needs yardwork and sedentary hobbies.   Two workouts a week with that lifestyle isn’t really enough to stay healthy and strong, and I know it.  If I had a dog I was walking every day, or was doing something where I was walking the equivalent of a couple of miles a day, it’d be different.

However, with my lifestyle, a good solid workout every weekday is pretty necessary.

With that in mind, I hauled my complaining butt into the weight room today (swam yesterday) and decided that since I’ve been a slacker, I was going to drop back to embarassingly light weights just to make sure I did the darn workout.  You know, Rule One and all.

I was weaker than I thought.  That wimp workout was a challenge!

Ah well.  I’ll do the wimp workout again on Thursday, and then next week do it again.  Then I’ll be a little stronger and can add a little more.  I wish I loved working out.  I mean, it’s okay when I’m in the weight room and all, but I’d rather stay in a warm bed, I really would.

I actually found it hard to hit the weight room today — afraid of being judged or made unwelcome.  That was goofy and there was no excuse for it.  I knew the people in there. I see them several times a week.  None of ’em have ever been mean to me, so there was no reason in the world to think they would do so because I was working out instead of working behind a desk!   If they’re going back to their blogs or weight lifting discussion boards and making fun of how the fat chick looks at the squat rack, I certainly don’t see it.  But they don’t behave as if they’re into that level of petty nastiness in the gym, so I’ve no evidence to think they would.

It got me to thinking.  Sure there’s a lot of nastiness about appearance out there, no doubt.  But it seems a bit unkind to brace oneself for it when one hasn’t any evidence that it’s likely to happen.   Now, I got picked on in school, so I know what it’s like to cultivate the appearance of deafness, but be braced inside for nasty comments.  I know the inward flinch, the way you script in your own mind for a good comeback.  Which, of course, you never remember to use when the situation happens, anyway.   That mental bracing is a waste of valuable butt-scratching time when you think about it.  You’d be much better employed learning to fart the Jaws theme rather than spend precious mental energy on it.

And in my case, thinking about my form when the bar is loaded across my shoulders is a lot better use of mental energy than worrying about how I look to others.  I mean, if I look around to see if I’m being judged, I’m more likely to fall and hurt myself.   Forget that!

I was called athletic today.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love being called that. Tickles the hell out of me. But I really don’t see myself that way.  Yeah, yeah, I know, what else does being an athlete require but spending some time on a sport on a regular basis?

I’ve mused on this before, but I still haven’t internalized the idea that I wanted to — that being an athlete merely requires something physical you love and do on a relatively frequent basis.  I mean, I just swam over a mile today!

Am I a great athlete?  No.  Am I even a fast swimmer?  Hell, no!

I think part of it is that I do sometimes slog through a swim.  Goodness knows I did today.  I was constantly telling myself, “C’mon.  You decided to put in a 2,000 today.  Just keep doing it.  You’ve got one more length in you.”   This was not one of those glorious swims where I feel like a god. (Though I like those a lot better).

Now, a lot of why I’m doing the 50 mile swim is because I’ll get a t-shirt at the end of it that I intend to wear when I’m working the front desk at the gym.  So very often women built like me are scared to come to the gym.  They’re scared their goals won’t be listened to.  They’re scared of being judged.  The gym I go to is about getting moving on a regular basis and not about getting down to 12% body fat, but there are gyms that feel otherwise about it, and goodness knows that can put someone off.

Although maybe I’ll be taking away hope when I prove that exercise doesn’t automagically make you skinny.  Who knows?