As I joggle and rattle, I have flashbacks of having to run through Charles de Gaulle airport in order to make a connecting flight to Barcelona, wheeled carryon luggage careening wildly as I knock little old grannies and greasy Euro-teens out of the way with the abandon felt by one for whom seven minutes stand between idyllic vacation and having to sleep on a cigarette-butt-encrusted airport floor.

I make it on the bus and plunk myself into a seat. I think I’m having a heart attack. My chest is tight and my left arm is numb. Do 32 year old fit women have heart attacks? Only if they’re all whacked on uppers. I did have two cups of coffee today. Maybe I should have done more cardio. Except that Jim Fixx dude did all the cardio in the world and he kicked off early. Why did I waste time eating all those damn vegetables if I’m going to have a heart attack now? 32 year old women with crazy heart conditions have heart attacks. Maybe I have some heretofore unknown crazy heart condition. Oh great, I’m going to die on the campus express bus, in a pile of dirty old newspapers. I regret nothing! Goodbye, cruel world! Feed my fish! They like twice a day and not too much each time. And give the pleco an algae pellet. That lazy bastard never eats any real algae.

I stay very still, trying not to breathe too hard. It dawns on me that the chest tightness is a combo of lung burn from running in the cold, and my tummy growling. The arm numbness mysteriously disappears when I remove my enormous knapsack that has been crushing my acromion into my kidneys. Another medical mystery, solved by my brilliant diagnostic powers! I will live to fight another day!

Even as a sedentary office worker, my day is full of mini-challenges. The morning of the day I ran to catch the bus, I had to tromp through several inches of snow to do a number of errands. Working on campus, I often find myself walking, climbing stairs, running to make appointments, and carrying loads of books.

At the gym it dawns on me how far our fitness practice has come from the demands of real life. Attentive gym staff hover over clients on machines, careful lest their unskilled charge make a wrong move. Everywhere, people are cradled by machines that do most of the work for them, and limit their range of mobility. But consider: when in reality do we perform such carefully constrained movements? Trainers that caution us not to squat have no comment on how the heck we are supposed to get off the toilet or out of the bathtub. Walking is essentially a one-sided controlled fall. Even turning over in bed is a full body activity. In daily life, we are constantly required to move in ways that far exceed the capacities of any machine. We are consistently off-balance, using one arm or leg, twisting, standing and reaching, squatting to pick items up, leaning over to grab groceries out of the trunk, trying not to wipe out on the ice. We need to integrate, not isolate.

Before we attempt to meet the demands of any other activity or sport, we must meet the demands of daily life.

This means that in our training we use exercises that are integrated, that focus on movement as movement rather than as something that “hits the biceps”. We must use exercises that challenge us (whatever that means to our specific fitness level), not keep us safe and warm and wrapped in a little padded blanky. The fear of damaging ourselves in the gym is an effect of the unnatural movements and postures that modern “fitness” and sedentary lifestyles promote, along with a lack of practice. Many of us have forgotten how to move properly, freely, and naturally. Our children can still do it-watch them squat perfectly-but we have gotten out of the habit. We cannot tell when we start out whether we are doing things “right” because we often have little concept of what “right” would be. We also forget to pay attention to when the body tells us we are moving improperly. But the more we move, and experiment with movement, the better and more confident we become.

Once we have met the challenges of day to day existence, we can consider how we might respond if reality asks a little more of us. The following comes from a friend in Mississippi who survived Hurrican Katrina.

During the storm itself, a tree fell on the back of my house, bashing in the roof over the porch pretty badly. During the eye of the storm, I went out to see how bad it was, and found a big piece of porch roof (about 8′x10′ — sheet metal, plywood, and 2×6 rafters) barely attached to the house. I was afraid that when the eye passed, and the wind started blowing the other way, this section of roof would catch the wind and either take some of the house roof with it, or beat against the house.

So I finished detaching that roof section from the house by precision application of the 8-pound sledgehammer (which every Ironworker should have!) , and dragged it across the yard. I then rolled the 292-pound concrete tire on top of it to keep it from flying. Now, that’s not a huge feat of strength, but I don’t think a normal person (ie, someone who isn’t in the habit of lifting/dragging/playing with heavy junk) would have even thought of it.

After the storm… woohoo. Of course, electricity was out, meaning NO AIR CONDITIONING! And, of course, temperatures were in the high 90s for the first week or two. Two things saved my butt there. First, I had lost about 55 pounds of flab in the preceding 8 months. Heat has no mercy on fatasses. Second, inspired partly by an old Brooks Kubik article (dontcha miss the old Brooks?), I had been training outdoors for most of the summer, specifically to acclimate myself to the heat. I don’t know how well my previous obese, air-conditioning-addicted self would have handled those first weeks, but it would have been ugly.

Being in (more or less) good shape paid off bigtime. All the cars were drowned and the phones were dead, meaning that just looking for local news meant hiking a mile or two. No big deal. The fact that previous hiking (and training) had turned me into a fanatic about hydration probably helped out, too. Unloading supply trucks was almost fun — dude, it’s just another loading drill!

Is there a lesson in all this babbling? I think so. In an emergency, especially a long-term one, health and strength are more important that any equipment or supplies. The whole experience made me rethink some of my own training priorities: strength endurance proved much more useful than raw strength, and having a lot of muscle mass was almost a liability. Pavel suddenly seems a bit less insane to me now.

As much as I enjoy weightlifting in all its forms, I’m seeing more and more how valuable “real work” is. Dragging, carrying and so forth — like you say, it’s what our ancestors had to do. Same thing goes for hiking, especially in rough terrain. Great exercise, and it pays off if/when you HAVE to do it.

Day-to-day life is so easy that a lot of people end up incredibly spoiled. I saw a thread somewhere else some time back where the poster basically questioned the value of physical strength, since we have machines to do all the lifting and so forth. Of course, anybody who’s done manual labor knows that’s BS, but it’s a symptom of how people think now.

At any rate, when the infrastructure goes away, even temporarily, what’s left is strength of body and of mind and of will. I talked to people who literally swam out of their houses to get out of the flood. Two guys down the road from me found a bass boat and took turns, one swimming and towing the boat while the other lay in the boat and rested, until they got to high ground about a mile away. Another guy put his small children on a wooden table and floated them to safety. Heroics? Or simply the only reasonable response to the situation?

Nevertheless the skies are darkening and the wind is flexing its muscles after a few months off. Late fall, after the enjoyment of the harvest, is a time to contemplate the winter ahead. Many ancient cultures explained the cycle of the seasons by alluding to a periodic journey of a favoured fertility deity. For the Greeks, the goddess Persephone, the daughter of Demeter (the harvest goddess) was the one responsible for the annual winter as she descended into the underworld to be with the underworld god Hades. For the Celts, it was the god Cerunnos’ short lifespan from birth in winter to death in summer. For the ancient Sumerians, who lived approximately in the region we’d now call the Middle East, it was the descent of the goddess Inanna into the underworld to see her sister Ereshkigal.

In the process of descending into the underworld, Inanna is forced seven times to stop and remove some item that signifies her status. First, she must remove her crown, then her jewelry, and so forth until at the last stop she must remove her royal robes and enter the underworld naked, “bowed low”, and humiliated. The fun doesn’t stop there because frankly, Ereshkigal is a bit of a bitch.

The Annuna, the judges of the underworld, surrounded [Inanna].
They passed judgment against her.
Then Ereshkigal fastened on Inanna the eye of death.
She spoke against her the word of wrath.
She uttered against her the cry of guilt.
She struck her.
Inanna was turned into a corpse,
A piece of rotting meat,
And was hung from a hook on the wall.

Depiction of the goddess Inanna on clay tablet, approximately two millennia BCE

Kinda gross, but it’s hard to imagine a better metaphor for total physical and spiritual abjection. Basically, Inanna is forced to give up every shred of power and dignity that she has in this process.

Eventually, of course, Inanna is able to return from the underworld, thus allowing for the cyclical nature of feast and famine.

“I got a feeling that from here on in, things are gonna get real shitty.”
—Thelma and Louise

The story of Inanna is an instructive one for those of us undergoing life crises either large or small.

Over the past year I have had many challenges, twists, and turns in the road. Regular rant readers will recall that a mystery pelvic injury emerged in February. As it turned out the damage was more extensive than I had originally imagined, and stemmed from an injury that I gave myself many years ago. While I am now about 95% functional, I still carry this damage with me. I discovered that I am the proud owner of a herniated disk and scar tissue along the dura, the sheath surrounding the spinal cord. Most of the time it’s no problem – weight training keeps me as functional and strong as possible. The doctors were pretty impressed at how well I was doing, in fact, and said stuff like, “I can’t believe you’re not in MORE pain!” I’m not exactly sure how I feel about that. :)

But now I have limitations. Because the original injury years ago was between lumbar vertebrae, I can no longer stabilize the lumbar spine enough to deadlift without injury. I can no longer tolerate the axial spinal loading that back squatting imposes, so I’m squatting with weights that were formerly an easy warmup (I’m still squatting though, dammit – you’ll take my squat bar from me when you pry it out of my cold dead hands). As you can imagine, this puts a bit of a dent in my self-concept as a butched-up lifter.

Other challenges have confronted me. I’ll spare you the whiney details. But in each case, it was not the challenge itself that was the hardest to deal with. It was the challenge to my self-concept and identity.

For instance, before my injury I had considered myself largely invincible. I think of myself as generally healthy and fit, and that’s an identity that I value very much. I’d hear other people say, “Oh, I have a bad back,” but never take any steps to alter that, and I’d mentally roll my eyes, because instead of trying to solve the problem they’d settled for “bad back person” as their identity. Even in the worst moments of pain I wouldn’t have said that because that was not how I defined myself. I didn’t want to be that person. Instead, I defined myself as a healthy person who was experiencing a temporary loss of function in one area. When the doctors asked how I felt, most of the time I’d say “Great!” and mean it.

Earlier this year I applied for a job. I didn’t get it. I didn’t think I would. Well, I did think I would until I walked into the interview then I realized I wouldn’t (God I hate that. I wish we could all just spare ourselves the pleasantries and agree to just quit now rather than drawing out the excruciating formalities. “I’m sorry, we don’t like the cut of your jib and we can tell you don’t like us either. That’s why Interviewer #1 is acting like there’s a bad smell in the room and Interviewer #2 is staring absently out the window. Why don’t you take the few hours you were going to spend on this interview and go buy yourself some nice shoes instead?”) The dumb move I made was not failing the job screening process, but pinning a lot of hope on this job as a means to reinforce my self concept.

It dawned on me as I was angsting about this job issue that the real issue wasn’t job related. It was that I had defined myself as this thing, and now this thing might or might not happen (because hey, what if I never found another job opening and if I did what if they hated me, blah blah), and thus what I was really asking was not, “Where do I go now that XYZ is no longer open to me,” but rather, “Who am I?”

“Who am I?” is the question that most of us are really asking when we fret about challenge and change. I remain convinced that for most people, a chronic injury or illness is not spiritually debilitating primarily because of pain. In the majority of cases, the pain and lack of mobility is controllable and manageable, and does not dominate every waking moment of consciousness. Rather, the psychic blow comes from this damage to our identities, to our sense of ourselves as physically whole.

This is also true for other behaviours. People starting a fitness and nutrition plan after a long period of sedentary living often have to cope with several issues that go well beyond losing a few pounds or eating more carrots. For example, they may actually be a player in a family or social psychodrama that depends on them being a stable identity, such as “the fat kid”. Once change is initiated, family and friends may respond negatively to this disruption in interpersonal order. This response can range from passive aggressive negativity (“Aren’t you getting a little obsessed with all that exercise stuff?”) to outright sabotage (“Here, I baked you another tray of butter-iced brownies”). Or, the person themselves may have constructed an elaborate identity and justification for being “the fat kid” or “the person who is smart and thus is sooo above having to care about appearance” or “the person who is a bookworm and hates to associate with jocks” or “the person who has no self control” or “the person who isn’t sexually attractive to other people” and so forth.

When change occurs, the person unexpectedly has to confront these other issues. S/he may be unprepared and may backslide, reverting to the comfort of familiar surroundings, relationship dynamics, and behaviours. Screwups are often taken as reinforcing evidence that no change is possible, rather than as temporary setbacks.

In my case, my earlier identity was “doomed by genetics” with a side helping of “thunder thighs”. In order to get where I am now, busted ass and all, I had to confront and beat the snot out of my earlier identity. Then I had to let it go and limp away. I had to find a new identity, as someone with a productive and positive relationship with her body. The thighs did get smaller when I lost the 40 lbs I was hauling around, but what really changed was how I looked at them. Now I love their size and strength and I don’t feel it’s particularly my problem when I can’t stuff them into boy-cut jeans.

The application of the Inanna story to our lives is threefold. First, it demonstrates that we are none of the things that are external to us. As Brad Pitt’s character put it in the movie Fight Club, “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis.” What is external to us does not define our selves. Moreover, as the Inanna story points out, these things can (and often will) be taken away from us, if only temporarily. We’re all one bump on the head away from permanent disability; only a few paycheques away from living in a cardboard box. And when this occurs, we are left naked and humiliated, trying to figure out what the hell happened, but most importantly, trying to figure out who the hell we are.

The second point is that we need to develop a strong core – and I’m not talking about Pilates or jumping on vinyl balls. We need to develop, maintain, and care for a strong sense of internal self. Fitness is part of this project because it helps us test and surpass our limits. It teaches us skill and confidence, and it forces us to meet challenges. If we stick to it through difficulty, then we are rewarded in ways that are often hard to see.

Today during wrestling training I got dropped on my head by accident. It sounds funny now, but for five minutes afterwards, it really scared the crap out of me. Although I was actually uninjured and didn’t even bite my tongue, the idea of what could have happened was distressing (not to mention the anticipation of the freakout I was gonna get from my chiro). OK, I admit it, I snuffled a bit, but hey, nearly every tough male competitor on the second season of Ultimate Fighter has bawled like a little baby so I don’t see why I can’t. But then I got up, wiped my snotty nose on my partner’s gloves as payback for dropping me on my head, and got back in there. Every little mini-obstacle that you overcome in training makes you stronger inside. Strength is an expression of the body but more importantly it is also an expression of the will and the spirit. To struggle and surpass; or even to struggle when there is no means of surpassing – that is strength.

Finally, the Inanna story ends on a positive note: pain and suffering is temporary. Life is change and movement. Eventually we return from the underworld (and make someone else, in this case Inanna’s husband, go down there! Ha ha ha!). As my grandma likes to say, “This too will pass”, and she should know: she went out to work when she was twelve and her mother died, and she raised four kids in a small northern town with a domineering husband. If that’s her advice, I’m taking it.

That North American smugness has recently been tested by various world events and our own shifting demographics. We are getting older, more sedentary, and sicker with illnesses of affluence that previous generations knew little of. Late summer’s hurricanes showed us the creaking, crumbling, moldy underbelly of the United States’ social infrastructure.

Many students in my introductory undergraduate classes live with their parents in middle-class homes and have little concept of what it takes to survive. So every year, we do a pretend budget that tallies living expenses for different types of families living on everything from welfare to minimum wage full time work to reasonable affluence. The exercise usually ends in lots of indignant pouting about the cost of diapers and public transit and how do you expect me to live on this?

In all cases, it becomes abundantly clear that economic wages alone fall far short of what people need to survive and thrive. People also need safety, security, social cohesion, and a community infrastructure that provides services such as care for children, and sick, disabled, and elderly people. People need access to these resources, the knowledge to make informed choices, and the substantive ability to put these choices into place. For example, in order to eat well, people need access to food that is both nutritious and affordable, they need to know which foods will benefit them and why, and they need to have the time, money, facilities, and ability to prepare them. They also need to live in a cultural context that prioritizes health and wellness.

In Ireland, although fresh food was available in supermarkets, I saw people filling their carts with frozen and prefab processed food. No veggies, no fruits, nothing that hadn’t been excreted from the ass end of a machine. This way of eating would make people in Italy or France hurl their homemade cookies. During my travels I puzzled over why countries so geographically close could be so culturally different. A society’s priorities, to some degree, shape its citizens’ behaviour.

Our health and wellness is not an isolated event. A community is more than a group of people who just happened to be in the same place. Economists have long used gross national production as a measure of a country’s success. In the 1980s, the tiny kingdom of Bhutan highlighted the idea of “gross national happiness” as another measure of success, and began to incorporate this into its five-year plans. The 2002 Ninth Plan document that reiterates this principle as a priority states, in part:

“In Bhutan, economic growth and material progress must not be seen as being the only way to personal fulfillment, but must be tempered by an equal emphasis on the advancement of an individual’s spiritual and emotional security. These societal values stem from a strict Buddhist moral code that permeates personal ethics, government policies, and development philosophy. A part of this is the quest for fairness, equity, and equal treatment for all.

Over time, therefore, economic development in the Bhutanese context has come to mean the balancing of material economic progress with the maintenance of Bhutanese cultural and spiritual values, the improvement of social well-being, the preservation of the environment, and the promotion of good governance, all attained as a result of relatively wide participation in decision-making. Resources have been used judiciously and fairly, therefore, and even though vulnerability remains widespread, it is not associated with the abject wretchedness and human suffering so often found elsewhere.”

Compare this approach to ideologies in which measures such as profit, consumption, and whether citizens can buy giant 200 oz Slurpees are considered the sole indicators of social success.

Lately I have become more interested in space. I don’t mean the black stuff with sparkly dots in it from whence the occasional alien emerges; I mean the physical space of our built and lived environments. What spaces have we constructed for ourselves? And how do these spaces contribute to our ability to participate in health and wellness activities? Are our streets safe to walk in? Are there public gathering areas where people like to congregate?

In many of Toronto’s distinctive neighbourhoods such as Little Italy and Greektown, the streets are thronged with people just getting out to walk around for no reason, and park benches are sprinkled liberally so that old men can get together and talk about whatever old men talk about. In Barcelona, even in late December’s cold, the tapas hours of 3 to 6 pm are an absolute mob scene where the only strategy for hapless tourists to escape the relentless throngs of people out for a stroll is to dash into back alleys. Green spaces in Toronto play host to tai chi groups, joggers, people walking dogs, kids on bikes, and pickup baseball, soccer, and cricket games. Cities with bike lanes and bike locking posts encourage people to commute on two wheels instead of four. Quieter streets away from the main drag host road hockey. Public transit discourages driving door to door. The alleys of neighbourhoods like Chinatown and Kensington burst with markets where fresh produce abounds. Even on cold days, people sit on patios, just to sit on patios.

At the end of September I traveled to Atlanta for several days. I have been there twice before and each time have been struck by the peculiar absence of people in public spaces. When I travel to cities I like to get out and walk around to see what the city has to offer, and to take its cultural pulse a little bit. What are people wearing? Where do they hang out? What’s the city’s vibe? The first time I visited Atlanta, there were so few people out on the streets, I wondered if a zombie attack had taken place. This third time, I was determined to scour the city for good restaurants and pedestrians. I did extremely well on the first (by the way, I recommend Globe, Fuego’s $1 tapas, and South City Kitchen), and disappointingly on the second. The people are all in cars. Despite the fact that the city has many shiny new buildings, plenty of trees, and nice places to go for a nosh on a comfortably warm day, there are few people out enjoying this. I have experienced a similar puzzlement when I travel to many other American cities. In one place, there were no sidewalks at all, just miles and miles of suburban sprawl roads dotted with big box stores. I asked my friend, the local resident, “How do people walk here?” The response: “People don’t walk here.” Even the ATM was a drive-through.

How, as a society, do we encourage people to be active and well? In a general sense, we do it by making these things social priorities instead of frills that people can pursue on their own time. One key element is to build spaces where people are encouraged to be physically present participants. Another strategy is to develop a broader concept of public health as both reactive (as in a rapid response to crisis) and preventive (as in preventing ill health and encouraging good health). Toronto has joined other cities such as Dublin where smoking is banned in restaurants and bars. Initially, food service owners were appalled at such a maneuver, and protested it outright as a death knell for business. However, city officials in both places persevered, and now one can enjoy songs of drinking and fighting smoke free. And guess what? People kept coming to bars and restaurants because people like to flock together. Last Saturday night, I walked down to one of my favourite little haunts for a chocolate martini, and when I left, I didn’t stink of someone else’s carbon monoxide sticks. It made me want to go out even more, rather than staying at home where the only thing that stinks is me.

Another example, as chef Jamie Oliver has made widely public, is the fight over what to serve children in schools. Some schools such as Stratford Northwestern have made a concerted effort to expose kids to good, nutritious food as a way of promoting good health habits. Importantly, the kids also participate in their own food prep and build skills that they will use for life. My mother, a former nutritionist and now a high school principal, recently stared down an executive from a soft drink company over the vending machine in her school. The company said that the principal had the right to determine the content of the machine, so mom said fine, that means fruit juice and bottled water. The company said, well, what we really meant was that you’d fill it full of our sugary carbonated nutrient-free crap that has a higher profit margin. I feel sorry for the company exec that tried to take on mom the nutritional pit bull, I really do. By the way, mom’s school is also one that has an on staff chef who engages the kids in prepping healthy, affordable, tasty and nutritious meals. I don’t want to say that my mom probably threatened a giant industrial processed food conglomerate with a tire iron or nuthin, but accidents happen…

We think often of physical fitness as a thing that we go elsewhere to do in an approved facility. We get in our cars and drive to the gym. We watch other people be active on TeeVee while we sit in a La-Z-Boy. What’s wrong with this picture? Activity should be within our homes and just outside our doors. It should be part of our lives. We should demand public spaces that allow us to be safe and secure while we enjoy them, and we should demand that “gross social happiness” begin to guide our social policies.

reader comments

Thus far, this rant has been a hit with readers, who are writing in with emails of agreement, and questions about how to improve things in their own communities. Readers who are interested in making positive change in their own physical environments might be interested in the work of the International Physical Activity and the Environment Network (IPEN), including a walkability score for neighbourhoods. Also check out this document, which outlines a rating system for walkability, and strategies for change. The author writes, “I have started to invest more of my time into my local
communities: my street and my neighbourhood. I am starting to
see the need – and the opportunities – for this involvement, and
am trying to find a way to support myself doing it.” His ideas include:

• Start a “co-transportation” club. This is the way to provide
  “fractional” access to a car and break the need to use a car a
  lot in order to justify the high fixed costs.
• Local stories and maps. Get local people to record/share local
  knowledge, develop local maps, design neighbourhood walks for
  newcomers & visitors. Then hold a walking festival with all the
  walks offered as part of a multi-day blitz.
• Visions. Organize street and neighbourhood visions/plans and
  bring together resources to coordinate future changes to conform.
• Try a Visual Preference Survey (developed by A. Nelessen) to
  focus people on their communities as place. It gets people
  mentally out on foot in the settings they usually only drive
  through.
• “Be a PESt!” (Pedestrian Environment Steward) and animate -
  and care for – the streets and parks.
• Start a “DePoT” (corner store, recycling centre, laundry/photo
  drop-off, and postal station, and delivery point for larger
  stores and catalogue shopping). Hire teenagers to help with
  pickup and delivery; supply them with cargo-carrying “bringhy”.
• Be a “johnny greenseed” and restore your neighbourhood’s
  ecology
• Get local merchants to “localize”: 1) cater to local
  customers (the ones who don’t use parking spots and don’t expect
  you to sit on busy road and advertise city-wide, 2) encourage
  locals to produce for your store, 3) hire locally and help
  current employees to move into neighbourhood, 4) reduce outbound
  wastes
• Start a neighbourhood BBS (computer bulletin board system)
  for local information and commerce.
• Determine your community’s walkability.

For cyclists, why not start a Bicycle User Group like the one in Toronto? BUGs are instrumental in advocating for bike lanes, shared traffic road planning, and bike racks for locking bikes.

One of the things that comes out of this is: If a state (and a lot of these are
states in the South and West) did its primary growth and development after the war
(read that, after having an automobile became something generally accepted, after
school building started taking place outside of towns, in other words, the 1950s),
the less people walk (because there is no safe place to walk), the more they drive,
the worse/deader/etc. the downtown areas are, and the poorer quality of life in the
community. Older cities like new York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, etc. have
lots of sidewalks, lots of downtown life, lots of community involvement, etc. Newer
places like Tampa, Baton Rouge, Jackson (MS), Houston, Phoenix – no downtown, lots
of suburban sprawl, no sidewalks, lots of pollutants in the air, horrible safety
records(the Danger Index in Tampa-St. Pete is 67.2) and so forth.

Time and again, it has been shown that if Americans have safe places to walk and ride bikes, they are more than happy to do so, but they will not try to compete with cars, buses, and
fast traffic. In the DC area, the famous Tyson’s Corners (which went from a sleepy
little crossroads in the 1950s to a suburban retail bohemoth today) is trying
desperately to do something about calming the traffic on Chain Bridge Road (the
main drag) – why? Because it doesn’t make any difference — people are going to try
to cross that road to go shopping elsewhere rather than get on a bus or get into
their cars just to cross. it’s a horribly dangerous place. My sister lives down there and came up to visit us in Binghamton, NY – not exactly a hotbed of pedestrial activity, but still, you can get around pretty well in town on foot or bike. We went to a local event which is held once a month called First Friday – during the summer, there is a lot of activity both on the street and in the galleries and so forth – in the winter, it is all inside, but still pretty hoppin’.
In any case, her comment was that if they were looking for something like this, they’d have to get in their car and drive into DC itself – no one outside the city has this sort of life … it is not built into the suburban lifestyle. School stuff, shopping, sports, yes, but no downtown with restaurants, galleries, stores, doctor’s offices, etc… because it does not exist.

There is some work being done in some places to help – in some municipalities, if
someone wants to do a housing development, for every xx houses, they have to declare it a community, and have room for a school, a downtown, churches and so on, with sidewalks, parks and so forth. This is becoming a big deal here as people start to realize how empty their “communities” are since all they really do is sleep in them — they don’t work there, play there, etc.

Toby Wollin
Binghamton, NY

I’ve just been reading your October rantage, and felt compelled to share a few of my travelling experiences with you – I hope you don’t mind!

I’m back in the land of Oz after three wonderful months in Europe. I found your
comments about Ireland fascinating, as I have a Canadian friend who lives in Ely,
just north of Cambridge, and she is researching and writing a book about Eamon
DeValera, and keeps bringing Irish cheese back to England to feast on. Anyway,
that’s beside the point.

We went to England to dance at the British Open Championships, which are held each year at Blackpool. Your comments about the health of different cultures are spot on. We felt the English, particularly in Blackpool and Torquay, where we were competing, looked so unhealthy. I know they were just coming out of winter, but their skin tone was not good, they were overweight, and looked very unfit. We embarked on three months of walking absolutely everywhere, and boy, do you see some good stuff when you walk places! We stayed in apartments in England, shopped at Sainsburys and cooked for ourselves, eating far more nutritious and better food than we got in the very few restaurants we tried. Basically the English haven’t a clue about good pub food. I must give our Aussie pubs a plug here, because they do a fine job!

Organic produce was readily available, and we ate a lot of fresh fish. Thanks to Jamie Oliver, we realised that you can actually eat well in England if you cook for yourself! When we got to Finland though, it was a different story. The friends we spent the bulk of our stay with eat a low lactose, high sugar, high refined carbohydrate diet. We forced them to add salad to the menu every day, and shopped for our own breakfast things which ended up being fresh fruit, organic yoghurt, grainy bread, meat and cheese. I constantly carried a bag of raw nuts in my rucksack, and bottled water, which saved our bacon on many occasions, when we looked at the food on offer and decided we didn’t want to eat any of it!

I’m sure that my girlfriend suffers from “restrained eating” to maintain her slimness. She constantly complained about being hungry, but never ate enough protein to keep her satisfied. But she seems to have figured out what keeps her slim, so there was no point in my saying anything at all. The Finns also have a problem now with what she described as “hereditery diabetes”. I felt like shouting “just look at what you’re eating!” Everything was full of sugar. And I mean everything — even the breakfast meats. Don’t ask me how they manage that.

In the 1970′s when I was living there, the big health concern was heart disease,
mainly due to the high fat diet and the amount of dairy products they ate. They
were then a very slim people, but now, with the introduction of MacDonalds,
Hesburger, and other fast food chains, that has changed dramatically. We saw almost as many “muffin tops” as you see here in Australia. The Finns are getting heavier.

Potatoes and bread form the basis of the Finnish diet, even in summer. The fresh
produce was generally of dubious quality, but we did find some good places to shop. And the food we ate in restaurants was generally very good. They also love their cakes and pastries, ice cream, liquorice (which I reckon is the best in the world!) and sausages. We managed to spend two whole months in Finland and not eat a sausage! Needless to say our friends thought we were quite mad.

Fortunately meals are served by putting all the dishes on the table and you help
yourself. So we could navigate our way through the things we would eat and leave
the things we didn’t want. I’m sure they didn’t notice half the time that we left
the bread and potatoes in favour of large amounts of salad and vegetables. Although they did comment that we ate “a dancer’s diet”!!

We found a fitness track near where we were living, and every second day we did a
two hour circuit, climbing up the nearby ridge through the forest, walking several
kilometres and lifting weights, doing push ups and and sit ups on the equipment
along the track. That was absolutely brilliant and if I could have brought
something home with me, it would have been that. It’s exactly what you were saying about the built environment and the chance to exercise out in the open. I’m sure the locals were wondering what the heck we were doing as they were gathering blueberries from the forest floor! In winter the track is a cross country skiing trail with lights. But we seemed to be the only people using the weights equipment during the summer.

We also trained at a dance studio twice a week, and had lessons with one of the
Finnish coaches, which meant we were very well prepared for the German Open in
August. By the time we got to Germany we had worn our runners out! We danced four days out of five, and because we were staying in a hotel this time, organising our food during the competition was far more difficult. But, we managed, and came home a couple of kilos lighter because of it! I was developing what one Aussie friend (who is living in Finland at present), described as the Finnish middle, which is brought about by the sugar in all the food. I was glad it had gone by the time we got home.

The food in Germany, by the way, was fantastic. Good, fresh produce, and lots of
it. If you ordered a salad – you got a big salad. Wonderful grainy breads,
delicious yoghurts, summer berries, and autumn mushrooms. We didn’t notice the same obesity problems in Germany that we had seen in England and Finland. The Germans are tall and solidly built, but certainly not overweight. They also eat their main meal in the middle part of the day, and have a simple supper of bread, cheese and cold meats at around 7pm. The German dancers are very tall – for the first time Chris and I felt small on the dance floor!

If we had been able to totally control what we were eating in Finland, we would
probably have come home even slimmer. The amount of walking and fitness work we did was addictive, and we’ve been missing it since we came home. It’s been so cold here, after the warmth of the European summer, and we’re waiting for the sun to come out and warm us up again!

Anyway, I just wanted to share a few observations with you. We’re glad to be home
to good, fresh produce, and our regular diet. It’s almost three years since I
reached the weight I am at now, and if I can maintain it after the challenges of
being away from home, I know it’s not coming back – ever! I’ve attached a photo of
us training at the Spiral Studio in Tampere, Finland, so you can see that we really
were there!

Regards from Down Under,
Ingrid

finland, finland, finland / the country where i want to be

Reader Mira, “from the land of Santa Claus”, writes:

I also read Ingrids horror story about Finland and I’m truly sorry that she did not have a chance to get to know the Finland I know:

I’m glad that we have built numerous places, tracks etc where anyone can exercise free. I’m glad there is so many of these places and so few people that they never become too congested.

I’m glad I’m able to choose not to use these places, but instead just go to any forest I like for a long walk or to pick berries and mushrooms.

I’m glad I have a chance to fill my freezer with those natures truly organic grown goodies, to enjoy them through the long winter.

I’m glad of the four seasons. As soon as I get bored with my exercise, the season changes and new events becomes possible.

I’m glad that our streets are safe for anyone to walk and run even in the dark evenings of autumn and winter.

I’m glad I can kick my kids out of door to rampage with neighbours children without fear of them to be kidnapped or run over by a car.

I’m glad that our children can (have to) walk or bike to the school, where they not only receive free, high standard education but also a free, warm and nutritious meal that is so good that school authorities come from other European countries to learn about it. (OK – in some parts of Eastern Finland kids can’t really walk to school, because wolves might attack and eat them).

I’m glad my employee offers me same high standard lunch with lots of veggies, enough protein and low on fat for a price of a Big Mac meal (saves me lot of effort packing my own lunch every day).

I’m glad that previous generations have studied and learned from the heart diseases so much in the 70´s. Now I know that although my genetics may predispose me to heart problems, I’m able to prevent becoming ill by right nutrition and exercise.

I’m glad we have wholegrain rye bread! One of the things I miss every time I’m
travelling somewhere else in the world.

I’m glad I live in Finland!!

Regarding the October Rant, I must agree with you. Copenhagen is a comparably small city – Denmark has about 5.5 million citizens – and we are also fighting obesity, as every industrialized country is. Because of the level of taxation (48% for students), and a VAT of 25%, things are expensive here. Most Danes use public transportation, ie. bus and/or trains, or combine with bikes. One of the funnier examples of ingenuity is the Copenhagen CityBike (www.bycyklen.dk), which both trains unemployed, and serves as a service for Danes and tourists.

Regarding the obesity, we are still fighting with solutions – quite difficult to get answers, when the top government official (a doctor of nutrition), received large government grants to produce pamphlets telling people that sugar was healthy(!). Funny part was, he was forced to resign when it was made official that he was sponsored by the sugar-producers (banana-republic, anyone?). We pride ourselves in being sensible and open, but recent studies has shown that we eat fast food and machinefood, instead of the many vegetables and fruits we export.

Newest feature in Copenhagen is “flow-food” – a holistic way, described as the integration of the purchase of food, preparation of food, and consumption of food in the daily life.

Carpenters, electricians and masons are all taught nutrition during their schooling, by the same nutritionists that teach athletes at the elite level. Parliament has just passed a bill, with a hefty grant tacked on, which insures that from 2008, every school will teach nutrition. The super-athletes, who receive government grants or support, will help in their local districts. The basic concept being that the life-long learning experience that life is, requires the same dedication to correct nutrition that athletes need.

Sincerely,
Nicolai

http://www.livingstreets.org.uk

This grew out of what used to be called the Pedestrians Association, somewhat modernised and widening its outlook, basically to try to make our streets and public places much more pleasant places to be. (I don’t work for them, but am a volunteer contact for them in the town where I live (Abingdon, Oxon).)

All the best,
Mike

For those folks actually in school, as well as the folks who supervise them, school also brings a new round of activity and challenges to time management. Except for a few years of my life when I was bussed to a “special school” for so called “gifted” children, which really meant “putting all the nerd rats in a cage and watching them fight for dork supremacy”, or when I lived out in the country and the nearest school was a 25-minute drive, I always walked or biked to school, year round. A few times, when the weather was really snowy, I even cross country skiied. No shit. By 7 or 8, I was the one sent out to the corner store a half-mile away if we needed milk. Before my age had barely crested double digits, Mom also made me find my own way to camp, doctor’s appointments, the library, and the mall — all at least a 15 minute bike ride away, and often more. I loved it. I had a sweet three-speed and two working feet that were my ticket to freedom and independence, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, a lifelong fitness habit. I remember thinking how lame my classmates were, standing out waiting for the bus to take them only a few minutes down the road, while I tromped or sped past, enjoying the morning sun. Guest ranter this month, Wendy M. (shown in action below), shares a similar story of walking her child to school.

walking to school

By guest ranter Wendy M.

My children live 0.6 miles away from our local elementary school. With few exceptions, every one of the 400 children in the school lives within walking distance of this neighborhood elementary school.

My first grader is the only child walking to elementary school. I’m only barely exaggerating. He’s the only one walking from our direction, the only one crossing with the crossing guard at Main Street. The only one. The crossing guard is irritated because she doesn’t see why she has to be there. On Main Street. The busiest street in town.

For the time being I’m walking him back and forth to school. I figured we’d meet up with older kids who were walking and arrange for him to walk with them in the future. I also figure I’ll walk with him 100 times and then he’ll have crossed the street 100 times and be ready to do it on his own. (And even if 100 isn’t the right number, I can’t expect the moment to magically arrive in second grade, either, unless I put in the time walking with him first.)

We’re having a spate of nice weather: sunny and in the seventies, and all the parents are lining up to drop off their kids by car and lining up to pick up their kids by car. (Need I mention how overfat these people are? No, of course I don’t have to say that.) I’m not saying I’ll walk every single day no matter how rushed we are or how bad the weather, but I just can’t believe that none of the other kids are walking on these beautiful days.

I’ve had people tell me that they are worried about abductions. They say this gently, trying not to criticize my parenting, but they obviously think I’m being too laissez-faire with my kids. And I’m pretty sure they mean stranger abductions, although I know (even if they don’t) that custodial interference abductions are the main threat to our kids, and it’s not like the parent has to wait to snatch them off the street if that’s going to happen. They also raise the specter of the bogeyman child murderer. I’ve got an answer for that one: the person statistically most likely to kill my children is me. Time they spend walking home is time they spend away from the person most likely to murder them, as well as time spent out of a car (their most likely place to die.)

I could expand on that, but my previous sentence is usually a conversation killer. I’d add that my kids get a lot of benefits from walking. Not just from the fresh air and exercise, but because they meet people and smile at people and wave at people as they walk. People are much more connected to their communities when they’re outside of a car. That connection between my kids and their neighbors is valuable to them.

Another benefit is self-confidence that comes from being able to do for yourself. I don’t want them standing on the playground worrying and wondering where their mother is when I’m five minutes late (still with a client I can’t shoo out the door). I want them to feel confident that they can take matters into their own hands – to the greatest extent possible. Walking 0.6 miles seems like one of those matters they can manage on their own.

The other benefit is time on their own. It’s carefully circumscribed time, but still time away from teachers and parents. They can dally (a trait I value in measured amounts) and they can whisper curse words and they can concoct stories about what they saw on Mulberry Street. (Which, by the way, is near here.) I’ve even known my kids to take detours by a local bakery or the Library from time to time. I like that they’re venturing off on their own a bit. I’m expecting them to take on the whole world when they’re 18. Why not four blocks when they’re 6?

I’m fighting convention, propriety, and approbation by not coddling my kids more. I’ve told my 7th grade son that he can walk to the bus stop OR ride his bike three miles to middle school. But my best friend and near neighbor drives her middle-school children to the school every day. She’d be happy to car pool with me. I don’t want to car pool. I want to conserve gas, not waste 20 minutes of my life in a car every morning, and I want my kid to be able to manage three miles on his own with the aid of public transportation. He’s 12.5. This seems appropriate to me.

The horrors continue with my teen-aged daughter. I made her – gasp – walk 0.8 miles home from piano lessons the other day. No one else’s mother does that.

How come?

Update: From the folks at the Department of Obvious Research, a shocking revelation that kids who play outside are less likely to be obese.

Cleland, V, et al. A prospective examination of children’s time spent outdoors, objectively measured physical activity and overweight. International Journal of Obesity (2008) 32, 1685–1693; doi:10.1038/ijo.2008.171; published online 14 October 2008.

Conclusions: The more kids are outdoors, the more likely they are to be engaged in active play. And the more they are active, the less they are obese. Ergo, turning off the TeeVee and booting the little bastids outdoors, like my mom did, means everyone is better off.

Raise your hand if you have trouble finding motivation to go to the gym.

Now raise your hand if you have trouble finding motivation to goof off, screw around, be silly, and have fun.

Unless your acquaintances secretly refer to you as “Captain Buzzkill and the Bringdowns”, you probably have a taste for pointless enjoyment, otherwise known as play. In both humans and animals, play is serious business. It teaches skills used in adult life, builds motor coordination, alleviates boredom, enables the player to try out new things without serious consequence, and provides opportunities for unstructured learning.

These days, it seems, many of us have forgotten how to have fun. Bourgeois children have the play sucked right out of their lives in favour of formal, organized activities. Instead of kicking a soccer ball around with garbage cans as goalposts, they get driven to soccer practice. Instead of street hockey, they get driven to hockey games where their parents make asses of themselves insisting that children check one another into the boards, getting into fistfights, and calling for the referee’s head on a plate. (Or they threaten to go to court.)

Instead of spending hours playing in the dirt, kids get disinfected with Lysol wipes. Instead of making forts out of sofa cushions or an old cardboard refrigerator carton, they get educational toys, or toys with such specific purposes that the manufacturer practically encloses a script with them (Hello? What’s up with Lego kits? You can hardly find plain old blocks any more).

My summer cycling commute takes me through a park in an affluent neighbourhood where there is a baseball diamond and soccer field. The grass is dotted with tiny tots in colourful sports uniforms, and as I pass, I listen to them. The parental units sitting on the sidelines morph into demented avenging angels the second their little darlings hit the turf. Insults fly like foamy-mouthed spit from a rabid dog. The coach is a screwup. The other kids are screwups. Their own children are screwups. I think there are plenty of screwups here, but they ain’t on the team. Good thing the kids will have money to pay for therapy in 20 years.

When they’re not traumatizing their children, adults are the same way about their own lives. Exercise and activity is something that we go to the gym to do. It isn’t supposed to be fun – indeed, it has overtones of moral punishment – and it’s certainly not something that is supposed to be part of our daily lives. It happens only in an approved facility. It involves pain, shame, and guilt. The body is a lumpen obstacle to be overcome, not something that brings pleasure and does cool things.

Goofing around and practicing my handstands

A friend of mine who is a recreational soccer player joined a casual workplace soccer league for fun. She played three games and quit, disgusted by the ultra-competitive behaviour of teammates and opposing players. In university, my husband joined an intramural indoor hockey league with his roommates, again, for fun. Their team name reflected their commitment to silliness: they were the Banana Tokers. They were terrible. They fell down. They shot on their own net by mistake. They lost nearly every game, and had a great time doing it. Rather than enjoying their relaxed attitude, other teams got pissed off because the BTs weren’t taking things seriously enough.

At what stage in our development do we forget to chill out and have a good time while batting around a projectile? Is there some evolutionary purpose to becoming a complete pill? Some brain chemical that kicks in around age 25, inhibiting the silliness receptors? Why would people approach a pickup sports league with the same gravity and killer instinct that they would use for the disembowelling of a mortal enemy? Hey grayhairs, klutzes, and average schmoes, your moment to be in the NHL is over, so lighten up.

My office is located near a daycare with a large fenced-in playground. I often watch the kids play through my office window. They are so freakin’ happy to be out there! Sand is great! Swings are kickass! Slides-whoooo! Hell yeah running running running running nowhere somewhere everywhere running is fun look at me I’m running!!

I remember the days as a child when I would be so immersed in a task or activity that I was entirely oblivious to the world. As an adult, I often long for that singular focus, especially when I am reminded of it by the wee bairns who are utterly focused on that singular moment of pleasure in watching an ant crawl by or the colour of a sand pail. Adults often yearn for what they imagine to be the good old days, and they assume that this is because the good old days when they were young were actually better. In reality this is because they were largely insulated from the world. People who were children in the vaunted June and Ward Cleaver days don’t remember the Korean War, racial segregation, or McCarthyism, because they were so busy having fun with their Slinkys and hula hoops.

When was the last time your activity was fun? When you forgot about counting minutes and reps and calories? When you stopped feeling obligated and started feeling inspired? When you felt your legs not as aesthetic embarrassments but as engines that powered you across a field with the wind in your face? When you did something and thought about nothing?

I often get emails from harried mothers who bemoan the fact that having kids prevents them from exercising. Given the immense time commitment of motherhood, this makes sense if one thinks of “exercise” as “something you take the time to go out to a gym to do”. It makes less sense if you remember that children are natural energy sources who love to play, and if you emulate them, you can both supervise and get some great activity. At the playground, parents stand around and watch their children. What if they were to play along with them? Parents, climb the slide stairs with the kids, hang on the jungle gym, put a little oomph in your swing pushing, race them across the lawn, throw a ball or frisbee, invent games that require jumping, running, swimming, and whatever else you like. Do as they do and follow their lead; their ability to play is instinctive and you have likely forgotten it. Instead of enrolling your kids in formal activities that require preparation, money, stress, driving, and adherence to a formal schedule, why not just play with them yourself? Any adult of moderate intelligence can devise games that will develop the sports skills that a six-year-old might need. Also, they are small and you can easily kick their ass. Hoohah!

If you are not burdened with child care responsibilities, you have even more opportunity to spend time playing. Why not try a new sport instead of hamstering on the treadmill?

some of the funnestest activities! whee!

These are things I think are fun. If you have other suggestions, send ‘em in and I’ll add them to this article. Send pics of you doing said fun thing if you can.

boxing

Million Dollar Baby and lesser clones such as J Lo’s forgettable flick Enough aren’t bad introductions, but if you really want inspiration, rent Girlfight and watch it with your female friends. Let the femacho vibes fly. Then go sign up for boxing classes. Lots of folks avoid boxing because they are worried they will have to get in a ring and fight someone. But you never have to hit anyone if you don’t want to. You can gain many of the skills and conditioning simply by practising the techniques: jumping rope, shadow boxing, and heavy bag work. Had a sucky day at work? Go and beat the bejeezus out of a heavy bag. You’ll feel worlds better, I assure you. Lessons are good for beginners, as they teach safety and proper technique, but once you get confident enough, spend $100 on a heavy bag and hang it in your basement or garage. You can even spend $20 more on pulleys and rope at Home Depot to hang it from a pulley so that it can be easily raised and lowered, or even moved out of the way. And don’t forget to hum the Rocky song to yourself: da da daaaaa, doo doo doooooo…

Inspiration site:
http://www.womenboxing.com/

climbing

Remember how much fun climbing trees was? Time to get that back. If you can climb a ladder, you can climb a wall. An indoor climbing gym is a great place to hang out on a rainy Sunday. One lesson is usually all it takes to familiarize beginners with the very basic tasks of putting on a harness and tying a couple of knots. Then you’re set to hit the wall. Top-roping is the standard in climbing gyms, which means that there is a rope attached to you, the wall, and a second person called a belayer. If you fall, the rope is there to catch you. You can even just let go of the wall and hang there if you like. Walls range in difficulty from something approximating a ladder to nearly blank faces with only a few nipple-like protuberances for the skilled climber to grasp with her pinky. Women are particularly good at this sport because they tend to have better balance, a lower centre of gravity, and better flexibility than men. While it might seem as though climbing depends entirely on strength (and being as strong as you can does indeed help), it depends much more on being able to balance yourself and think your way up the wall by carefully choosing a route and a strategy for moving through it. Good climbers “walk” up the wall; they don’t pull themselves up the wall. And if you’re afraid of heights, just don’t look down!

Inspiration:
Women Who Rock feature in Outside magazine.

cycling

One of the best moments in childhood was learning to ride a bike. As a kid, I was pretty much grafted on to my bike. For me a bike was freedom. It was speed. It was the ability to go anywhere I wanted, as fast as I wanted. While other kids waited for the bus, I rode my bike to school, taking that sweet three-speed on the road in all types of weather. There is something magical about a girl and her bike, whether it’s putting the little bobbles on the spokes to make them go clink-clink-clink as you ride, getting a wicked banana seat and handle streamers, or just going so freaking fast it feels like your little legs are going to explode.

In an urban or suburban environment, the bike is a perfect mode of transport for day-to-day travel. The other day I ran into a friend of mine on her retro, Barbie-pink one-speed. She was tootling her way down to the climbing gym. “Nice bike,” I said.

“Thanks,” said my friend. “I call her the pink vulva. She’s pink and I stuck a Vulcan sticker on her. Vulva.” This cracked us up for a good two minutes.

Cycling is one of those great activities that offers something for everyone from total just-got-the-training-wheels-off beginner to eat-dirt-for-breakfast mountain bikers. And hey, you never forget how to do it! That being said, if you plan to cycle in an urban environment or on ungroomed dirt trails, do some research on proper cycling technique. You may think you know how to ride a bike, but you may not know some of the other cycling techniques that will keep you safe.

Basically, urban cycling safety can be summed up as follows: use your brain; obey the rules; you can’t be too visible; assume that all drivers/pedestrians/other cyclists are dangerous psychos or utterly clueless, so keep your eyes peeled; travel off the beaten path as often as possible on lower-traffic side streets or bike paths; and learn to handle your bike and keep it in good shape. Red lights and stop signs are there for a reason. Obey them, dumbass. And always, always wear your helmet. I generally assume that drivers are about 99% oblivious to my presence, so when I’m commuting to work, I get decked out in SafetyDweeb^TM wear complete with bright orange vest. This doesn’t mean urban cycling is a paranoid ordeal; rather, if you assume the worst and cycle defensively, most of the time you’ll be pleasantly surprised. With a little practice and some knowledge, urban cycling can be a wonderful experience, and it’ll save you a bundle on transit and parking. The environment will be happy too.

Inspiration:
http://www.wombats.org/
http://www.girlgroove.com/
http://www.girlbike.com/

dancing

Dance movies are a perennial favourite, and for good reason. The movies create a fantasy world with coordinated and graceful characters where we too might dance the tango, bring it on, or shake our booties. Or, as my eleven-year-old self envisioned, we too could get to suck face with Patrick Swayze. As a child in the 1970s, the few athletic pursuits open to girls were ringette (a crappy imitation of hockey because for some reason, girls couldn’t play hockey???), soccer, and of course, ballet. Lord, I hated ballet (my apologies to anyone who is a ballet fan – it’s not my cup of tea). Our instructors made us sit and point and flex our toes for what seemed like hours. Point. Flex. Point. Flex. Point. Flex. As we got older, they tsked about our expanding flesh. Anyone heavier than a praying mantis got a disapproving glare. Who knows how many eating disorders the sadistic ballet mistresses created, or how many girls left dance and never looked back.

But despite the Ilsa of the SS instructor memories, dancing is super fun. It’s no coincidence that one thing people do when they’re feeling happy or groovy is dance. There are many, many ways to shake your booty regardless of your shape, size, or skill. You can wiggle what your momma gave you in private to your favourite tunes. You can practice your steps to Dance Dance Revolution. Or you can take a class in any of the zillion types of dance, from salsa to cardio funk to bellydancing to tap to ballroom to strippercise. Hell–even square dancing if it floats your boat. One of my life goals is to hook up with the all-girl breakdance troupe in the city and take some lessons. I have a feeling it’ll be much harder at 31 than it was at 12, but that’s what Tylenol is for!

Inspiration:
http://www.breakgirl.com/
http://www.womensdanceproject.org/

martial arts

Mom used to yell at me not to hit my younger sister. Now that my younger sister is a kickboxer, trying to hit her is even more fun. That is, if she doesn’t nail me first. Given that humans are extremely inventive about finding ways to whup one another’s asses, there are about a zillion types of martial arts out there to try. They range from regimented and formal (e.g. karate, kung fu) to down ‘n’ dirty (e.g. krav maga, muay thai) to weapons-based (e.g. kobudo, kali/arnis) to elegant and dancelike (e.g. capoeira). There are primarily striking-based martial arts, which rely mostly on kicks, punches, or hitting with a weapon, and grappling-based martial arts, which rely mostly on throws and wrestling-type movements. There are also mixed martial arts (MMA), which seek to combine all the best elements of each type to maximize the beatdown potential. Even tai chi is technically a martial art in its movements and intent – it’s just designed for fighting an old tree sloth.

You don't have to deal with Rex Kwon Do types when learning martial arts. Look around and see what suits you.

Each martial art demands different levels of base fitness, cardiovascular conditioning, flexibility, balance, and strength. Some types, for example, favour bigger people, while others favour faster people, or more flexible people. Some types rely more on lower body strength, while others target upper body strength, and still others depend on the strength of the opponent so it’s less important if you’re a hulkster.

As with boxing, you need not worry about having to really hit another person. Most of martial arts training involves conditioning, practice, technique development, and at the higher levels, sparring (akin to playfighting). Martial arts nerds spend a lot of time debating over which art is best/most deadly, or whether a woman could beat up a man, or whether this kick is better than that one, or whether Bruce Lee could beat up Mike Tyson. These dorks are found at every school, but they tend to lurk in places that pride themselves on being hardcore. Don’t get sucked in by them and think that martial arts is only for these survivalist nuts who are armchair ninjas. Martial arts is full of regular people just like you who are looking for fitness, fun, and possibly some self-defense skills. Your best option is to go and visit each school that interests you and check out the instructors, sit in on a class, and decide whether this art, school, and style of instruction suits your personality and interests. Women-owned and operated schools are popping up here and there as well. You might consider checking these places out if you’re not into the machismo. Of course, if you are into the machismo, hey, knock yourself out. Har.

Inspiration:
http://www.tuffgrrlz.com/

http://www.fightergirls.net/

“I like those odds.” –Homer Simpson

Regular readers will recall from my last rant that there are nasty sciatica gremlins in my ass. Yes, my low back and hip are grumpy things at the moment, forcing me to do a little butt wiggle every time I get up from the couch, in order to try to remove my femoral condyle from my sphincter, or whatever the hell is actually wrong in there.

I started seeing a chiro.

After a lengthy diagnostic visit, during which I was thoroughly poked, prodded, bent, measured, weighed, observed, x-rayed, stretched, folded, spindled, and mutilated for a total of nearly two hours, they arrived at a diagnosis.

I’m fucked.

The chiro and I went through the x-rays together. The good news is that I was correct in that the SI joint is involved. The bad news is that C1, C2, C5, T5 thru 9, and L5 are also a problem. My spine makes a gentle side-to-side S-curve, like the Hippocratic snake wrapped around the staff. Some degree of asymmetry is pretty normal, but I am lopsided as hell – 10 lbs of difference when each foot is placed on a separate scale, nearly 10% of my bodyweight. My left leg is 1/2″ shorter than my right because of my habitual carriage of my left side and pelvic misalignment. My hips are level, thank heaven, which is about the only thing right with me. My cervical spine should have the curvature of a banana — it’s flattened with the lovely E.T. posture one develops from years of desk work, and protective calcium deposits are grinding into one anterior vertebral connection already. My neck has the mobility of a bag of wet sand. I’m kyphotic up top and lordotic down below. My pelvis tips forward like a drunk about to throw up, which is grinding the facet joints of L5-S1 together.

I asked the chiro whether she thought weight training was an issue. She said she thought the weight training was probably what had been holding me together relatively pain-free for so long. Apparently I should feel worse than I do (I’m not exactly sure how to respond to that).

Finally, after an enumeration of my spinal sins, I got cracked in cervical, thoracic, and lumbar areas. This was a bit gross and unnerving, pardon the pun, but quick and painless. After a few crackings I got to like it and started pestering them to do more. And so began my new relationships with CrackPeople: Cracky the chiro, CrackDad the office patriarch, and CrackSon the young upstart who will, presumably, eventually kill CrackDad in order to assume supremacy.

According to CrackDad, spinal degeneration has a multitude of sources, generally consisting of the crimes of our sedentary culture, but one of the causes caught my attention: Birth Trauma. I giggled to myself, considering the psychoanalytic implications of that — Otto Rank would be proud.

Oh yeah, they hate it when you say “crack”. The term is “adjust”. But somehow, “Adjusty” just doesn’t have it for me. Chiros are a sensitive lot and any whiff of the sentiment that they are not “real doctors” gets their back up. Har.

It began innocently enough. A site reader, alerted to the plight of my ass, suggested I try Active Release Technique. I’d seen it demo’d years ago at a SWIS conference, and heard legendary tales of its greatness (as well as its excruciating painfulness) that paralleled Pilgrim’s Progress-type narratives of biomechanical enlightenment. But I never got around to giving it a try.

I wasn’t unhappy with CrackPeople, nor the occasional ministrations of Tammy The Best Massage Therapist in the Universe, nor the happy and extremely tranquil Yoga People on the So, Your Spine is Fux0red DVD who gently urged me to rotate my spine ever further into the great super fun happy ether. I was diligently stretching and strengthening and twisting this way and that. I had combed the nutritional literature and was jamming various healthy pills into my pill-hole. I was eating my leafy greens, flossing, and breathing deeply. Things seemed to be getting better, more or less, but not spectatularly so.

After what I calculated was approximately the 75th morning of crawling out of bed and doing the little butt wiggling dance, I decided that it was time to bring out the BFG on this biznatch. Athletes are wont to bust themselves up good, so I found myself a sports medicine clinic with a chiro who also does ART. And that’s how I met JockDoc.

JockDoc is an affable young guy who could almost be one of my students. So, what’s wrong?” he asks, pen poised in muscular forearm. “Idiopathic sciatica with lumbar flexion,” I sez. He puts the pen down. Looks at me. “You’re not an undergraduate student, are you?” It’s sweet that there was even a remote possibility, I have to concede.

He’s not much of an assesser. He is more of a seat-of-the-pants kind of flier. He doesn’t waste much time with muscle testing or checking my range of motion. His bedside manner is not unlike being pushed out of a plane. He plunks me into a standing position and grabs my ass. “Oh yeah,” he says, with both hands wrapped firmly around the sacroiliac crest of my pelvis, “I’m going to manipulate your hips. Hope that’s OK. Bend over please.”

I can hear the existential crunching sound as the last crumbs of my dignity are devoured.

He folds and unfolds me, immobilizing various segments of my spine till he decides he’s going to focus his zeal on the SI joint (right again! hell yeah!). He wraps one arm around my ribcage, progressively immobilizing segments of the spine upwards, and making me bend, bend, bend. I hope desperately that nobody is filming this, because it’s approaching blackmail material. My performance bending over is miserable: I can get my hands about midway down my shins, if I’m sneaky, until my sciatic nerve tells me to knock it off.

He plunks me on the table. “Ever had acupuncture?” He gives me five seconds to say yes while he unwraps the needle and into my ass it goes. This is no groove salad out of body experience, like my previous acupuncture was. This is full on fuck-yeah-there’s-something-stabbing-my-dermatome kind of action. Tweak-tweak-tweak goes the needle. I’m not brave enough to sneak a peek at what he’s doing. “I had acupuncture before and it didn’t do anything,” I warn him. “Who did it?” he asks. “A naturopath.” He snorts derisively. Chinese medicine by naturopaths is good for old ladies. Not for those of us who are strong like bull. “Are you OK?” he asks, solicitously.

“For someone with my ass hanging out and a needle in it, I’m great,” I respond.

“Well, it’s not like I was looking,” he offers in a tone of hurt politeness.

He flips me like a steak. “Ever been adjusted?” I get the requisite five seconds to say yes while he’s climbing on top of me and jamming my knee into my shoulder. Snap-crackle-pop goes my lumbar spine, deeper and funkier than CrackPeople have ever done it. This man means business. My vertebrae are his bitches and they are dancing for him like a bunch of freaked-out jungle house rave kids. In between all of this he keeps up a running patter about injuries, spines, and his upcoming wedding. Big family. First grandkids to get married. Honeymoon in the Caribbean. Stab stab crack.

Then, suddenly, his knuckle is jammed in my jejunum (or is it my duodenum?) and he is flexing and extending my knee. Shit, people were not kidding when they said this was not fun stuff. He moves on to drive his thumb into my hamstring while he rotates my leg, which is not unlike cycling while having an enema. Okay, there goes the last of my dignity. Right about… now.

Flip again. Knuckle in the hip joint. “Ah,” he says, “you’re a cheek clencher.” I suppose self-knowledge is ultimately the point of the healing process, isn’t it? I’m a cheek clencher. CC for short, I suggest. He cackles.

And then, it’s over. He plunks me into a standing position and makes me bend over again. Holy jesus fuck. It’s a fucking miracle. My palms are on the goddamned floor. “Come back next week,” he says. “We’ll have you all fixed up soon.” CrackPeople, I was drunk at first and JockDoc meant nothing to me, but now… I think it’s love.

As I write this, I am in pain.

Something is strangling the sciatic nerve that runs through my hip and down my leg. When I stand up, I stumble with momentary weakness as the nerve responds to the change in spinal position. Instinctively I curl the leg, twisting it inward to protect it, like cradling a baby animal gently. It is literally a pain in the ass.

My pain is not serious, although it is mildly debilitating and annoying. I will fix it eventually (I hope). I have no clear suspects, but the sacroiliac joint is looking a bit shifty, and it did take out a multimillion dollar insurance policy on the sciatic nerve just last week…

In the meantime, this has been a learning experience. And I have been pondering the nature of pain.

Pain is a highly subjective experience. While there are biological markers of pain in the body, our awareness of pain can be altered by gender, individual makeup, our psychological state, mental and physical stress, distractions, and a host of other things. Pain without physical origins can manifest itself concretely – workplace demands translate into a headache; emotional trauma becomes pins in our abdominal cavity. Conventional medicine has long been troubled by the challenge of pain, because it often defies the symptomatic fixit approach. People whose limbs have been amputated often continue to feel sensation and pain in the appendage that no longer exists. Pain may occur without observable damage. It may persist after the tissues have healed. The body is like the proverbial elephant that is slow to forget. People may move or act in a manner that avoids pain for years after the original trauma.

“Pleasure reaches its maximum limit at the removal of all sources of pain. When such pleasure is present, for as long as it lasts, there is no cause of physical nor mental pain present – nor of both together.” –Epicurus

Women, in particular, have often been accused of faking certain kinds of pain, or told that it is “all in our heads”. Well, pain is in everyone’s heads. Without a central nervous system, we could not perceive pain at all. We could, at best, respond like amoebae to stimuli, pulling away from something noxious without knowing why. Our simian brains allow us to respond more fully to pain, and to reflect on its implications.

“[Pain] removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.”
–CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain

According to Viktor Frankl, the renowned psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor, with meaning, suffering can be endured with dignity. Often, argues Frankl, we are asked to renounce our pain, to put a brave face on things, and to be “courageous”. However, this denies the respect and acknowledgement that should be accorded to pain. This is not to say that we are required to wallow in it, but rather, that pain is a fundamental human experience that requires a certain sort of psychic digestion. Likewise, the existentialist Martin Heidegger suggests that the experience of pain for the existential self is a movement towards authenticity. However, Frankl cautions against focusing too much on our own motivations and interests, arguing that this creates a “collective obsessive neurosis” in which we turn inwards without contemplating our relationships to others and the outside world as we navel gaze into oblivion.

The other possibility, of course, is that there is no point to pain. There is no meaning. Attempting to find meaning in randomness may amount to the quest for a left-handed screwdriver (or, as the Southerners say, a snipe hunt). People often struggle to ascribe meaning to suffering, but the logic of this struggle can be convoluted. We hope that there is some kind of plan or bigger picture, but what if there is not? What if we are less than the sum of our parts, and our pain is nothing more than chemical markers of disorder?

This latter point is currently what is troubling me. I know what is happening to cause my pain, but I don’t yet know why. My previous injuries have all had a clear cause, and that was usually being stupid and careless in the gym. Like Gregor Samsa in Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, who wakes up one day to find that he has been transformed inexplicably into a giant insect, I literally woke up one morning with this pain.

It is the failure of explanation that often hurts the most.

Update 1: I’ve tried a chiropractor and an acupuncturist, whom I mentally refer to as Cracky and Poky, respectively. I have discovered may be the only person in the universe for whom acupuncture not only doesn’t work, but in fact makes it worse. The chiro, however, is a different story. She folds me up and jumps on me. Afterwards we talk about feminism. It’s like the perfect relationship. Apparently, dear readers, I “crack well”. I hope you are all jealous. *preening*

Update 2: On March 10, a few days after I posted this rant, the following editorial appeared in the Globe and Mail.

Odds ‘n’ sods:

Yes, we know that photos are airbrushed, but it’s still a bit breathtaking to see just how much an attractive woman needs “fixing” for a magazine after her photo is taken after hours of makeup, styling, good lighting, and skilled photography. Check out one example of a digital airbrusher’s work, and roll the mouse over the photos to see before and after.

I have decided to start my own modelling career as of now. I figure I’ll just let the artists airbrush in twelve inches of height and get me down to a svelte 48 lbs with DD breasts. While you’re at it, guys, give me a tail. I always wanted a tail.

Groundhog Day, for those of you readers not in North America, is an event that takes place on February 2nd. A little furry rodent supposedly pokes its nose out of its burrow to determine whether there will be an early spring or six more weeks of winter. If it sees its shadow, six more weeks of winter are in order. Various groundhogs such as Punxsutawney Pete (or Punxsutawney Phil), and Wiarton Willie have made their careers from their Nostradamus-like skill.

However, since in most of Canada, spring in mid-March IS early, it’s really all the same thing. But nobody seems to concern themselves too much with whether the groundhog’s record is solid. It’s all in good fun; and the groundhog enjoys his brief fame every year. By the time March rolls around, everyone’s forgotten about it anyway. We’re consumed with lust over the prospect of seeing sexy flashes of people’s uncovered ankles, wrists, and maybe if we’re lucky, nude elbows.

The original groundhog was actually a badger, and the tradition brought to North America by the Pennsylvania Dutch in the 18th century. The spirit behind the ceremony is much older, of course. For thousands of years, humans have looked to signs such as bones, bird flight or entrails, runes, stars and planets, to provide a view into the future. In most of these cases, the divination is through external means. The future is conceptualized as something outside human control; thus, the reporting is left also to apparently random external signs.

In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a jaded TV weatherman doomed to repeat the day’s events, over and over and over. He knows the future but is unable to do anything with it, until he makes major changes in his actions and his attitude.

Often when I speak to clients and trainees it is as if they too are stuck in their own Groundhog Day. They repeat the same negative patterns over and over without really learning anything or fundamentally re-evaluating why things did not work. They also look to external sources to tell them the future: a new “magic” diet or fitness plan, a new “guru”, a new celebrity shill, or a new product. They often feel that a new supplement is the groundhog that will control their future success. Or, perhaps they feel that genetics is the groundhog that predicts their failure. This occurs despite them often “knowing” the right thing to do. But as the saying goes, knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing at all.

Aside from chance or random events such as giant tidal waves, plagues of locusts, being discovered as the next supermodel on the New York subway system, or being hit in the cranium with a frozen mass discharged from an airplane’s bathroom 20,000 feet overhead, most of our future is well within our control. Our behaviour and attitude determine the outcome much of the time. I met my husband through a chance encounter; some folks would call that destiny or fate. But consider this: how many people do you meet in your life that you don’t marry? I’ve met probably thousands of people in 31 years of experience. Most of those were also what you might call chance encounters. I just happen to remember the one person that was actually successful, so if I focus on that one, it might seem like there was some special plan. I also forget all the hard work and daily care and feeding that is required to maintain a relationship, and focus instead on the magic. It’s a selective memory of destiny, for sure.

(And, by the way, this hard work of relationships is also conveniently forgotten during the second holiday, Valentine’s Day. Chocolate has a way of doing that to a person.)

Being in the right place at the right time never hurts. But the more you’re in that right place, the better your chances of it being the right time. We like to focus on stories that chart someone’s meteoric rise to fame and fortune, but we usually forget the ass-busting that is between rags and riches. I think human beings are fascinating, wonderful creatures. We are incredibly adaptive, diverse, and creative. And if we really, really want something, we usually find some way to get it (sadly, much of human inventiveness has been expended in the service of finding ways to blow other humans up good).

So, metaphorically speaking, why are you granting ownership of your future to small furry mammals? Beyond digging holes that we can step in while running, what power do they have over us? You’re not in charge of the weather, but you’re the one who decides whether to pack the umbrella or suntan lotion every morning. Instead of whining about how the groundhog screwed up when March 31 brings a giant apocalyptic snowstorm, put on your toasty warm boots and start shoveling.

Canadian Red Cross or International Red Cross | Doctors without Borders
Unicef | Oxfam | CARE

I just flew in from Barcelona, and boy are my arms tired. Hyuk.  New Year’s Eve in Barcelona is a riotous event that would be utter drunken anarchy if it weren’t so generally jovial. Eh, what am I saying, it still is utter drunken anarchy. People in Barcelona take their partying extremely seriously. Many bars don’t even open until midnight or later. At 8 am on New Year’s Day, the streets and bars still teemed with people, just like a weekday morning’s rush hour, except these folks were still celebrating from the night before. No doubt, everyone eventually had a sangria hangover to remember.

Contemplating our excesses generally leads to a resolution to improve. Throwing up the previous night’s cerveza invariably leads to some kind of vow never to ingest alcohol again in between lying on the bathroom floor thinking how nice the cold tile feels against one’s face. But memories are short, and often we need to repeat our mistakes several times before we learn from them (luckily, by the way, I learned my lesson quickly as an undergrad after one horrible Jack Daniels incident during which I sincerely wished for death to end my projectile vomiting).

This is, of course, a time of year to make resolutions. And in about two days, the time of year to forget about them.

There are many reasons why resolutions fail. First, they’re often made in a moment of weakness and shame. Like a dog eating grass to settle its stomach by upchucking green stuff all over the rug, resolutions have a sort of cathartic purpose. We’ve just done something awful, or let ourselves go, but now we can make it better. When we’re feeling better, we tend to forget about the drive for redemption. If you want a resolution to work, revisit it frequently in sickness and in health. Also, resolutions based in negative emotions such as shame, guilt, fear, or the like don’t tend to last. Leaders who govern through fear and intimidation are effective in the short term, but in the long term, followers will only take a bullet for a leader that makes them feel good and somehow worthwhile. Lifestyle choices are the same. Don’t focus on what an out of shape piece of crap you are. Focus on how great you’re going to feel once you get and stay in shape. Also focus on what made you feel good about your bad habits, and transfer those good feelings to something more productive.

Second, resolutions are just that: resolutions. They don’t mean anything without a plan. Make a plan and devise a strategy. I mean, I can have the goal of world domination all I want, but until I smite my enemies using some kind of sun-powered death ray beam, how am I going to achieve it? Oh hell, I’ve said too much. Hold still while I zot you. Um, could you move a little to the left? This beam is being a little cranky. Thanks.

Third, making a resolution once a year isn’t frequent enough. I once asked one of my clients, an accountant, whether she’d made any New Year’s resolutions. She didn’t make yearly resolutions, she said, she made quarterly progress assessments. Every quarter, she’d take into account what she’d done, and then make adjustments as necessary. This seemed very sensible to me, but then, sensible is what accountants do best, isn’t it? I’d suggest weekly assessments and review, and then monthly progress records. This sounds overly anal retentive but it could be as simple as taking two minutes once a week to think about how things went that week, and where you might make changes. You might even take thirty seconds to do it once a day. Anticipate problems. You may be gung-ho now, but what about in mid-January? Mid-February? April? November? Think ahead.

Fourth, New Year’s resolutions usually have no accountability. What are you going to do to ensure that you meet your goals? Think about putting something in place to keep yourself honest. Perhaps go in on something with a friend, or make your plan public. Start a notebook or a blog. And check in regularly.

Fifth, make sure your resolutions match your personality. This article from the Physician and Sportsmedicine suggests that activity should be tailored to invididual needs and personality traits. If fitness is your goal, you don’t need to do what everyone else is doing. If long hours of hamstering on a treadmill bore you, then find another activity! Everything from archery to, umm… something starting with “z” is available to you. And if you’re really not a morning person, don’t bother to book in that 5 am run. You might find my article on goal setting useful.