Yeah, I’ll be hitting up the nutritional atonement plan just like everyone else in January — my god, I’m only human and premenstrual to boot! Stay out of my way unless you want your fingers bitten off! Luckily I’ve used the holidays to hit the gym daily, which is a wonderful treat (and it’s open on Xmas Day! Hooray for Jewish community centres!). I’m telling myself I’m in a “muscle mass gaining” phase. Beefcake! Beefcaaaake! Let’s see… now where did I put that Santa-print muumuu?

But every year I feel a growing sense of revulsion for the annual carnival of consumption that is December in North America. This is, perhaps, the result of living in a fabulously multicultural city, which brings an acute awareness that the world is not entirely made up of people who celebrate Christmas. Yet despite my fortunate placement in a cosmopolitan urban setting, I don’t think I’m alone in this rejection of the grotesque spectacle, even among folks who identify with the Christmas crowd.

Nearly everyone I talk to, from all wallks of life, is sick of the omnipresence of insipid ditties in public spaces and the intense pressure to mortgage the house so they can buy their closest 137 friends a new iPod, both of which appear like a tidal wave of consumer capitalism at approximately 12:01 am on November 1. Many people, like myself, choose not to participate, opting instead for low-key, family/friend-oriented gatherings where the emphasis is on reconnecting and relaxing, rather than ripping open another fugly reindeer sweater and pretending to be thrilled with more crap we don’t need nor want. Some people also choose to say no to unreasonable demands or to family interactions that drain rather than invigorate them. (A certain acquaintance of mine, nine months pregnant, just finished spending two days baking, only to have her three sons and husband shrug and give the cookies a grudging lukewarm review. Lucky for them she can’t move fast otherwise I assume there would have been a decapitation involved.) I can’t recommend this strategy enough! Say no! Scale back! Seriously. Your wallet and stress levels will thank you.

This year has seen some splendid successes and spectacular failures for me. In many ways it has been the hardest year of my life. In other areas I feel an immense sense of accomplishment. Through it all there has been one constant: I have committed to self care, which means sticking to a good nutrition and regular exercise plan. It has been far from perfect. But if nothing else it has been a consistent effort.

In January 2006 I gave up sugar, just for the hell of it. I’d read one too many studies about the relationship between simple sugars and inflammation. Plus, I was curious whether my tastes would change. To accommodate this, I had to alter my eating. The first week of coffee was like drinking dirt. Now I notice subtle nuances in the bitter acidity of an espresso that were lost in a double double.

In March I figured out I was intolerant of cow’s milk (thank goodness for goat cheese!). I had to change my eating again. Out with the whey, in with the hemp protein; out with the cream and in with the soymilk lattes (by the way, if you’re in this predicament, go and find yourself some Silk soymilk. Accept no substitutes! A lovely lady at the local coffee joint, a seasoned barista, can even coax dairy-worthy foam from it for me, so it’s possible to have your cappusoyno and drink it too. If you’re wary of soy — rightfully so — almond and coconut milk are also lovely.)

I focused on getting lots and lots of fruit and veggies, and began cooking Italian food in earnest, despite its reputation for artery-clogging pasta and cheese, it’s one of the best (and most delicious) models for incorporating lean protein and fresh seasonal produce into one’s daily life (East Asian and French cuisines are also a good approach). Still connected to their agrarian roots even if they are macchiato-swilling, leather-loafer-wearing urbanites, Italians eat mostly things that would normally be growing in the garden or wandering about the nearby field. Food is still made by hand, prepared with love, and enjoyed with friends and family in an unhurried way.

Over the summer I got increasingly interested in the slow food movement, the 100-mile diet, and purchasing from local markets and providers. I made my own pasta and tossed it with gorgeous dark greens and the very best olive oil I could find. I mastered (mistressed?) the risotto, obsessed with new flavour combinations and the visual presentation of humbly cooked but lovingly prepared dishes. I went through a fennel phase and a yam phase and a spinach phase and a fig phase and a phase for just about every seasonal fruit or vegetable making a cameo in my supermarket. I stalked hole-in-the-wall restaurants and upscale bistros, sniffing out new ideas. I cooked bison, ostrich, and wild game. I tried every weird new plant item I could find. By the way, anyone with good ideas for persimmons? To me they are among the most disappointing fruit there is. Should they taste like chalk? Please advise.

As a result, I find myself in late December 2006 craving salmon sashimi, rapini and roasted squash, sprinting down an alleyway at 6 am on a pitch-black morning with the frost glittering along the edges of the potholes. A batch of chocolate truffles is a rare indulgence and even in my all-consuming premenstrually-addled state, I can only do limited damage.

What progress have I made? you might ask. Yes, yes, all this is fine, but what about my bench press? Did I get hyuuge biceps or massively ripped?

The thing about progress is that it doesn’t always express itself in momentous milestones. It rarely shouts but often whispers. And it often appears in the form of process rather than outcome.

I didn’t set any world records this year. In fact, I didn’t do anything that could be considered a stellar achievement, fitnesswise. However, I did:

• take up one new martial art (BJJ) and improve my skills in a second (boxing)
• cycle at least twice a week to work in the summer
• wake up every morning free of pain (mostly)
• approach a return to my pre-broken ass squatting poundage
• take up running, very moderately
• take up rowing, salsa and belly dancing
• do something physical nearly every day, and had fun doing it

In short, I committed to eating well and frequent regular activity, and I stuck to it. As a result, despite intense pressure to fall off the wagon, and a million distractions along the way, 2007 finds me fit, healthy, happy, excited by new possibilities, confident in my physical being, and free of pain. I’m not going to stuff my bad self into a bikini and high heels any time soon (or ever), but this gift of physical wellbeing is a rare and special thing. Yet it doesn’t have to be so unique. It’s accessible to anyone who’s willing to put in the time, attention, and effort on a regular basis, and make their physical care a top priority.

This month, I invested in an awesome fitness program: I moved to a new house that was 10 min farther from transit, 10 min closer to the grocery store, and close to a bustling commercial section of the city. As a result I now walk 30 min a day just getting to and from work, and have taken the car out of the garage exactly three times this month. I run to the gym. I walk to restaurants and stores. I don’t bother often with take-out food when I come home tired; I swing by the grocery store and grab something fresh and good for me, then walk the 5 min home. Simple changes in our lives have major effects even if they are not obvious.

When I mention my house to suburbanites, they always want to know one thing: how many square feet? When I mention my house to urbanites, they always want to know one thing: what neighbourhood? When I tell them where, they generally say Oh, have you tried XYZ restaurant or Check out that little Hungarian deli or Hey — you’re close to that theatre! The priorities of urbanites tend to be different, and life is measured not in square feet but in terms of proximity to social and material sustenance. Buying a place downtown is more expensive than buying a house in the suburbs, but the quality of life, at least in my city, is vastly better. The savings in stress and emotional costs easily outweigh the financial liabilities: an hour’s commute with a good book on a train is better than half an hour in a gridlocked automobile.

Regardless of where you live, consider this: how does your geographical placement affect your physical wellbeing? How have you prioritized health and fitness in all aspects of your life, even the most banal? What self-care are you putting off or avoiding simply through your daily routine, and how could you change this? I’m not talking about hitting the gym every day or enduring a regular 5 am boot camp (unless you’re into that, then bring on the Sarge). I mean how do you feed, water, and walk yourself, and are there ways that you could do that better through a few simple changes in priorities and actions?

By the way, speaking of Italians, I’ve had the good fortune to select a house between two old Italian families. On Christmas Eve, Next Door Nonna sent over her two cherubic-faced sons with a bottle of wine, chocolate, and homemade meatballs. Opening the door to these two grinning elves holding a steaming plate of NDN’s secondi was just about the best gift I’ve ever gotten.

This year, ask yourself: how will I care for me and for those around me? How will I ensure my commitment to this project? How will I prioritize wellness?

Happy holidays y’all. Have a truffle before I eat them all. *burp*

North American folks looking to learn more about what’s in season and how to make it, check out The Cook’s Garden, a beautifully illustrated compendium of how to grow and eat year-round. Also worth checking out: Lorenza’s Italian Seasons.

I began to feel ill after surgical complications in 2004. I never fully recovered from my surgery and blamed it on a previous medical condition. Before 2004, I had been very athletic my whole life, ranging from cheerleading to lacrosse. I was a self proclaimed gym rat. However, that all changed. My earliest memory of knowing that something was wrong was when I was worrying that I would be to tired to walk to the bus. I was unable to take a shower or make a meal without having a nap right afterwards. I knew that something was wrong and began seeing my family physician for immense fatigue that did not go away without plenty of rest after 6 months. I suffered from profound physical and mental exhaustion. Any activity that I did would make me severely impaired afterwards.

After a year of blood tests, specialist appointments, sleep clinics, etc., it was determined that I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Since this is a relatively new condition there is no cure or ‘universal’ treatment for patients. Testing is also tiring and tests your patience. Many people also believe it’s “all in your head” (which it is, because CFS is also neurological). I began to get very discouraged and felt completely hopeless. My identity was slipping away since I had to quit my job, and I was unable to attend school, read, write, go to the gym, be social etc. I lost words. A family friend forwarded me the information for Dr. Bested (http://www.thedoctors.ca/), who specializes in the
treatment of fibromalygia and cfs. It was at this clinic that I began to receive some help.

I think the hardest part of suffering from an illness like CFS is how you are unable to control your body or plan. I do not know if I will wake up and be able to function or if I will have to stay in bed all day. I began to physically unable to be active in the most basic sense. I started to suffer cognitively, and still do suffer immnensely. I was also in physical and emotional pain. I looked okay from the outside, but on the inside I felt awful. I struggled every day to maintain hope and to stay positive about my health status. I was in bed all day except to eat and shower. Any basic activity involved me napping and pacing the week beforehand. However, it is difficult to remain positive and upbeat when your
physical condition has no forecasted time frame to run its course. I was so afraid, scared and at the same time every day I felt awful. I began to attend group sessions where I could discuss my pain and emotions about dealing with my illness. It was the only time where everyone in a room fully understood what I was going through. I also began counseling sessions as a way to cope with the enormity of my illness.

It is now a two years after having CFS and one year after my official diagnosis and beginning my treatment. I am now in a much better position healthwise. I am able to be out of bed during the day with only one nap during the afternoon. I am on a strict diet due to major gastro-intestinal issues. I can now be physically active if I pace myself accordingly. I am on
many supplements throughout the day. I have also learned the skills from my CFS management group that I attended at Dr. Bested’s. Unfortunately, I still suffer
a lot from cognitive impairments. I am unable to write/think/read without post-exertion. I stumble on retrieving words and I mix them up. However, my condition has improved greatly. I believe that my improvement is because I pace myself, meditate, take supplements, have coping skills, improved sleep hygiene, had immediate medical attention, financial and family support.

Finishing the Halloween Howl on the Hill 10k run

Once I was feeling physically stronger and able to spend more hours out of bed I was itching to get back to the gym. With the guidance of my doctor I slowly worked up to getting to the gym to walk. I started walking for 5 min, then 10 etc. I monitored my post-exertional malaise to see if it would put me in bedrest. After awhile I was able to work up to walking for 60 min for a month after a lot of planning, pacing and close monitoring of every hour of the day. Although I was suffering extremely cognitively I was desperate to make some type of short term goals in my life. I did so through walking for one more minute a day. After a year of impairment and finally being able to walk for 60 minutes, I signed up for a learn to run clinic. I joined the clinic with my partner for support and to help me if I needed to stop. I did the clinic with proper support and monitoring from my doctor. I monitored any pain or severe fatigue that would signal for me to reduce my running.

Having some fun at the Run for the Cure race

I successfully completed my first 5k as a “Run for the Cure” in September. I did so with tears in my eyes. It was a fantastic event for me, because I was surrounded by so many strong women who themselves were fighting against their own health struggles. I was one of the most single events in my life that I am proud of. I fought against all the odds and maintained a positive attitude to get me to the point of even considering running a race.

It is important to stress that every experience of CFS is DIFFERENT. There are many factors that contribute to me being in better health and the fact that I slowly improved. Also, many treatments that work for some do not work for others.

1. I received support on many levels, which is crucial for anyone with CFS.
2. My partner supported me and was there for me. He stayed with me through the good times and bad.
3. I received counseling which helped me cope through the darkest times of learning to deal with an illness. It also helped me talk about how I would adjust.
4. I received great medical care early on in the onset of my illness.
5. I had financial support that allowed me to eat, sleep and heal.
6. MOST IMPORTANT – I never gave up HOPE!!! I stopped being a pessimistic person and decided that I needed to change my attitude and become my own best friend.
7. Laughter. I had to laugh at myself when I mixed up my words and forgot the most basic details.
8. Have a basic goal every day. By basic I mean… reading ten pages a day or reading an email.
9. Never give up on yourself. Hang in there no matter how hard it gets.
10. Adjust your expectations. I realized that since I struggle to read academic work that on my bad days I’ll pick up a trashy gossip mag and read it.
11. Ask for help.
12. Never be ashamed of your disability. Let others know.
13. Find one moment of joy daily in your life. During my worst days…. the one thing that I loved to do was look at the shadows of leaves that danced across my wall as I was in bed.

Why do I run you ask? I run because it makes me proud of myself and my body.

I do it as a way to give back to my body that has been fighting my illness to heal me. I do it to make it make my body physically and emotionally stronger to continue fighting it everyday. It helps me cope with my anxiety and stress. I do it to help clear the severe brain fog. Everytime I finish a run I visualize that I have fought off my CFS. I only run to challenge myself.

I still continue to have 1-2 bad days a week during a good week. I still know that my disability can appear at any time and is easily aggravated by stress. If I had to say anything who is fighting CFS or any illness, it’s to never give up and to allow yourself to go through your emotions. I have also worked on re-framing how I view illness/disability as a negative aspect of my identity. I have embraced my limitations and most importantly refuse to hide who I am. I do so because I think it is important to educate others about invisible disabilities/illnesses. I do not try to achieve “normal” expectations of daily living and fitness but work towards my own standards of achievable goals. I also think it is important to show people that disability does not mean that you have to be inactive. I think it is important that we challenge mainstream fitness depiction of normative bodies.

If you would like to contact me, please do so at ironbelle5@yahoo.ca

update march 2007

Kayla runs a half-marathon in March 2007, finishing in 2:21. I am so proud of her I could plotz!

Helpful links

CDC Factsheets on CFS

CFIDS Association of America

Medline resources on CFS

Unlike many people, I like hospitals. I like the idea that no matter what crazy unexpected shit goes down, the people there can handle it. I like the idea that nothing shocks them. I even kind of like the weird antiseptic smell. I like the timelessness combined with the regular rhythms: people shuffle in and out, shifts change, things change but stay the same. Dinner at 5, respirologist at 7, vitals at 8, Ambien and Percocet at 9.

In a hospital, it becomes painfully evident that we depend on human kindness, empathy, and connection for sustenance. It also becomes immediately apparent that our health and mobility are transient things. At any moment, we can be rendered immobilized, helpless, and dependent. We can be transformed from carefree bipedalism to an agonized prostration. All of us are one head-on collision, tumble down the stairs, or rampaging virus away from this situation.

I haven’t been a hospital patient myself since my appendix nearly went postal when I was 7, leaving me with a funny orange tummy, a lifetime fondness for food in cube format, and an incision scar that I happily described to friends as “ham coloured!” while I ate cubic Jello. My last surgery involved having my wisdom teeth extracted under general anesthesia when I was about 16. I felt quite perky and pleased with myself as I settled into the dentist’s chair, admiring the midsummer tan that turned my outstretched legs a honey gold colour, and my favourite pair of penny loafers, complete with pennies cheekily perched in the slots (hey, it was the 80s). The anesthesiologist poked the needle in my hand and said, “You’re going to go to sleep now.” I looked at the needle, felt the deadness spread outwards up my arm, and said, “Hey, that feels wei—“ [clunk]

I woke up, shivering, nauseated, and covered in blood. I couldn’t walk. My mouth was packed full of gauze. The anesthesiologist leaned his kindly gray-haired head into my line of fuzzy vision. “How much do you weigh?” he asked. “I think I’m going to carry you.”

Not being entirely on the earthly plane of existence at that moment, I wasn’t going to disagree. He scooped me up and carried me Bodyguard-style through the waiting room to plop me prone on the back seat of my mom’s car. I can only imagine what this scene did for my dentist’s business as horrified clients watched a semi-conscious blood-spattered girl being carried out of the clinic. Oh yeah, by the way, this dentist wasn’t very good. He left a giant chunk of bone in my face and I spent two months that summer looking like a chipmunk who’d had a stroke before another dentist, tsk-tsking, removed it.

Thanks to my dentist’s take-no-prisoners-remove-teeth-with-mallet approach, recovery was slow and I spent two weeks alternately sucking soup through a straw, swishing my raw gum stumps with salt water, and tripping out on Tylenol-3s. My golden legs turned skinny and pale. I watched my ribs emerge two by two, like baby birds poking their heads bravely out of the nest, and decided that maybe thin thighs weren’t all they were cracked up to be. The first day I ate solid food was a triumph!

15-odd years later, I approached the matter of my friend’s surgery like a military operation. I planned her post-surgical nutrition, and cooked her antioxidant-laden, fibre-y goodness food every day. Hospital food looks and tastes like reheated ass – if you aren’t sick when you get in there, you damn well will be after a few days on the mystery meat and white paste. And shitting a brick takes on a whole new meaning when you’re trying to hustle along some opiate-sluggish colon action with stitches in inconvenient places.

Every day, to the great amusement and puzzlement of the small town hospital staff, I marched into the ward laden with cooler bags packed with spinach salad, fresh fruit, homemade stews and curries, my baba’s healing borscht (“Gives you roses in your cheeks!” she’d said to me decades ago, and who was I to question the ancestral knowledge of an octogenarian Ukrainian turnip farmer who’d given birth to twins with the same effort as peeing in her cornfield?), and lots of protein. I hovered over my friend as she imbibed fish oil capsules, glutamine powder, and probiotics.

Thanks to my attentive ministrations and home made Colon Blow granola, she had her first post-morphine bowel movement a day ahead of schedule. We were both so thrilled, I took a photo of her on the can, giving the thumbs-up. I was hoping to find a bumper sticker saying “My patient pooped early” in the vein of “My kid is an honour student”, or perhaps “My patient’s bowels are exuberant overachievers and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”.

Priorities change a hell of a lot when suddenly good health and physical security are taken away. My aunt, who has struggled with her weight her entire life, now finds herself greatly motivated to lose the extra pounds she carries on her tiny body, as every additional ounce has suddenly become another incremental burden to her crushed feet. 50 pounds and a cat-herd of tiny unruly bone fragments may stand between her and walking again. My friend, once accustomed to the hard daily training regimen of an amateur athlete, resigned herself to the small victories of shuffling slowly down the hallway, and having a shower standing up by herself, before returning to bed exhausted. Pooping on one’s own in the potty like a big girl becomes cause for celebration. Right now, I’m pretty sure my aunt would eat rat poison if someone told her it would enable her to walk.

Don’t take health and movement for granted. They are gifts, and it’s a gift given by a mildly psychotic stingy deity who might see fit to retract its offer of your unassisted ambulation or intact immune system at any moment. Care for your health, bodily integrity, and movement, and nurture them daily. Reward them. Let them know they are special and important to you. They can disappear, but like cats, if fed they will reappear. The more well-fed the cat, the better your chances that it will return to your couch, purring happily as it sheds copious furballs all over your lap.

First, the exciting news: I am happy to announce a new Gym That Does Not Suck in Toronto! The Toronto Newsgirls, under the able direction of coach Savoy Howe, hope to go solo with an all-female boxing gym September 1! I hope to participate in directing a strength and conditioning component, so stay tuned for updates…

I’ve been training with the Toronto Newsgirls for a few months now. The boxing gym is straight out of central casting: gray cinder block walls, duct-taped heavy bags, rust-edged lockers, and the faint whiff of old sweat (or, if you put on their communal boxing gloves, the overpowering, skin-permeating whiff of old sweat). It’s over an auto body shop. It has industrial fans and a big warehouse window, but no A/C. And, although we all agree it could use a hazmat team to spruce it up before we take it over, and we’re afraid of what horrors await in the men’s bathroom, we love it nevertheless.

On June 24th, I marched along with the Newsgirls in Toronto’s Dyke March. The Dyke March, for those of you who don’t enjoy such things in your town, is a women-only march that’s part of Toronto’s Gay Pride celebrations. Pride began with a handful of gay activists in 1970, and has progressed from a few hours to a day to an entire week of flamboyant merriment (I figure in about a decade, people will just party for a month straight). It’s one of Toronto’s biggest parties, and over a million people show up to ogle the buff boys, wear feather boas, and hold hands with anyone they damn well please. What can I say? We’re hippies and we love a good semi-naked shindig.

Marching with the banner and my pink hand wraps. If you’re going to beat someone’s ass down, make sure to look like a lady while you do it.

The crowd thrills to the girl-on-girl action!!

Anyhoo, anticipating thousands of potential jockchicks gathered in one place, the Newsgirls threw together a float. Thanks to the creative genius of Tank, our mighty 165 lb bruiser, we assembled a mobile boxing ring, in which boxers sparred as we rolled down the parade route. We had a ref and a ring girl. One of the women brought her six-year-old daughter fully decked out in her own kid-sized boxing gear. We were a huge hit (hyuk).

As we set up and playfully sparred, curious women asked us questions. It became clear that the sport of boxing intrigued many people. Boxing has a semi-mythical reputation among the uninitiated. Boxing hints at the world of fat guys with cigars and porkpie hats; snot, spit and sweat flying off worn leather; smelly men pounding each other in the face – okay, well that’s all true. For peacenik types, boxing exemplifies the worst elements of human aggression and Cro-Magnon social skills. They can’t figure out why anyone would get into a ring ON PURPOSE and let another person chase them around with the express intention of punching them. To be fair, it is hard to understand.

Until you try it.

And then you realize: boxing is the crack of sports. One sniff of the sweaty glove, one honk of the grimy leather up the nose… well. Like Palmolive, nice girls suddenly find themselves soaking in it.

Coach Howe has two sneaky tricks she uses on first-timers. First, after Howe observes their style or reflects on their name, they get a boxing handle like Spitfire or Machine, and Howe will never again use their real name. Actually, I don’t even know half the real names of my compatriots. Makes things mildly weird at parties when the boxing people meet the non boxing people, but it does break the ice as polite Canadians try to figure out why all the women they’re meeting are named Rhino and Iceberg.

Second, after showing them a few basic punches, Howe immediately puts the beginner in the ring with a higher-level competitor. The competitor can’t hit the beginner. But the newbie can hit the competitor. It’s win-win: the competitor works on her defense, while the noob discovers the adrenaline thrill of chasing another foam-covered human around. When the first timer steps into the ring, she’s nervous. When she leaves two minutes later, she’s hooked.

At the parade, one woman approached me. “I’ve always wanted to try boxing,” she said shyly.

“Well then come join us!” I responded warmly.

And then it began: the process that seems to occur just about every time I talk to people about exercise. The buts.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

“You never have to hit a person, or have them hit you,” I said. “If you only ever want to hit an inanimate bag, that’s cool.”

“I’m not in good enough shape,” she said.

“Well, that’s how you get in shape!” I responded.

“I don’t know… all those pushups…”

And so it went. In two minutes flat she’d talked herself out of a kickass workout, physical and mental empowerment, meeting a welcoming community of cool chicks, and an opportunity to learn a new skill.

I’m often asked how it’s possible for me to have so many interests and hobbies: photography, gardening, weight training, cooking, martial arts… Here’s my secret.

Hold your breath.

I just do it.

The night before the Dyke March, I spun a DJ set of funky Latin house music at a party, matching beats with more enthusiasm than skill, but the gang of tipsy guests found it adequately entertaining (the secret to a good performance is plenty of booze for the crowd).

(For those of you under 25, there are these things called “records” that are flat and round and they play music. For those of you over 45, DJing does not mean just playing songs; the beats have to mix and it all kind of sounds like boom chakka boom chakka boom chakka boom. Hope this helps)

I’d learned to spin from my old man DJ Gamma Fodder only a week beforehand. It seemed fun, so I tried it. I just did it. Was I great? Nah. Did I have a great time doing it? Hell yeah.

I could have said, “I’m afraid.” I could have said, “What if everyone hates me?” I could have said, “What if I make a horrible embarrassing mistake?” or “What if my beats all mash together, everyone covers their ears, and throws beer bottles at me while screaming ‘Get off the stage!’?” I could have come up with three thousand reasons not to do something. But I didn’t. I just did it. It didn’t matter if I was the worst DJ in the world – my friends were there, the wine was flowing, and the tracks were groovy. And afterwards, people said, “Wow, you DJ now!” Yeah, I guess I do.

I’m not especially talented or special or even that hard a worker. I do, however, have one gift: a natural ability for saying “What the hell!”

OK, now think of something you’ve always wanted to do or try. Could be big, could be small. Why aren’t you trying it or doing it?*

Once you’ve said, “I want to, but…” then figure out how to take away the “but” and replace it with “and I will”.

*By the way, it’s probably okay to make an exception for self-mutilation, wrestling PMSing anacondas, or eating raw chicken.

A recent article in the Statistics Canada publication Canadian Social Trends examined people’s perceptions of control over their life choices.

Using General Social Survey data, it attempted to correlate factors that enhanced people’s sense of control over their own lives. Not surprisingly, income and education were positively correlated – in other words, the more educated and richer people were, the more likely they were to feel they had more choices in life. However, the article also noted the role of health and wellbeing:

There was a substantial difference in perceptions of control depending on the health status of respondents. People who rated themselves as being in excellent health, scored an average of 20.0 on the mastery scale, compared to 16.1 for those who reported that their health was fair or poor. While it is possible to take responsibility for certain aspects of one’s health, with measures such as exercise, diet or lifestyle, accidents and some illnesses are beyond one’s control. Therefore, it is not surprising that individuals in less than optimal health feel that their sense of mastery is lower than that of others with little or no health challenges… It should be noted that the relationship between indicators of well-being and perceptions of control over life chances may be reciprocal. For example, feeling in control may be mitigated by health problems or dissatisfaction with life; however, having a reduced sense of mastery could also lead to poorer health or well-being. Indeed, a 2005 study found that a low perception of control over one’s own life negatively affects health outcomes, which in turn reduces sense of control.

Over the decade that I’ve been training more or less seriously, I’ve noticed a growing sense of control over my physical destiny, along with increased confidence and courage. No, I’m never going to be an Olympian, nor will I probably ever slam dunk a ball. I may face new injuries, illnesses, and challenges. Regardless, I feel now that I can take on just about any physical project and succeed reasonably well. I won’t ever be the best, but with enough effort I can be decent. For me, this sense of physical mastery is a direct result of weight training.

Although logically, there must be a point at which I can’t progress any further, at this moment there seems to be no upward limit to what I can accomplish. Things that seemed impossible five years ago are trivial obstacles now.

Three years ago, cycling twenty kilometres one way to work seemed like a momentous accomplishment (and I still swear it’s somehow uphill and upwind both ways). My husband pooh-poohed the idea of me attempting it. Of course, I had to prove him wrong. The first time I cycled that distance, I spent two days thinking I was God, running around and flexing my biceps. A few weeks ago I did a thirty-five kilometre trip as a Sunday jaunt. With a good breakfast in my tummy, I don’t imagine fifty would be all that challenging. I haven’t tried yet. But now I know I will.

When I first saw the Firejock workout some years ago, it seemed unbelievable that anyone could train even five days a week. Faced with a challenging job schedule last year, I resolved to train in the early mornings. Both things seemed impossible to sustain but I was determined. I stocked up on home gym stuff, set the coffeemaker on a timer, and rode my bike to the gym when the weather was warmer. Now, years later, it doesn’t seem odd to me to train twice a day if I feel so inclined. I have to force myself to take rest days on purpose.

In 1996, when I started training, I was about fifty pounds overweight (I say “about” because I just quit getting on the scale). In 1998 when I got married I’d lost about twenty or so of those pounds. I felt good but figured that was all she wrote, bodyfat wise. In 2000 or so, I thought about competing in powerlifting. I looked at the weight classes. Could I make the 52 kg one? (about 114 lbs) That seemed so difficult. I gave it a shot. Several weeks later, lo and behold, there I was at 52 kg. Over the last year, I’d been training steadily but getting a wee bit lazy about proper eating. My jeans were starting to strangle me. Inspired by hanging out with Phil Caravaggio and John Berardi’s lovely concept of “highly effective nutritional habits“, I started putting more effort into my nutrition, especially the preparation of each day’s food. I started running – very short distances and mostly sprinting, mindful of the knees that never seemed to like the activity. I stretched out my IT band carefully each time. So far so good. A month ago, with nary a complaint from my knees, I hit a weight that I hadn’t seen since I had my wisdom teeth out in high school and was eating mashed bananas through a straw for two weeks. I was floored.

I started Olympic weightlifting with a coach some years ago, and dabbled in it on and off. I remember struggling with a 65 lb clean. I quit in 2002 when I left a gym that had the right equipment. A few months ago, I discovered that my new gym had a proper Olympic weightlifting bar, tucked into a corner. I started using it once a week for cleans. After a couple of sessions my groove came back. Three weeks ago, for the first time in my life, I did a bodyweight clean – for a double. (Okay, it was a bit ugly. But it went up, dammit.) I also knocked off a personal pullup record after two hours of boxing training.

I continue to amaze myself. With consistent effort, preparation, and care, my body continues to deliver the goods.

Although I’ve been humbled by injuries and many setbacks and screwups in my training, I’ve persisted. Today, more than ten years older and hopefully wiser, I feel as if I am just beginning. I am fitter, stronger, and in better shape than I have ever been in my life. Right now, anything feels possible with enough work and determination. I keep learning this lesson over and over: I can do more than I ever thought I can do, and regardless of what life throws at me, I am in charge of my own physical destiny.

I received this wonderful piece of writing in email and George Beinhorn, the author, has kindly agreed to let me reprint an excerpt. The full book can be found here: http://www.oceansofenergy.com/book.html

Chapter 2. The Simple Joy of Sports

While I was on vacation in Hawaii last summer, I picked up a hitchhiker on
the winding main road just west of Hanalei. He was a fit-looking young man
who appeared to be in his early twenties. He spoke with a French accent, and
he told me he’d grown up in Tahiti, but that he now lived in France, and
that he was a professional body-boarder. I asked if he rode big waves, and
he said, “Yeah, that’s my thing – it takes lots of wave energy to perform
well.”

He said he’d grown tired of the continual travel that his sport required,
and that he was thinking of taking a break, because he was no longer happy
being a professional athlete. His voice thickened with regret as he
described how riding the waves as a child in Tahiti had been pure joy, and
how competition had sapped that pristine happiness. “Competing, you have to
play tricks on your friends,” he said. “You can’t even talk to them the same
way anymore.”

I marveled – this young man had accomplished so much, and already he was
career-weary. And some moxie, too, to drop off a two story wall of water
while performing tricks along the way. His voice was firm with the
determination that had made his achievements possible.

[...]

I told the body surfer that I’d spent much of my vacation snorkeling at
Tunnels Lagoon. His voice rose with enthusiasm as he described the “amazing
numbers of seashells” I’d find if I swam straight out from the singer
Charo’s house to a gap in the reef where the currents dropped mounds of
debris. “You’ll find many wonderful things!” he said, his pleasure in
sharing contrasting with the weary tones in which he’d described his career
impasse.

I told him how, when I was at Runner’s World, I would photograph indoor
track meets that would always begin with races for elementary school kids,
and how the crowd would go wild, screaming and whistling as the tiny kids
flailed around the track. I told him how it had struck me that the applause
for the professionals was always much more subdued. The body boarder
appeared to resent my saying this, as if I’d intended to cast a slur on his
sport. “I like competition,” he said sullenly as he stepped out of the car.

I regretted that I hadn’t been able to explain my meaning more clearly.
Putting down his sport was the last thing on my mind. I’d simply wanted to
share a feeling that audiences respond with greater enthusiasm to a certain
naive joy in sports, than to events tinged with too much adult hype and
seriousness.

Reflecting on our conversation, I wondered if the young bodyboarder’s simple
happiness riding the waves as a boy hadn’t helped him to rise to the top of
his sport. If he could recover some of that un-self-conscious joy, perhaps
he could forget his competitors and perform better than ever. It might take
courage, because he’d have to become wholly engrossed in pure “play” again,
and less focused on external rewards. Going his own way, he might even find
himself further distanced from his competitors. But his purity would surely
win their respect in the end, and his joy might even inspire them.

An idealistic scenario? A Pollyanna ending for a Hollywood script? Possibly.

When Michael Jordan joined the Chicago Bulls, he insisted on a clause in his
contract that spelled out his freedom to play basketball whenever and
wherever he liked, including joining in neighborhood pickup games. And when
a reporter asked then-Bulls coach Phil Jackson to characterize Jordan’s
co-star Scottie Pippen in a single phrase, Jackson thought for a moment,
then replied: “The joy of basketball.”

In sports nowadays, it can be pretty hard to find joy. Turning on the TV,
the odds are good that we’ll be treated to the sight of professional
athletes whining, brawling, and preening… As fans, we may have to take what’s dished out to us. But as participants, we can craft our own experiences. Like Jordan and Pippen, we can make a
conscious decision to turn sports, at our level, into a quest for expansion
- an artistic performance, celebration, and spiritual quest.

How can we experience pure joy in sports? We can learn a lot from famous
athletes who’ve shown exceptional qualities as people.

Granted, this is personal, but I’m very inspired whenever I see Ann Trason,
the greatest female ultramarathon runner of all time, handing out cups of
Gatorade at an obscure trail race in the hills north of San Francisco,
motivated by the simple pleasure of helping old geezers like me.

I’m inspired by Mark Plaatjes, winner of the 1993 World Championships
marathon. At the New York City marathon the following year, Plaatjes was
running in the lead pack when an injury forced him to drop out of the race.
Instead of retiring to his hotel room to sulk, Plaatjes hobbled to the
nearest aid station, where he volunteered his skills as a trained physical
therapist to massage the slower runners.

[…]

Loving, expansive feelings aren’t exclusive to great athletes, of course,
but can an athlete be considered truly great without them?

[…]

A review of 101 studies of several thousand men and women revealed that
negative emotions can have severe health consequences:

People who experienced chronic anxiety, long periods of sadness and
pessimism, unremitting tension or incessant hostility, relentless cynicism
or suspiciousness, were found to have double the risk of disease-including
asthma, arthritis, headaches, peptic ulcers, and heart disease (each
representative of major, broad categories of disease).¹

As 1972 Olympic marathon gold medalist Frank Shorter put it, “The marathon
is too hard a race to waste energy hating your competitors.”

[…]

Our everyday experiences tell us that contractive feelings sap energy.
Shorter was right: life is too hard to waste energy hating people. Moreover,
the notion that expansive feelings such as love and kindness promote health
and improve performance is no longer a mere airy sentiment. It’s been
verified by the discovery of the electrical and chemical pathways by which
the effects of our positive and negative thoughts and feelings are carried
to the most distant parts of the body, including the immune system, which is
vitally involved in sports training and recovery.

Bruce Ogilvy, Ph.D., a pioneering sports psychologist, once studied the
factors that had prevented a group of world-class badminton players from
breaking through to the top of their sport. Ogilvy found that the
second-tier athletes tended to beat themselves up mentally for their
mistakes, while the champions simply noted their errors and moved on,
wasting no energy on self-recrimination. The top players inwardly reviewed
their mistakes and quickly turned to the next task. Negative self-thoughts
sap our energy. They are self-defeating.

Is it surprising, then, that so many great players, including Michael
Jordan, have remained positive and expansive, relishing the game until the
end of their careers? …

In Jordan’s own words:

“People talk about my work ethic as a player, but they don’t understand. What
appeared to be hard work to others was simply playing for me. We were
playing a game. Why not play as hard as you can? There’s no pressure in
taking that approach.”²

[…]

If joyful, expansive attitudes spread good vibrations throughout our bodies,
they surely won’t stand in the way of sports achievement, and they may, in
fact, give us a powerful advantage. In every area of our lives, positive,
life affirming attitudes are essential for success: in relationships,
business, child-raising, and sports. Even if our goal is only to lose ten
pounds, our joy in the achievement will be amplified if we can devise ways
to shed the pounds “expansively” – perhaps with the goal of having more
energy to serve our family and friends.

It isn’t hard to understand how expansion works. Consider the experience of
people who start an exercise program. After the first few uncomfortable
weeks, they find that they can climb stairs, take out the garbage, and play
with the kids with greater zest and freedom. As fresh energy spreads
throughout their being, they become happier, more alert, and more in tune
with the life around them. Where they were formerly dragged down and
confined by the torporous mass of their own flesh, they now have visions of
surfing on waves of energy. Their awareness – the range and force of their
bodies, hearts and minds – has expanded.

[…]

Joe Ehrmann is a former Baltimore Colts All-Pro defensive tackle who now
coaches high school football at the Gilman School in Baltimore. Ehrmann
believes young athletes are encouraged to grow up today believing in three
wrong values: athletic ability, sexual conquest, and economic success. He
calls these “false masculinity.”

“Masculinity, first and foremost, ought to be defined in terms of
relationships,” Joe said. “It ought to be taught in terms of the capacity to
love and to be loved…. And I think the second criterion – the only other
criterion for masculinity – is that all of us ought to have some kind of
cause, some kind of purpose in our lives that’s bigger than our own
individual hopes, dreams, wants, and desires.”

Ehrmann teaches his players a code of conduct that’s starkly different from
the values most young athletes absorb. It includes accepting responsibility,
leading courageously, and “enacting justice on behalf of others.” Ehrmann’s
“Building Men for Others” program is based on empathy: “Not feeling for
someone, but with someone.”

Biff Poggi, Ehrman’s fellow coach at Gilman, happened to read a newspaper
article that quoted the football coach of another school: “You have to push
them [high school football players] to the brink and either they are going
to break or they are going to stand up and be a man.” Poggi took the article
to a team meeting, where he read it aloud to the players, then chortled:

“We ought to get a lifetime contract to play against this guy. We’d beat
them every time we’d play, because he has no idea what he’s talking about.
You understand? Fifty boys together, fifty boys that love each other and
that are well affirmed and well loved by their coaches, will smack those
guys anytime, in anything. Being a father. Being a son. Being a football
player. Being a doctor. Being an astronaut. Being a human being. Being
anything.

“That’s not how you become a man. Do you understand me? Because that means
to be a man, you gotta somehow be some big, strong, physical person. And
that’s got nothing to do with it. Trust me.”

———- o ———-

My best performances as a runner are not impressive. Thirty-two years ago,
at age 32, I ran a 5K in 18 minutes, a mediocre time, and it like to killed
me. I’ve never been able to run 400 meters faster than 80 seconds. At age
53, after training hard for seven months, I eked out a 10-mile race in 70
minutes, thereby earning no bragging rights. In my mid-twenties, I spent two
years paralyzed from the chest down (a tumor was compressing my spinal
cord), and although I recovered following two surgeries, my right leg still
isn’t hooked up properly. I’ve got the body of a great African runner – the
biomechanics of a hippo and the VO2Max of a sloth. Yet I find that I can
experience joy fairly reliably by cultivating expansive attitudes when I
run.

In fact, it’s a particular feature of the law of expansion that you don’t
have to be fast, young, talented, or famous to make it work. You don’t even
have to be fit, because you can taste the joys of expanded awareness by
“nudging your edges” and becoming larger in any dimension of your being:
body, heart, will, mind, or soul. You’ve surely met people like that – men
and women who were overweight and unhealthy, but who were happy in the part
of their lives where they expressed expansive qualities — like kindness,
love, or courage.

[…]

[N]ear the end of [a] run, I was warming down, feeling a
bit sandbagged, when I passed a lovely field where three Stanford soccer
players, a woman and two men, were practicing a ball-control drill. The
players were gold-rimmed by the late-afternoon sun against the green grass,
and for some reason the scene captured my attention, and I slowed to watch.

A player would run toward an orange pylon, then cut back sharply while a
second player tossed him the ball; the first player then kicked the ball
into the arms of the third player. They repeated the drill over and over,
with relentless skill and fully absorbed attention, and for reasons that I
can’t begin to explain, my heart was flooded with joy. The scene seemed to
embody the Zen concept of “suchness” – it was a thing complete in itself, a
small miracle of beauty and economy, and I nearly wept with happiness. My
fatigue vanished, and I sailed through a nearby eucalyptus grove on legs as
light as air.

A moment of simple magic had released an energy and joy that washed my
fatigue away. What if I could run that way again and again? Could I banish
fatigue by expanding my heart to the point of self forgetfulness? What
lessons would I have to learn in order to repeat the experience at will?

Casting my mind over my three decades as a runner, I realized that I had
experienced a similar joy at other times — an inner warmth of heart, or a
fusion of energy and silence. And always those moments had come when I
succeeded in opening doors through which my awareness could escape the
narrow confines of the little ego and emerge into a wider reality.

1. Daniel Goleman. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books. 1997. pp. 168-169.
The study mentioned is: Howard Friedman and S. Boothby-Kewley, “The
disease-Prone Personality: A Meta-Analytic View,” American Psychologist 42
(1987).

2. Driven From Within, Mark Vancil, ed. New York: Atria Books, 2005. p. 18

We’re having our first Brazilian jiu-jitsu lesson with kimonogirl. We’d learned a sprinkling of grappling on our own, and had dutifully spent every Sunday morning wrestling each other with more enthusiasm than skill. BJJ is a martial art that is based on the notion that your opponent will very likely be stronger, heavier, and faster than your sorry loser ass – perfect if you’re a 5 foot tall woman. It’s not meant to look pretty; it’s meant to work, and it’s meant to work in a world where most rules of orderly combat aren’t going to apply. Your opponent won’t be nice to you; they won’t avoid hitting below the belt; they aren’t concerned with aesthetics; they’re going to be in your face and things will get fugly real quick.

Our instructor is keen about teaching BJJ to women. He is a placid, wiry man of medium height who looks exactly the opposite of imposing, one of those guys that opponents might easily dismiss until he suddenly jams his knee up their nostril. He chokes and re-chokes us. We sprawl and flip. As the hickeys accumulate on my windpipe, I make a mental note to wear a turtleneck to work tomorrow.

I was initially hesitant in martial arts training. I’d stand ten feet away from the punching bag. I’d run away from the amused instructor chasing me around the room. But I’ve grown to love the physicality of grappling. In grappling, I can’t avoid being in close; getting snot, spit, and sweat on me; smelling someone else’s armpit as he or she wraps it around my head in the process of going for my throat. In each moment as I overcome my fear of diving towards, rather than away from, an opponent who means to do me harm, I move towards overcoming the other fears in my life that also threaten me. I don’t think about the size of my hips. I think about the power in them as I drive them up, using the laws of physics to free my body from my opponent’s weight.

I am often struck by this contradiction: that women are able opponents against themselves and one another, but poorly defended against real threats to their body and psyches. Women can be ninjas of self destruction and internecine warfare. Their verbal hostility can be a surgical strike. Their grasp of emotional tactics can make Sun Tzu look like Rain Man. And yet in other regards women may drop their defenses and let the forces of self-obliteration come marching across the drawbridge.

Well-meaning people often recommend self-defense for women. The idea is that we can learn to scream, scrape keys, and shin kick the guy who leaps out of the bushes at us late at night. These are all good strategies. And yet, although we have all felt well-founded fear on the street or even experienced harm from a stranger, most of the time, we know those who would do harm to us. Violence and abuse are in our homes. To be candid, if a family member, acquaintance, or partner isn’t abusing us, we’re way ahead of the game. The worst offender may even be ourselves. We worry about the guy in the bushes as we starve and poison our bodies, as we backstab each other, as we look in the mirror and say “I hate myself.” We worry about terrorism as we subject our bodies to the shock and awe of modern food chemistry, sleep deprivation, gridlock, time pressure, multitasking, staring at a picture box, stimulants, pills to keep us happy, pills to keep us from being too happy, pills to keep us sitting still and shutting up.

In Canada, eating disorders are now the third most common chronic illness in adolescent girls. (Adolescent Medicine Committee, Canadian Paediatric Society. Eating Disorders in adolescents: principles of diagnosis and treatment. Paediatrics and Child Health 1998; 3(3) 189-92. Reaffirmed January 2001.) What’s the biggest killer of women? Think breast cancer? Think again – it’s cardiovascular disease –heart disease and stroke, which are strongly affected by lifestyle choices. Beginning in 1993, more women in Canada have died each year from lung cancer than from breast cancer, and since 1971, the incidence and death rates for lung cancer among women have climbed almost fivefold.. Probably not coincidentally, in 2001, over 20% of the adult female population smoked daily, and about one-quarter of the Canadian female population was overweight (with rates approaching 40% in some provinces). 53% of females over 12 are physically inactive (see chart). (Source: Statistics Canada)

Rates of physical activity among females 12 and older, Canada, 2001

Every so often I get an email that breaks my heart – from a woman who wants to be 85 pounds, from a girl whose high school peers tease her cruelly for wanting to train hard, or from a woman who says with seriousness “I hate my disgusting ___”. The disgusting thing in question isn’t a parasitic twin or a sucking chest wound; it’s usually a normal, benign, possibly even rather pleasant body part. We need self defense for our psyches in a culture that worships plastic bodies but hates real ones; that provides an abundance of garbage food but a dearth of nutritional quality; that provides us with ergonomic chairs when we shouldn’t be sitting in the goddamned things for 12 hours a day anyway; and that fetishizes destruction, suspicion, and violence over wellness, care for others, and growth. Mainstream fitness caters to our fear of novelty and challenge. It promises to enclose us in a safe cocoon where we can’t hurt ourselves. It sedates us with low-level anxiety over our inadequacy, and shame in the knowledge that we will never achieve the shiny, tanned magazine-cover bodies. Not only does it remove the risk, it presents a false goal and takes away the possibility of ever attaining it. But without risk, without obstacles, we never grow. Without goals we proceed towards nothing. We never have to overcome our toughest opponent: ourselves.

I’m asked occasionally what type of self defense I recommend for a woman. I always say that whatever she chooses, her brain remains her best—and often most underutilized—weapon. If we aren’t safe in our own homes and in our own bodies, all the training in the world won’t help us. But training will help us get to that place where we can be strong enough to care for ourselves.

I kick my hips back, grab, feel for the neck, lean my weight on my opponent’s spine, apply the choke. As I train the body I train the mind. As I turn my focus outwards, less of my aggression creeps inwards. As I learn to fight others I am less concerned with fighting myself.

In fitness terms, the masculinity crisis occurs at several levels, some of them contradictory: the brute strength guys disparage the “bodybuffers”, while the bodybuffers disparage the “pencil necks”; the guys training for mass rip on the guys training for strength; the guys lifting barbells dump on the guys lifting kettlebells; the guys training with the new technological gadgets regard old-school trainers as a bunch of shambling Cro-Magnon morons; the weight trainers think endurance athletes are wimps and the endurance athletes say the weight trainers are so muscle-bound they can’t wipe their asses, and so forth. Running through this divergent collection of j’accuse is a “lady doth protest too much” level of angstiety over male weakness.

As one writer states in his essay, “The Pussification Of The Western Male”, “We have become a nation of women.” (In case you need assistance understanding this, dear reader, being a woman is a bad thing. Try to keep up.) The author enumerates a variety of faults of Western culture, mostly involving imaginary scenarios, Cheerios commercials and sitcoms, and provides statements such as “Real men, on the other hand, have big ####### mean-ass dogs.” My first question is: if this is such a real man thing, why does he write ####### instead of “fucking”? My second question is: this guy is pissed about women getting the vote 80 years after it happened? This is like what they call Northern Irish Alzheimers: You forget everything but the grudge.*

what makes a man, is it the power in his hands?
is it his quest for glory?
Give it all you’ve got, to fight to the top.
so we can know your story.

now you’re a man, a man, man, man.
now you’re a man, a manly, manly man.
a man, man, man.
you are now a man, you’re a man.
now you’re a man.

[Guitar solo.]

LIVE IT, LIVE IT!

what makes a man, is it the woman in his arms?
just cause she has big titties?
or is it the way, he fights every day?
No, it’s probably the titties.

now you’re a man, a man, man, man.
now you’re a ma-man, a ma-ma-ma-ma-man
now you’re a man, M-A-N man, man.
man, man, maan.
now you’re a man.

–Title track, Orgazmo

In 1985, Australian sociologist RW Connell and colleagues introduced the notion of “hegemonic masculinity” to describe “configurations of practice that are accomplished in social action… ‘Masculinity’ represents not a certain type of man bur rather, a way that men position themselves through discursive practices.” (2005: 836, 841). In non-academese, “masculinity” is defined as things that people do within social situations, rather than who they are. One could be said to be “performing”, “practicing” or “doing” masculinity. The point is that masculinity, like femininity, is doing rather than being. It is important to differentiate the idea of “masculinity” from “men”. “Masculinity” is a set of ideas and practices that have cultural currency at a historical period. The “hegemonic” part refers to the dominance of one cultural ideal or practice over others: at any one time, although masculinities are in fact highly diverse, there will be a general set of masculinities that are preferred or more valued. These forms of masculinity are understood to be dominant over femininities as well as other, less valued forms of masculinity.

It is also important to point out that masculinity, like femininity, has a history and what it means to be a “good man” or a “good woman” changes with time, circumstance, and individual characteristics. A century ago, many ideals of womanhood would be almost unrecognizable to the airbrushed and collagened clones that march across magazine covers, or the vapid, politically paranoid “soccer moms” whose habitus consists of the few cubic feet of an SUV’s interior. For example, the 1921 address of U.S. President Warren G. Harding includes a vision of women as workers and nation builders: “With the nation-wide induction of womanhood into our political life, we may count upon her intuitions, her refinements, her intelligence, and her influence to exalt the social order. We count upon her exercise of the full privileges and the performance of the duties of citizenship to speed the attainment of the highest state.” Likewise, a century ago, working-class men were seen as emasculated because of their subordinate relationship to capital (i.e. the fact that they laboured for a wage at the behest of factory owners and industrialists); it was middle-class white men who defined masculinity as a combination of domesticity and economic power (non-Anglo men were largely beneath notice except as occasional threats to white womanhood). Today people often hearken back to working man as an icon of “true” masculinity. A few decades ago, a manly man was a well-dressed man who was never without his hat; today it is seen as slightly twee to care about matching belt and shoes (Michael Jordan’s sartorial splendour notwithstanding). In some cultures, it is the presumed differences between males and females that are seen to be of prime importance in defining masculinity; in other cultures it is the differences between children and adults. Thus, masculinities not only change over time and depend on different things for social intelligibility, but at any one moment there are likely a number of competing and varied masculinities – as Joseph Roisman points out, such contradictory and convergent masculinities date back at least as far as fourth-century Athens and no doubt earlier .

French Revolution-era military uniforms, mid 1700s

Masculinities can be thought of as “projects, and a masculine identity as always being a provisional accomplishment within a life course.”(843) That is to say, one is always working on one’s masculinity, repeating it, refining it, and reiterating it, as masculinity is rarely content to rest on its laurels. As Stephen J. Ducat writes in The Wimp Factor, “For many men, masculinity is a hard-won, yet precarious and brittle psychological achievement that must be constantly proven and defended.”(1) He adds that while the circumstances provoking anxiety over emasculation appear to be external (e.g. queer cowboys, Hilary Clinton, latte drinking, etc.), “the actual threat that many men experience is an unconscious, internal one: the sense that they are not ‘real’ men.”(1)

Old joke: A guy in a bar turns to the man sitting next to him, and says, “I built this bar with my own hands. Do they call me John the Carpenter? No. I tilled the soil with the sweat of my brow. Do they call me John the Farmer? No.” He leans in closer to his listener: “But you fuck one goat…”

Culturally speaking, it appears that masculinity, like carpentry and farming, can be undone by a single goatfucking.

What people “do” is constrained by social rules, “by embodiment, by institutional histories, by economic forces, and by personal and family relationships.”(843) We are not fully free to choose our identities and behaviour – we must operate within the limits of our surroundings and our bodies, and relate to other people in our lives. We have to make ourselves coherent to others. Membership has its privileges, but also its price.

This cost-benefit sets up a complicated relationship between people and cultural ideals. While hegemonic masculinity is the form of masculinity that is dominant and has the most social value, very few men measure up to the hegemonic ideal. Indeed, it is the anxiety, powerlessness, and other negative consequences provoked by not “measuring up” that may encourage men to participate in a system that does not always reward them in the end. While men may participate in hegemonic masculinity, they may also resist it. However, the alternative is not always an option given that the costs of non-participation can be very high. As Connell (2005) writes, sustaining gender relations “requires the policing of men as well as the exclusion or discrediting of women.”(844) Punishments for not measuring up can include social ostracism, shame, verbal abuse, or in extreme cases of violence towards perceived gender deviance, death. In most cases the consequences are fairly quotidian; nevertheless they may be deeply felt and mark the psyche intensely. As Ducat notes, being a man is not a pathological state; instead, it is the “psychological cost of developing a male identity in a culture that disparages the feminine” and more importantly “insists that the boundaries between masculine and feminine remain unambiguous and impermeable.”(5) In My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins asked why a woman can’t be more like a man; it appears that the real issue for masculinity is not being a woman.

In late February I attended a CST training workshop. There were 15 men and me. When one is the only female in a group, especially a group typically defined by masculine characteristics (e.g. strength, power, mastery of physical skills), one of three things happens:

1. the woman is accepted into the group after the other people decide that she belongs;
2. the woman is rejected by the group after they decide she does not belong; or experiences small reminders that she is not welcome and not one of the boys;
3. the woman is largely ignored, her presence neither of interest nor of value to the group.

After a short period of figurative butt sniffing, the guys decided I was OK and went with option a. During a break early in the day, we were given an opportunity to look at the clubbells that the instructor had assembled. I’d seen but never lifted a 45-pound “Bruiser” CB before. Nobody seemed brave enough to touch it. I figured I had nothing to lose – perhaps they expected me to be a weakling anyway – and I was curious, so I grabbed it, and tried a swing with it. I (barely) managed to swing it upright in a messy two-hand clean, holding it way up the handle with both hands, because it was both damn heavy and too tall for my stumpy self to swing properly at full length. Focused on moving the weight, it wasn’t till after I was done that I realized I was standing in the middle of a semicircle of men, with 15 pairs of eyes riveted on this phenomenon. Oh great, I thought, they think I’m a wuss because I can’t swing this damn thing properly. I was mistaken: over lunch, one of the guys enthused, “Man, when you picked up that Bruiser, everyone was like holy shit!”

“Well, I couldn’t really swing it”, I replied.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, “You tried it. Other women wouldn’t have tried it.”

It dawned on me: they didn’t care about “measuring up”; what mattered to them was giving it a shot. The fact that I was there, taking my carpet burns rolling around on the floor looking like a jackass while learning the exercises along with everyone else… that was the point.

(By the way, the clubbell site advertises that you can “win big if you are man enough” to be the first Knuckledragger to clean the Bruiser clubbell. I say make me a shorter version, beeyotches, and we’ll see about who’s man enough. :))

A vision of manliness — as played in reality by a woman, aka a drag king.

In the recent book Self Made Man, writer Nora Vincent goes “undercover” as a dude named Ned to infiltrate the mysterious world of boycreatures. Vincent throws herself into Ned’s world with enthusiasm, seeking out various masculine spaces: she joins a bowling league, gets jobs in ad agencies, spends months in a monastery, goes to strip clubs, and attempts the dating scene. Along the way she discovers the immense diversity among men that is yet made coherent through a shared code of outlook and behaviour. One thing that strikes Vincent, particularly with the bowling league, is the air of collegiality: Ned is a terrible bowler and many other players take it upon themselves to offer correction, mentorship, and good-natured mockery. In contrast, Vincent notes, no female athlete offered the same to Nora during her many years of playing women’s sports. This, too, was my experience: the guys patiently corrected me without rancour nor judgement as we worked together for the shared goal.

The present “crisis of masculinity” (if such a thing exists, since such crises have been occurring with regularity, usually coincident with other economic or political anxiety) is somewhat ambivalent in its fears, but it appears to center around men losing power in various dimensions of their lives – power that they feel should naturally accrue to them. This notion reflects a misunderstanding of power as domination and control, and a misguided notion that masculinity should entail purposeless aggression, subordination of others, and a rock-hard metaphorical dick at all times.

Yet in fitness terms, power has two meanings: the power to do things, and explosive strength, both of which must come from within. Strength is also primarily neurological: the power to coordinate nervous impulses so that the muscles correctly execute their tasks. In training, one has power only over oneself: the power to make choices, the power to execute a movement, and the power to overcome challenges (most of which are, in fact, mental and emotional rather than physical even though the tools are manipulated by the body).

This second, more productive notion of power as power-to-do sets the stage for alternative visions of masculinity. Ducat links the presence and experiences of fathers to the development of masculinity, and discovers that in fact, a distant and authoritarian father produces a son who is narrow and rigid in his thinking, and emotionally disabled; whereas a father who is involved and loving produces a son who is able to tolerate emotional and intellectual complexity and ambiguity, and provide emotional sustenance to others in a healthy way. One of the most powerful roles for men is that of fathers, and yet in English, “to father a child” refers only to the dispensing of sperm (compare with “to mother a child”). Involved and caring fatherhood is masculinity at its best, evoking the most productive elements of hegemonic masculinity: responsibility, devotion, sacrifice for others.

In a recent post on a training message board, a number of strength training fathers discussed “Daddy Fitness”. Notably absent from this conversation was ranting about pussification, wimpery, wussification, or pimpery. Notably present was an honest conversation about weakness and strength dedicated to the care of others. One poster writes:

“Got into a conversation with another member of the YMCA yesterday about our workout goals. Both of us are white collar guys and we spend a large amount of time crouched in front of a computer. Both of us have kids and we are not involved in a sport. So we were trying to create a program that we would fit into our work schedule that would give us the fitness we need to be a prepared dad. We defined a prepared dad as one who can:

1. sprint across the street to save a child;
2. pick his child (children) up and carry them for a mile or more (possibly up stairs or hills);
3. play tag for an hour and have enough energy to put the kids to bed;
4. pick up most everything in his home and move it;
5. mow the grass, rake the leaves, or shovel the drive and have enough energy to play tag, jump in leave piles, or climb the best sledding hill in town with the kids on the sled;
6. do all of the above without pulling a muscle.

Once we came up with this definition we realized that the ability to do 100 pushups or to squat 400 lbs may not the best goals for us. Sure its impressive, but is it useful strength? And if not, is the time spent obtaining that strength the best use of limited workout time?”

Another poster shared the fact that his daughter is disabled and much of his training is dedicated towards being able to move and care for her.

This is “functional fitness” at its best, with training geared towards both life responsibilities as well as lived challenges that define us as real people, not false ideals that are ultimately self-destructive and exclude those who don’t “measure up”. It doesn’t depend on what kind of weight you lift, what sport you play, and whether you win – just on whether you try, bust your ass a little for a good cause, and ultimately, build a body and psyche that in its movements and ideas, adds to society rather than fulminating against its decline. And it’s something that we can all do.

*Please feel free to substitute the ethnic group/nationality of your choice. There’s enough long-standing internecine dysfunction for everyone to have a piece.

Connell, RW and James Messerschmidt. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.” Gender and Society 19 no. 6 (December 2005): 829-859.

Ducat, Stephen. The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.

Roisman, Joseph. The Rhetoric of Manhood: Masculinity in the Attic Orators. California: University of California Press, 2005.

Vincent, Nora. Self Made Man: One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back. Viking Press, 2006.

Nothing is quieter than a gym in mid-February once the winter blahs have set in and the resolutions are long forgotten. Of course this would not be you, dear reader, for this is the year it will happen! You will save money, whiten your teeth, be nicer to your coworkers, quit burping in front of your in-laws, and make a perfect gourmet 300-calorie lunch every day while talking on the phone and trying to separate your two children currently conjoined by claws and fangs. However, perhaps you have a friend who will fail in her resolutionary perfection, so pass the following book along to her.

If you (or your friend, wink wink) are looking for inspiration this season, look no further than Dave Draper’s latest book, Iron on my Mind (California: On Target Press, 2006).

This may be Draper’s finest work to date. It’s a series of little vignettes, Draper’s ruminations on his long career as the Blond Bomber and now golden aged iron lover. The writing mixes training advice, anecdotes, and the wisdom of long experience. Each mini-chapter is like a ritual of affirmation and motivation. Unlike empty affirmations that simply attempt to repeat I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and goshdarnit, people like me, and which evaporate along with the breath once they pass the lips, Draper’s affirmations are like a kick in the ass wrapped in a warm hug. One feels Draper’s boot in the glute for days.

One way to read this book might be to set aside ten or fifteen minutes per day or week to read a chapter, so that one is provided with an ongoing source of reflection and inspiration. This could enable one to remain committed to a fitness and wellness project throughout the year. Hey, put it in the bathroom so it’s close at hand and you have no excuse.

A passage in Draper’s work struck me as particularly interesting. He writes:

“The gym… Where musclebuilding takes place: crowded, funky, out-of-the-way, insufficiently equipped, wrong atmosphere and full of smudged mirrors and jerks. I hope that doesn’t describe your local iron-and-steel watering hole. If it does, think garage, Olympic set, squat rack, and a bench. The person who must work out can train in any dungeon, believe me. For the beginning trainees, the last impression they need is the most common scene they are introduced to across our fertile pastures and fruited plains: hyped energy, endless stationary bikes and running and climbing machines in a dazzling fluorescent white convention-hall setting, lined with mirrors and occupied with gaily outfitted, but disillusioned hopefuls strutting in unison. Who are they and where do they come from?”(105)

This type of gym sounds much like what Alan Klein, in his important work on the ethnography of masculinity as performed by California bodybuilders, Little Big Men (New York: SUNY Press, 1993), describes. Klein observes a fictitious gym that is an amalgam of a number of California gyms, cavernous places crammed with equipment, a complex primate social hierarchy, and a strong sense that gyms are serious business:

“With such a high level of tension during the precontest period, it is no wonder that the gym takes on a surly atmosphere The tension is intensified by the combined effects of dieting, steroids, exhaustion, and anxiety, which can turn any interaction into a confrontation… malicious gossip and even public character assassination are used as surrogates for physical fighting… (78)

“On one occasion I watched as Don was bench pressing 400 pounds. His cousin psyched him up by calling him a long string of nasty names. Failing to get the desired response, Phil propped his work boot against his cousin’s throat. The adrenalin rush that Don felt as he lay there enabled him to get out another repetition. ‘Training in the fifth dimension’ they called it… The abuse is, in their minds, instrumental in psyching-up the training partner…”(73)

Klein describes scenes full of competition, confrontation, narcissism, and what might even be termed body loathing at the Olympic Gym, a cavernous tourist trap with machines laid out in neat grids and a highly regimented pecking order among the bodybuilders that frequent it.

Yet Draper continues:

“Choose your gym wisely. Seek a clean iron refuge, a steel workplace, not a flashy cushioned playpen for adult toddlers. You can either get the job done with purpose or be certain, or fuss with colourful tinker toys, erector sets and building blocks till it’s time to go bye-bye.”(105)

Find your fitness forum, says Draper, and play in it. Make it special, fun, and genuine. “Put aside that time of rejoicing alone or with like minds three or four days a week, sixty exhilarating minutes of vigorous exercise.” (65)

I found this spirit of enjoyment quite apropos as I had just returned from visiting California and two gyms in San Francisco and Sacramento. Both gyms move beyond the sardine-can, fitness-as-commodity approach of most commercial gyms. They look different but the general mindset behind them is similar. Both are examples of alternatives to the norm.

Dikadi is in a converted warehouse building in San Francisco. Upon entering, I was immediately struck by one thing: it’s nearly empty by the standards of commercial gyms. My current gym, although I love it dearly, has taken a sort of pack ratty approach to things: every square inch that can have crap on it, does. Navigating the small but decent free weight areas is dangerous business: at any moment some important body part could intersect with a pointy steel thingy. Today, a trainer was doing some kind of ball bridging exercise with a woman in the weight room. People had to climb over benches not to step on her face as she lay on the mat.

The second thing that struck me at Dikadi was the integration of space. There was no “free weight” or “cardio” area. A massage table sat in the middle of one room, and other therapy rooms were scattered around the big open space among dumbbells, cable stacks, medicine balls and even (joy!) climbing ropes. In its layout, this gym said: we cater to the whole person. Tell us what you want, and we’ll make it happen. We’ll integrate, not isolate.

I’ve alreadyraved plenty about Bodytribe but you’ll have to indulge me one more time. This gym is so freakin sweet. When we arrived, two women were working together, barefoot and chalky handed, on the deadlift. One of them is in her mid-60s and just set a powerlifting record for her age class. Pop Will Eat Itself was on the speakers. Someone had brought their dog in and it ran around giving lickies to everyone. Quirky little touches adorn the place: original art by local artists, plants, couches, a strangely phallic giant fountain, a sculpture of a dog.

Chip, the visionary behind BT, gave me a kettlebell lesson, which was great fun. I even had a go at swinging the Big Kahuna kettlebell, which was something like 72 lbs (approx. 0.65 MKU [Mistress Krista Unit]), and discovered that the hard part isn’t so much swinging it up, but not falling forward when it descends and centrifugal force does its job. We finished up with some band squats.

One thing I enjoyed best at Bodytribe was the feeling that anything was OK in this gym. Whatever crazy crap I came up with, whatever my body type or fitness level, it’d be cool. Chip himself is known for going out to the park and throwing stuff. This approach carries over to his new endeavour with partner Cody, Empowered Tribes.

This “I’m OK, you’re OK” attitude is rarely found. Years ago I trained at a World Gym that was owned by a no-neck bodybuilder dude with the type of squarish mole-like hairline often found on the tanned, pharmaceutically muscular. It was a lovely gym, well equipped and neatly kept, except for one puzzling thing: they frowned on serious lifting. One day No Neck came by as I was deadlifting with my workout partner.

“What are you doing?” he exclaimed in horror. We were somewhat confused.

“Deadlifting,” we said.

“Don’t do that,” he ordered. “This isn’t a deadlifting gym.”

A World Gym not a deadlifting gym? Isn’t this like a Gap with no yuppies allowed? This World Gym, by the way, was also the place when the front desk staff insinuated aggressively that I looked fat and ungainly when I signed up and refused the free training session. No Neck and staff generally seemed peeved that people might actually be using the equipment, or that clients would have the poor taste to be out of shape.

After a few years of getting yelled at for deadlifting, squatting, and Olympic lifting, I quit Worlds and headed to a university gym. I stayed there for a while, happily using their rubber bumper plates and Olympic platform. At first I was so grateful for the platform and equipment that I didn’t mind that the place didn’t have air conditioning (staff explained that when the room was built, somehow they forgot to install ventilation), and I would just kick the platform’s boards back into place when they fell off (since they hadn’t been fixed since about 1973). I didn’t even mind when the staff yelled at me for wearing army boots – a kindly Bulgarian weight room attendant with a gray goatee bailed me out by explaining to the other weekend-certification putzes that “when lift, need hard shoe”.

Although thankful that a former Soviet weightlifter was willing to get my back, heatstroke, lack of oxygen, and giant nails sticking out of the floor have a way of dissuading a lifter. Midway through an extremely hot summer when noticed I spent as much time lying down on the platform as I did standing up, I sought out a local gym. Here the feeling was laid back, the staff didn’t care about me using chalk as long as I cleaned it up, and the weight room was spacious, if a little dingy. There were a few problems. First, the owner was a cheapskate who kept the place in poor repair. Apparently to save money, he only installed about one-third of the lights. The change room was like the basement of a parking garage at midnight. Water dripped from the pipes in the weight room so one had to be careful about stepping in a puddle when replacing the dumbbells. But worst of all, and most unforgivable in a neighbourhood gym, the staff had the cheerful and welcoming demeanour of autistic premenstrual trolls.

I’m leaving a fair bit out of my narrative, of course. There was the gym where the front desk guy wouldn’t let me look around until I bought a membership (I didn’t); the gym that was twice as expensive as most gyms with half the space (machines were wedged into the hallway so that if one stuck one’s elbows out too much while rowing, one was in danger of losing them to other gym patrons squeezing past); the gym that caught fire and was “cleaned up” by putting a fan out for a while; the gym that had hot water about 50% of the time; and the gym that didn’t permit women to join.

I’ve worked out now for about a decade. I’m pretty easy to please. I’m polite, friendly, and respectful. I’ve tried a whole lot of gyms, and most of them suck.

Why do gyms suck? This is the cardinal question. Why, in a city of millions of people, is it so damn hard to find a joint where I can lift in peace, wearing what I want, doing the exercises I want, without being hassled, disparaged, or ignored? It’s actually easier and cheaper to provide decent basic equipment and a welcoming environment than to maintain a fancy club. So what’s the deal?

One problem is that most gyms are not run by lifters whose operations are a labour of love. Most gyms are businesses designed to make money and run by people who could well be managing anything: a photocopier shop, a lawn care business, a pyramid scheme, whatever – the content is irrelevant and what matters is the bling. There’s nothing wrong with making money of course; we all have to earn a living. And yet, a business that runs on people has to acknowledge and cater to those people. Now I’m no MBA, but I think that “don’t make your clients feel like shit” is a good business principle. Although the rules of arithmetic are cold and hard, a people-oriented business has to have a little love in it to really thrive. Most gyms don’t give a rat’s ass about providing a pleasant environment, building community, or actually improving your fitness. They don’t care if you even show up. In fact, they’d rather you didn’t so that they can just collect your monthly fee and exorbitant “initiation charge” and not have to provide a space for your body to inhabit. No Neck drove a very nice car, so I’m pretty sure he wasn’t hurting in any way from my deadlifting.

Another question is, why do we not demand better? Why do we allow No Neck and his ilk to intimidate us, sell us things we don’t need, and make us feel like flab-encrusted beasts? Why do we tolerate gyms with all the charm and individuality of a morgue, with buzzing fluorescents and institutional furniture and used car salespeople who couldn’t tell their glutes from a hole in the ground? Why do we join fast food gyms that look identical instead of demanding local places with a little character and community? Why do we go to places that make us feel worse instead of better; that are more like purgatory than play, and that assume we are morons who can’t be trusted instead of wonderful works in progress?

Over to you readers: what makes a gym suck? What makes a gym not suck?

Also, what gyms do you know that don’t suck? I’m going to build a database of Gyms That Don’t Suck. Send me the names of worthy candidates, including locations, websites, pictures if possible, and a detailed explanation of why this gym deserves inclusion. For now, here’s a list of gyms that cater to strongpeople-type training.

“The gym, a haven featuring barbells and dumbbells, is a place of opportunity. It is what you make it; a place, in fact, for making and breaking…. The gym is home to the alone, a training camp to the robust, a correctional facility to the madman, a repair shop for the broken and a fairground to the lighthearted. It’s a hangout, a refuge, a rendezvous, and a place to regroup.” (Draper 44, 47)