I’ve been putting off admitting to myself that the season opener is less than a week away. It was distracting. I just needed to live, work, train, and throw. But the one handed count down begins today and it’s time to bring it in.
See, I get nervous. Really nervous. Before I threw at Enumclaw last July I was barely able to choke down a few bites of oatmeal and sausages and a cup of awesome Seattle coffee before we left the hotel. We had some drama brewing back at home between our new neighbors and our dogs sitter which was causing drama between me and Bigg. I honestly just wanted to go back to bed and forget about it all. I was almost shaking when we parked the car and started to unload the gear.
But then two things happened. First off, we happened to park right next to Kristi Scott and chatted with her a bit. Now if Kristi, who’s calm strong comes across in every soft spoken word she utters isn’t a bundle of nerves, then I don’t think I should be either. She had more on the line than me and she was fine. Lesson learned. The next thing that happened is we found this little guy…
I had a slight twinge of sadness for the little one who’s stroller our games minion probably fell out of but then grabbed hold and brought him along for the ride. I got checked in and started searching the perfect spot for his first photo shoot and we were off. Cuz finding that silly little evil minion reminded me that this throwing stuff is fun. First and foremost, it’s fun. We’re blessed to be able to travel around the globe, meet amazing people every time that quickly become friends, and just throw. It doesn’t lessen the hard work everyone has put in, it just pulls it into perspective.
So this off season as I trained and ran drills indoors I kept my focus on the now and not this far away competition that will kick off the 2014 season that happened to be the first time us ladies and amatuers throw at the Arnold. But now it’s time to let it in. Feel the nerves and let them go. Be excited.
And have fun. Games day needs to be fun. I’ll have my Bigg guy, my games minion, my support staff (KCon and Little Con), and friends (old and new.) I hope to throw far. I hope not to embarrass myself. I hope to put drills into motion with releases. But at the end of the day, I hope to just take it all in and have an absolute blast. Let the countdown begin, we’re ready.
Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
I met a family once who had two daughters. The youngest daughter was the Queen of the family. Whatever she did, whatever she wanted, whomever she dated was the topic of conversation for the night. I was at one party sitting outside (I always tried to avoid the mom who was FAR more entertained by her stories of her princess than I) when proud mom declared her precious princess completely out of the league of another high schooler sitting next to me. Huh? First off, he hadn’t asked out the girl so STFU. Second of all, he’s actually an incredibly bright young man who lifts very heavy weights and has an awesome future ahead of him. HE’S out of the princess league? Good. He’s too good for her.
I hosted a few parties of my own and proud mom came with another friend of hers who I was friendly with. There were enough folks in my small space that the younger lady I didn’t know and stayed off in the shadows next to these mom’s that I didn’t question it. Princess stopped by and in usual fashion, mummy stepped it up and made sure we all revolved around her. Shadow girl still sat quietly and by the end of the night I was curious enough to ask who she was. OH! She was daughter number one. Ok, so you bring this girl to my party and don’t even deem her important enough to not only talk to her, but introduce her to me? SO bizarre. I’ve seen favorite child crap go down before, even lived it here and there, but this was off the charts. That an entire family revolves around one daughter and completely ignores the other is so Flowers In The Attic I couldn’t be around this woman anymore. Yuck.
Enter the Men’s hockey Olympic tournament. Where are the Canadians? Ya know, the defending Gold medal team? To listen to our White House commentators (Oops, I mean NBC) you’d think the only one’s playing right now are the US and the Russians and everyone else is just fluff. Uhhhhh, where are the Canadians? I was so concerned that they didn’t make the trip I had to google them. Phew! Turns out they’re here after all. Actually here and kicking ass. Well they tied the Finnlanders but Teemu Salanne has tiger blood and ancient Finn mysticism flowing through his veins so how are you supposed to beat that? (As the Russians are finding out right meow.)
And so sums up the utter fail that NBC is. See, to them, only USA matters. No one else exists except some mythical cold war revisited propaganda bullshit that was decreed in the press packets of those in front of the camera. There’s a big ‘ol Olympic tournament going on and we’re hearing of an estimated 1/4000th of it. This is why I miss EuroSport. You actually gets sports, from a sport view, not a self absorbed “we’ll tell you only what we want you to hear and you’ll be happy to get it” view. Snore.
The Canadians, the Finn’s, the Detroit Red Wings (Oops, I mean Swedes)…lots of incredible hockey we may get a glimpse of. Thanks NBC, you suck. I guess the good news is Putin doesn’t have Sid and crew locked up in the attic feeding them powdered donuts…yet.
No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herself as ’embedded.’ To say, ‘I’m an embedded journalist’ is to say, ‘I’m a government Propagandist.
Noam Chomsky
…they’ll make you fat. Duh.
I am so tired of the glib phrase, ‘Training with weights won’t make you bulky ladies, but cupcakes will.’ At least not in the way we believe women are picturing. Of course our assumption is that silly women who believe that picking up a barbell will Evil Minion morph them into this…
Like, overnight. This belief that women are so incredibly stupid that they are unable to understand that to look like this woman, tons of hours in the gym and tons of drugs will be necessary. Cuz women are SO stoooopid! So we dumb things down for them and give them a dismissive, “You’re too stupid for me to teach you the fact that simple weight training will be good for you and I’ll tell you over time how so I’ll treat you like the silly person you are who obviously is only worth my sarcasm since training with weights is scary for you and I’m an expert weight trainer.”
Hey, anyone who’s said this? Please think about it. But not from your point of view, cuz there’s others out there YO!
Two points on this: first off, what is bulky? Bulk can be defined as large and fat or muscular. Well, ok. Then yes, cupcakes will make you bulky. Like, the fat part. But not the muscular part so why are we even bringing cake or cupcakes into the conversation? We’re talking about weight training, not diet. We WHill be talking about diet soon and if cupcakes are considered a daily dietary need in your house, we’ll be fixing that. But that’s not what we’re saying here. We want you to lift a barbell and put it back down. It will make you stronger. Period. Stronger feeling is always better than weaker feeling. Even for the untrained. If your crappy diet has you in constant inflammation, you’re picking up little cold or “flu” like bugs every other week and feel like crap on a regular basis, how do you feel once the bug has passed? Better? Stronger? More able to accomplish necessary tasks? Like going to the grocery store for more crap food? There ya go. You’re stronger. You know that feels better. You know you’re better able to do what needs to be done each day. Stronger. Better. Now think of how good you can feel if you actually trained to feel stronger and better each day and then as we go along, we’ll tweak that diet so that you’re fueling your body in ways it will run better for you and suddenly you’ll forget why you ever thought it was fun to feel like garbage. Weight training will do that. But not overnight. So we’ll start with an empty, lightweight bar and you won’t even realize you’ve suddenly just squatted 40kg for three sets of five after a few weeks but you WHill realize how good you feel. That’s what we want for you. Stronger. Bulk won’t even occur to you anymore so we don’t need to bring it up. See? Experienced trainers and strength coaches know this. So they don’t need to be glib and demeaning to you in the meantime.
Second, and sometimes most important, getting off the easy machines and cardio equipment can be scary. Yup. Scary. Why? Cuz they watch experienced lifters day after day who are lifting more weight than these women think they ever could and they’d just embarrass themselves trying. Us. We’re doing that. No, we’re not doing it intentionally. Obviously. But we’ve been doing this for so long that it’s like breathing. And sometimes we act better than them. Yup, we do. You do, and you do, and YOU! Each person who’s ever uttered this redunkulous statement does. We’re SOOOOO above these silly cardio queens and their silly elliptical cuz we train with barbells. Yup. I see it every single day on the social media scene. When I do train at a commercial gym, I put my music in; my head down; and train. That’s my way of shutting out not just the cardio queens, but usually more of the silly boys who need to get louder and louder to get the girls attention. We’ve completely ignored OUR beginnings and silly mistakes we made along the way and behave as if they never happened. Weight training is scary. There’s a lot of self esteem mixed up in there and to dismiss it with some jock strap snapping dick statement is, well, dick. Don’t be dick.
Be empathetic. Ya know, put yourselves in someone else’s shoes. Try to remember the first time you unloaded the bar from one side first so it went flying. That stupid feeling, remember that. Then go and make weights less scary for those you want to life them. I suspect that that’s the hard part. We need to lie, bargain, and coerce to get people to lift weights. That’s hard. It’s much easier to make THEM feel like a silly person and not be respectful just cuz we don’t know how to get a barbell in their hands.
So, cupcakes won’t make you bulky ladies, at least not in the way strength trainers assume you’re picturing. But strength trainers may make you feel stupid. If that happens, fire them. They’ll feel vindicated that you really didn’t want to work hard but you’ll find a strength trainer who will be patient and the meathead you just canned will still be a meathead. You win.
Talk about stupid…
We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur.
Al Gore
tosabarbell 