Ripped is the new skinny

I’ve noticed lately that some of my Facebook friends like to post inspirational pics of fiercely ripped women lifting serious weights while wearing insufficiently supportive sports garments (see link). These pics are usually accompanied with bullying, if trite slogans: “Good things come to those who work their asses off”;  “If you’re tired of starting over, stop giving up”. Unlike said friends, I’ve never found those images particularly inspiring and frequently hide them so I can continue with my day, unirritated.

What’s my problem? Being strong may be better than striving to be simply skinny, but being fitness-model ripped isn’t necessarily the healthiest place to be either. 

My beef with fitness models is that they tout an impossible ideal. What isn’t clear from the photos is that they represent a moment in time which is completely unsustainable in the long term. To appear ripped you have to have less than 19 per cent body fat. To maintain a super low body fat percentage you probably aren’t going to be eating enough to feed your muscles and make gains.

For me, lifting is about challenging myself and understanding my body in a way that transcends all the patriarchal crap sent our way daily by way of advertising, and popular media. I don’t train to be bench Barbie, I train because it makes me feel invincible. The numbers that matter to me aren’t my chest, waist and hip measurements but my bench, squat, and deadlift kgs.

Mercy

http://www.dumpaday.com/random-pictures/the-best-motivational-fitness-quotes-28-pics/

The Deadlift

“There is no easy way to do a deadlift - no way to cheat, which explains their lack of popularity in most gyms around the world”

Mark Rippetoe, Starting Strength

The deadlift may be a challenging lift but it’s a breeze to incur a deadlift injury. After all, it’s the exercise most closely akin to lifts you might have to perform in real life - lifting heavy shit off the floor - when the only advice you may be able to recall for the occasion is “bend zee knees!” 

While it’s a lift that primarily utilises the muscles of your lower back, it involves more muscles than any other lift you’ll perform. Everything that stabilises the “core” - the abs, obliques, the intercostals, plus all of the muscles of the upper and lower back are going to get seriously tested, as well as the glutes, traps, lats, delts, teres major, the quads, the hamstrings and, assuming you’re not using lifting straps, grip strength. In short, it is the Daddy of all compound lifts. 

Why is the deadlift such a bitch? Anything that challenges your back has the potential to be a bit of a scunner but the main issue with deadlifting is that  it starts with a concentric contraction and ends with an eccentric. Unlike the squat where you are lowering yourself into a “hole” before “exploding” put of it, with deads you are already in the hole which is what makes them so hard. You are not a coiled spring drawing on your power, you are heaving something off the ground from a dead stop (hence the name). 

Here’s how you do it:

Your stance should be narrower than for the squat, just a little more than hip-width apart. Toes are slightly angled out - less so than in the squat. The bar should be over the ball of your foot, an inch or so from the shin. Grip the bar so that the thumbs just clear the legs. Bend your knees and sink your bum. Keeping your chest high by lifting the shoulders up and back. The most important thing to think about is to ensure your back is flat/neutral and not rounded, throughout. 

Remind yourself that this is not a squat. You are not looking to get your thighs below parallel to the ground, you are only bending at the hips and knees enough that you can grasp the bar with straight arms. 

Keep tension in the lats by pulling the bar to touch your shins. The bar should maintain contact with the shins, then the knees, then the thighs, throughout (you might wish to invest in some sexy tube socks or wear tracky bottoms on legs day because there will be scraping). It might be helpful to think of the hands as merely hooks from which the bar dangles. Your arm strength will not be utilised at all. Simply grip the bar and let your legs and hips do most of the work.

Take a deep breath, face forward, look slightly down, and pull the bar up your legs, straightening the knees, pushing the pelvis forward. At the top of the pull, pull the shoulders back, lift the chest and lock the knees. Don’t exaggerate this thrust forward, your spine should still be in a neutral position. To complete the lift, lower the bar to the ground in the same way in reverse. You can let gravity do most of the work. You don’t want to waste your energy lowering it down super-carefully. Although if you drop it from a height while lifting anything less than a majestic amount of kgs you’re going to look like a bit of an idiot. So try not to do that. 

When the bar touches the floor reset yourself, mindfully, for the next rep.

Do not let you vanity drive your deadlift. Think of your spine! If you can’t lift with perfect form ie a flat back, you’ve got no business lifting that weight. I should know. As I sit here typing, awkwardly propped up with cushions on my sofa, I’m counting the minutes till I can take my next painkillers. What did I do? I hurt my back. How did I do it? Trying to deadlift too much.

Mercy

http://doubleyourgains.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/how-to-deadlift.jpg

Drop the pink weights ladies

A few years ago I had an epiphany at the gym. I looked around and saw

that men were lifting hefty weights and getting results. Whereas women

(generally speaking) were running on treadmills and lifting small

weights without achieving anything. Trainers I worked with assumed I

wanted to “lose weight and tone up”.  They would give me generic

programs consisting of a crazy amount of reps at unchallenging loads

on machines. And that was it. It was boring, it was pointless and I

strongly suspected the boys were having all the fun.

One day I thought sod this! I'm going to train like a man and see what

happens. For many women the idea of training like a man might not

sound particularly attractive. The world at large does not revere a

“masculine” women and it’s impressed on us from an early age that we

are expected to be delicate, to take up little room. Be skinny or be

pneumatic, be fragile, be helpless, for god’s sake don’t be in any way

like a man!

But being a physically strong woman is nothing like being a man. And

as I got into my training I realised that there was nothing

particularly gender specific about lifting weights. Although we are

composed differently hormonally, women and men have exactly the same

skeletal muscle composition, so there is no reason to train

differently. Our hormonal differences mean that it is much harder for

a woman to pack on muscle than it is for a man. Female body-builders

work exceptionally hard to look the way they want to look, so there’s

no way you could look like one by accident.

One of the first things I noticed about weight-training is how

time-efficient it is. Heavy weights at low reps meant that rather than

hanging around the gym for more than an hour, I could get a much more

meaningful workout in around 40 minutes. I also started to look

forward to getting into the weights room to see how I could improve on

my previous performance. Instead of focussing on losing something

(weight), I was making measurable gains (strength) and with this came

a very profound change in the way I related to my own body. Feeling

strong physically is one of the biggest confidence builders

imaginable.

And there’s more: Muscle costs your body more to maintain than fat.

When your muscle mass increases your metabolism changes, with fat-loss

as the happy by-product. As well as strengthening your muscles, weight

training has been shown to improve bone density, this is specifically

useful to women who are more likely than men to succumb  to

osteoporosis in old age. Studies have also shown resistance training

improves the cognitive abilities of older adults, keeping dementia at

bay. It's also a powerful tool for combating depression as brain

chemistry is altered through the release of endorphins and increased

levels of mood-boosting serotonin. On top of all this, after a session

your body continues to burn calories at an elevated rate for several

hours even when you're resting.

Strength, fat-loss, confidence, enhanced mood, longevity, plus a hot

body. Why would anyone cheat themselves out of those benefits?

Squatting, benching and dead-lifting are for everyone. Not just

body-builders. Not just guys.

Mercy