What is Fitness (Again)? Time, Training, Tenacity

“Fitness is being able to do what the body can do, when it needs to, for things we imagine, for the age we are and the needs of our lives at the moment.” This is a marvelously broad and affirming definition of fitness, though not one I seem able to believe. Tough to cite one’s own words and realize an impotent center to them. (see A New Question Begins, 12-16-12). Much more regular in my thoughts are the monolithic tropes of the overculture, particularly with respect to feminine form. “Being fit” in my head usually means

• wearing size 10 or smaller clothing
• having slim to no hips, thin thighs, absolutely flat stomach
• running a marathon or being a tri-athlete
• never eating sweets, pizza, or fatty foods

 Then I got interested in Crossfit, though not enough to actually pursue their “plan” or “product” myself. Yet. For now, I’m living vicariously through my trainer, who discovered this elite fitness community about 6 months ago. (See www.crossfit.com). The site offers an introductory article to introduce their mission in the world, entitled “What is Fitness?” which informs this entire post.

There, Crossfit suggests three basic standards to fitness. The first includes ten recognized, general physical skills: cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. “You are as fit as you are competent in each of these ten skills,” they write. They also observe that some training improves competence through organic changes in the body (endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility) while others improve through practice, changes in the nervous system (coordination, agility, balance, accuracy). “Power and speed are adaptations of both training and practice.” The symmetrical balance of body and ‘mind’ here pleases my sense of proportion. Makes sense that fitness should have a good balance of both physical and mental acuity.

The second fitness standard marks a high bar: performing well at any and every task imaginable. Instead of the ever-increasing achievements of weight or distance, this standard shows a pragmatic turn. Does your level of fitness allow you to perform what you need to perform, in any given setting? This kind of standard is particularly appropriate for firemen (women), policemen (women), and any who face physical challenges in their profession/job. Crossfit is particularly aimed—or at least well-suited—to these populations, as a matter of fact.

The third fitness standard governs (and assesses) performance in all three pathways of energy for human action—phosphagen pathway, glycolytic pathway and the oxidative pathway. The first dominates the highest-powered activities, those that last 10 seconds or less; the second (glycolytic) dominates moderate-powered activities, those that last up to several minutes; and the third (oxidative) dominates low-powered activities, those that last in excess of several minutes. The task is to develop and attend to all three pathways of energy for human action. Just learning about them, I can already confess that I’m really comfortable with the third, oxidative, pathway, as seen by my love of long-distance running. I’m less comfortable with—but can tolerate—those things that last less than 10 seconds. It’s that middle ground, the glycolytic pathway, that brings fear for me. Why? I have no idea.

Another schema in which Crossfit defines fitness lies in a continuum between Sickness, Wellness, and Fitness. In this frame, “fitness is and should be ‘super-wellness.’” I find this schema quite useful, particularly as our rather polemical culture can create “fitness junkies” whose obsession with their bodies, physical fitness, and presentation of form offers little to them (or others) in terms of health or wellness. Particularly for women, the media-saturated ideal of “feminine fitness” poses images and behaviors decidedly sick: anorexic, boyish-boney, even starved softness with shadowed make-up. In the CrossFit world, wellness integrates medical science without being enslaved by it. Wellness is based on measurements of blood pressure, body fat, bone density, triglycerides, good/bad cholesterol, flexibility, muscle mass, etc.  Sickness can address everything from excessive bodyfat to low bone density to mental illness (depression, etc.), with actions to be taken toward wellness before “super-wellness” or “fitness.” Fitness simply becomes wellness magnified, deepened, intensified.

Implementation of this “definition” of fitness attends to metabolic conditioning or “cardio” work, interval training, gymnastics, weightlifting, throwing, nutrition, and sport.  The hierarchy begins with nutrition, however, only ending with sport, or “a fantastic atmosphere of competition and mastery.”

When I return to the notions of ‘fitness’ that usually float like pixies in my head,

• wearing size 10 or smaller clothing
• having slim to no hips, thin thighs, absolutely flat stomach
• running a marathon or being a tri-athlete
• never eating sweets, pizza, or fatty foods

I smile with relief at the Crossfit mission and wisdom, even if it feels a bit like Everest from where most in the American scene live. A notion of fitness rooted in pragmatic performance, particularly one connected to one’s life/profession, how one needs to spend time in any given day, is quite satisfying. Honorable, somehow. I’m beginning to pay attention to how my profession naturally predisposes me to certain kinds of body experiences, which continue to be necessary, for now, but can become a choice too.

Mostly, this intensely articulate definition and implementation of fitness frees me from some of the overculture’s obsessions I’ve been internalizing for a long time. Size of clothing matters little. Wearing slightly baggier jeans has loosened and strengthened awareness in my belly, my womb, which I have needed for a long while. Having hip strength, even a repository of abdominal fat that stores energy for core-strength use, is a good thing for performing many tasks I might previously have thought impossible. Running long distances offers one kind of performance, but fitness can express itself in multiple ways. This makes the path to fitness so much more interesting and exploratory, which is marvelous too. For good or ill, I’ve also gotten a little less self-incriminating about food. I’ve noted my weight is up since I’ve focused on strength-training and development of upper-body musculature.  I also know, for a season, that the weight-gain may actually be necessary for what I’m trying to learn, to do. For once, my weight is a pragmatic portion of a larger picture about what my goals are, what I might want to explore, to learn. It does not define or condemn, but instead, contributes its part alongside other factors.

Come to think of it, I feel a bit more like a sculptor of form and less an impotent lump of clay shaped only by my impulses or outer culture. Not only does it feel good to have some agency in this morass we call feminine fitness, it’s incredibly empowering to name a goal (even if it still feels impossible to me!) and find relationships and a fitness community in which such things are mountains needing to be climbed, desiring to be climbed,…and simply a matter of time, training, and tenacity.

“Fitness is being able to do what the body can do, when it needs to, for things we imagine, for the age we are and the needs of our lives at the moment.” For now, I want to companion my body, with other wisdom-folks, into this exploration of upper-body strength, without an obsession or all-costs force-of-will, but with an impish smile and intention to be free—to act, to play, to grow.

Seeing the 'Personal' in Personal Training

A new, if obvious, angle into personal training has emerged this week ‘between holidays’ and amidst travel to visit family. The Personal.

I have begun my Pull-up Virgin Workout journal, a large-ish calendar I had purchased for some bodywork musing and planning, and have made a couple entries about my workouts every other day. The workout is pretty straight-forward, actually, and only requires doing it. Like most things, however, it takes all kinds of permutations to get to actually doing it instead of just thinking about it. But after a long day of rambling, then napping, with little else ahead for the evening, I finally got to it. I cleared the downstairs of obstructing furniture—coffee table, ottoman, etc.—and took my time with the calisthenic-esque workout listed (at end of this post). If one uses parts of the floor covered by furniture, there's less chance of being on floor where dogs (etc.) have been!

Thing One. One of the reasons I do so little body-movement or work-out things at home is the never-ending barrage of self-critique that comes. It's volatile and vitriolic, for whatever reason. Where did I learn to dislike my own form so very much? I can distract myself at the gym—there are all kinds of people around—and I can even deaden some of the internal noise with my iPod—depending upon the mood, using either oral-teachings from SoundsTrue or tunes of some kind. But at home, with all my familiar comforts and distractions, I find it hard to stay at anything challenging, requiring bodily stamina. I find it hard not to listen, eventually believe what my inner-demons have learned to spout about myself. Which then made me realize just how very much my personal trainer, N, keeps me talking and listening while I move, while she makes sure I don’t hurt myself. J Amongst all kinds of other benefits, I think I’ve become as strong, dare I say as fit as I am because I’ve been mentally distracted by conversations I value while my body moves. Keep the mind busy and the body may just have a chance to say something in its own ‘tongue,’ so to speak.

I need to continue to deepen my ability to listen too, as I discovered the next day. The entire workout felt good, actually. I observed the voices as they whined, encouraging them to whimper into some peace and quiet of just moving. I allowed the shortness of breath to be what it was, resting when I needed to amidst the sets of 15, knowing it was more important to simply complete the movements with good form, not worrying about timing or pace, just yet.  And I felt the pleasure that always comes when an over-achiever reaches her numerical goals, even surpassing them to 16 reps, “because my birthday is day 16” my mind rationalized.

But then I get out of the driver’s seat at  the Minnesota History Museum the next day and ‘toink!’ went my back. Lower back, to be specific. I probably overdid it, again without knowing it. It relaxed over the course of the next hour and it all seems fine. Never debilitating into no-movement-flat-on-the-bed kind of space, but a small sign that I had apparently missed something my body had said. So…I need to continue to deepen the ability to listen. Why does that always seem so elusive to me!? How do you listen for the quiet speech when the ugly voices are so strident?

But the new thing, the new awareness that is making me smile, is simply how personal personal training needs to be. For me, at least. I have new appreciation for how social it is, how connective it can be for a woman such as myself. It’s a relational thing, actually, with body-benefits. And it’s a body-thing, with learnings internal and external. Now that I know that, a new task is to learn how to integrate the simple body-movements of some basic-fitness into my work-a-day world, companioning myself as well as being companioned by a trainer. A bit in the morning, on my own, can only increase my strength-training skills and my ability to body-listen, which should also help the eventual familiarity with the pull-up bar in the end.

So be it. Oh, and here’s the Pull-Up Virgin’s Work-out, for now:

Set One

15 Superman-flight, hands-fee push-ups

15 wide-pulls with bands, squat form for leg-strengthening

Set Two

15 1-2-3 Superman-flights, 1-2-3 hold hands-free push-ups

15 quick-row, 1-2-3 hold wide-pulls with band, squat form

Set Three (had to skip; no easily identifiable weights)

Russian twists with weights—floor, floor, up 1-2-3

Russian quick-twists with weights

Instead:

Leg-lifts with abduction movements

Downward Facing Dog without touching the floor—15x

Set Four:

15 second-step lunge-raises, off-angle for hip-flexor stretch

15 lunges with core-twist, 15/side

Set Five:

15 each-side, Side-arm planks, arm raise and floor-touch

15 each-side, hip-movement elbow-planks

The Arrival of the Power-Tower

It became real last night. 

We dragged the large, thin box into the dining room from its ‘hidden’ place in the garage. (How does one hide a large piece of athletic equipment in a two-person family?) B surprised me by suggesting we put it on the tile-surface right there by the stairs, where I’d have regular access (and obvious reminder) of my new quest. The ‘power-tower’ for upper-body strength training. Yikes! We’re actually creating space in both our lives for me to do this one simple thing: a pull-up. I felt anxiety and potential embarrassment in the pit of my stomach. I still don’t really think I can do this.

As I’ve stated before, this is clearly not about a pull-up. But what, then?

I’ve mused on this question all week, listing potential topics I could muse ‘aloud’ about here… The preparation (or lack thereof) of young girls to love their own bodies, no matter the shape/size. Deeper acceptance of my own large-ish build—fit, but ‘big-boned,’ we always used to say when I was distraught about my body’s lack of conformity to the dainty norms of high school. What ‘fitness’ actually means. The business and relational life of ‘personal training.’ The vast realms of kinesthetic technique alongside the body’s rather mysterious or mystical ‘fingerprint of knowing,’ distinctly configured for each of us. Lots and lots of ideas and associations have been swirling about.

Last night was not about any of those, though. B and I drove to one of our favorite ‘date’ places for an early Christmas dinner, having set aside Saturday night as ‘our’ celebration of the holiday. Given the pastoral and familial dimensions of such things, we’ve learned to (often surreptiously) protect one evening before the ‘real’ holiday in order to enjoy one another, exchange gifts, dream a bit about our shared life in the year to come. As I turned the car onto the main road, I felt this pinch of anxiety deep in my gut…alongside something that felt new.

“I’m nervous,” I said aloud.

“Nervous about what?” he asked.

“I still don’t think I can do this. The whole pull-up thing. The thing we’ve now invested money in together.”

“Sure you can. N said you were this close…” squinting his voice and placing his thumb and finger a hairbreadth apart from one another.

“She’s just being nice,” I said. “You know, like we never believe one another, claiming ‘You’re biased.’? She’s just being nice.”

“Well, out of the three of us, she’d know more than either you or me.” he said, with a smile.

I laughed, consigning him the point. The feeling of impossibility—that pinch that comes into articulation as anxiety—lessened a bit, and I found myself lighter, smiling. Getting a big ol’ Christmas present, of substantial size/cost, proved once again that where one’s treasure goes, so does one’s heart. I have more heart about this process than I did yesterday morning. Impossibility—lessened, admittedly—alongside determination and heart. Not bad.

And I do acknowledge stretching in the bathroom just yesterday morning, awaiting the water to warm up before entering the shower. I startled. As I had raised my arms, I noticed that I actually had upper body muscles. I mean, like, pronounced ones, if small or slight, fitting. A lilt to the bicep. An angle to the neck and shoulder, with back muscles appearing over the horizon of the collar bone. “Shit,” I said quietly. “I think I have new muscles.” Brian laughed aloud, “Well, of course, beautiful.”

Beautiful, indeed.