Month: November 2015

fitness

No cartwheels for you!

Sam B7 Comments

cw

I’ve written before about dangerous sports and gender and I’ve been thinking about it again recently in the context of the “play gap.” Women get less activity than men but the gender gap in sports participation and in time for active play begins when children are young.

Insofar as cartwheels are more of a girl thing the latest move to ban them on the schoolyard won’t help girls keep up with the boys in terms of amount of time for play.

This fall Runnymede Junior and Senior Public School in Toronto caused a controversy by banning cartwheels.

In the Globe and Mail Naomi Buck writes: “Following umbrellas, hard balls and patches of ice, yet another hazard has presented itself on the playground of an elementary school in midtown Toronto. The cartwheel, not generally considered a thing of peril, has been banned, together with the entire family of activities it belongs to, commonly known as gymnastics. The powers that be have determined that these risky contortions of young bodies and outright defiance of the laws of gravity have no place on the school playground.” See What’s the point of recess with no fun?

But it wasn’t just cartwheels, the ban also included somersaults, handstands and gymnastics of any sort, including backflips. Or none of those things. According to the Toronto Star piece on the new policies it was only “advanced gymnastics moves” that were forbidden. It’s not clear what this means. I don’t know about you but it’s not clear to me what counts as an advanced gymnastics or cheerleading move.

Lest you think this is just a North American phenomena, a British school also banned cartwheels and handstands this summer.

I’m not going to argue there’s no danger in cartwheels. I hurt my own shoulder a couple of years ago doing a badly executed Aikido roll. I will argue that the kinds of injuries children sustain doing cartwheels mostly heal quickly. Also, I think, there’s value in doing dangerous things.

Better cartwheels than other kinds of risktaking, no?

If you’re interested in the value of dangerous sports for children, read “Children and Dangerous Sport and Recreation” in the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport Volume 34, Issue 2, 2007 by J.S. Russell.

It’s behind a journal pay wall so you won’t be able to read it unless you have access to a university library. (Insert rant about the need for open access publishing here.) But here’s a sample of Russell’s exploration of a view he dubs the “uncommon sense view.”

The uncommon sense view “asserts that at a certain point in child development physical risks should be tolerated, and children’s choices (and adults’ choices on their behalf) to engage them should frequently be respected, even if the risks of such activities are greater than necessary to promote the developmental goods sought by the common sense view—and thus represent unnecessary threats to the goods that the common sense view aims at securing. I call this “the uncommon sense view” because although I think it is pretty obviously correct, it would appear to take uncommon philosophical sense to recognize it, for the most prominent official and philosophical positions about obligations to raise and care for children oppose it in principle. The uncommon sense view, however, is reflected widely in our institutions and practices of children’s sport and recreation. Consider popular but risky young persons’ sports and recreations such as American football, rugby, horse jumping, gymnastics, cheerleading, freestyle skiing, skateboarding, wakeboarding, hockey, diving, motocross, and the like.”

Here’s an advanced and a basic cartwheel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN93YuWDRxw

 

 

 

 

fitness

New Research on Sitting: Relax! It’s Not So Bad After All

Tracy I12 Comments

There is new research on sitting and the news is that the research that said it would kill us is wrong. Here it is:

The study, from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, examined 3,720 men and 1,412 women who didn’t have heart disease and were part of a long-term U.K. health study.

The participants had provided info about how long they spent sitting each week — while they were at work, during leisure time, or when they were watching television — during the late 1990s. They were then followed for 16 years to see what happened.

The researchers found no evidence that sitting, whether at home or at work, is tied to an increased risk of dying.

The study is published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

There are few bits of everyday rhetoric that set my teeth on edge more than “sitting is the new smoking” or “chairs are evil.” Why? Because whatever the research on prolonged sitting (and the research that it’s bad for us has now been called into question. See “Sitting All Day Long May Not Be a Death Sentence after All), it is decidely not the new smoking. And whatever health issues chair design may contribute to, which, I say again, have now been cast in a more dubious light (see “Couch Potatoes Rejoice: Sitting for Long Periods is NOT Bad for Your Health, Study Says“), they may be many things but they are not evil.

The Nazis are evil. Serial killers are evil. Dr. Evil is evil.

But chairs? Let’s not moralize them, please. They may not be for everyone, but for some people, they’re the best bet for mobility and getting around in the world. For others they are an essential piece of furniture or equipment. Calling them an evil fails to recognize that being able to choose whether to sit, stand, or walk is itself ableist privilege.

And the analogy with smoking also has to go. Smoking is conclusively bad for your health. And while you might feel free to indulge if that’s what you want to do — I don’t believe we are obligated to look after our health — it is also bad for the health of the people around you. It’s bad for the health of the planet. I do think we have some responsibilities towards others and the planet. Sitting does none of these harmful things. Therefore, it is not the new smoking.

It’s also not clear that there just one solution that’s best for everyone. Yet the devotees of the research that says sitting is bad for our health have latched onto it with almost religious fervour (hence, the language of “evil”). There’s always an air of self-righteousness around the pronouncement that sitting is bad for you — “you don’t sit all day, do you?” is asked in about the same way as food purists scornfully ask, “you don’t drink juice, do you?”  That’s the one that prompted me to write “Why Food Is Beyond Good and Evil” over two years ago.

Anyway, call me overly sensitive, but the whole evangelical line about sitting has just never felt quite right to me. One reason is that, and I grant you this is anecdotal, though I do like to get up and stretch and walk around, I simply cannot imagine standing all day at a desk.  I did a weekend long stint at the Ontario Universities’ Fair at the end of September, standing on my feet for eight hours a day, three days in a row. By the end of the first day my feet were on fire and my lower back was killing me.  Maybe it’s a great alternative for some people, but I think a lot of cashiers and people in retail and people who spend a lot of time at trade shows standing in more or less the same place might have a different opinion, indeed, might welcome a place to rest their weary bones throughout the day.

And it’s not clear anyway that standing is any better for you than sitting according to “Sitting down at work is no worse for you than standing up, study claims.”  This article reports findings from the same University of Exeter study, and questions the health benefits of sit-stand work stations:

Sitting down is no worse for you than standing up as long as you take regular exercise, a study has claimed, casting doubt on the health benefits of sit-stand work stations.

Note that it also calls into doubt the claim about “sedentary athletes.” These are athletes who are basically couch-bound when they are not working out. The alarming news in the anti-sitting camp was that these people cannot reverse the alleged ill-health effects of sitting even if they’re super-active. The new finding is that with regular exercise you might just be okay, even if you sit a lot, or stand a lot.

Since “[t]he research found there was no influence on mortality risk for participants from sitting at work, during leisure time or watching television,” we can all relax a bit about the whole sitting-will-kill-you scare.

Yes, they still recommend breaking it up with some walking around every 30 minutes or so if you can. It’s good to stretch and change up your position from time to time if you can. But the castrophizing about the impact of sitting on our lifespan is simply not well-supported by the research.

And it moralizes something that for one thing is relaxing and for another is essential in the lives of many people. I’m not saying that there aren’t reasons for those who can to move around, to switch it up, to walk away from their desks if they work sitting in an office.

But to couch (yes, I know) all of that in moralistic language the makes chairs into enemies and sitting into something akin to a public health offense is just resorting to a moralized rhetoric that feels designed to shame people who sit.

No one is saying someone who chooses not to use chairs, or who prefers not to sit, or who experiences aches and pains and discomfort from prolonged sitting (and has alternatives available to them) has to sit. By all means, stand all day of that’s comfortable or necessary given your body. But I hope this new research makes people back off of the intensity of the conviction a bit. It’s not like smoking and chairs are not evil.

Tracy sitting in a round red chair, looking happy and content.

ergonomics · family

Furniture free living and the case for active sitting?

Sam B26 Comments

rocksI’ve been thinking lots about furniture since I moved to a standing desk. I’m interested in how furniture shapes and contains the way we live our lives. It’s the sort of thing that seems neutral but isn’t. Assumptions about the ideal body, about ability, and about relationships shape our furniture choices.  But I confess it’s not just the standing desk that got me thinking in this direction.

When these stone pillows came through my newsfeed from the aptly named page “this is why I’m broke,” I confess to making that “squee” noise. Want!

I’m attracted to multi-purpose rooms,  buying less stuff that’s inevitably landfill bound, flexible housing arrangements, active sitting, and seeing how families around the world live and what their dwellings look like.

Our furniture is so specialized. There are desks for working, kitchen tables for casual meals, dining room tables (that get their own rarely used room) for formal meals, and large beds that say “this is the room in which you sleep” in a way that a rollable mat or futon does not). We’re not very flexible about it all. Heaven forbid you try to work at the dining room table or sit with your laptop in bed. Each activity has its own place, its own thing, and so we buy more stuff and cram it into ever larger homes.

If we’re friends on Facebook you know I have a bit of a soft spot for tiny houses. Mostly that’s because I live in a crowded, messy house full of teenagers and their stuff. Minimalism is a bit of fantasy. I also have a love of co-housing, intentional communities, shared cars, a communal library and living room, shared sporting stuff, and a roster for cooking meals.

It’s clear that most people don’t see things my way. Single family homes are just getting bigger and bigger and they’re filled with more and more individually owned, non-shared stuff.

In the United States, there are 300,000 items in the average American home (LA Times), the average size of the American home has nearly tripled in size over the past 50 years (NPR) and  still, 1 out of every 10 Americans rent offsite storage—the fastest growing segment of the commercial real estate industry over the past four decades. (New York Times Magazine). For more on this theme, see here.

What’s with all this stuff? I confess that when I first saw special pillows for different sex positions I thought “wow, that’s cool” but even sex positive me is still frugal me and I thought couldn’t you just scrunch up a regular pillow? Again does each activity have to have its own thing? (Okay, the sex pillows are cool. But still. Landfill? Pass them on to the grandchildren?)

But I’m way off track now. Back to chairs. Or at least back to furniture. Returning to the fitness angle.

I started thinking about furniture first when we were a young family, with small kids. And we were being marketed cribs, and toddler beds, and child size beds (all for people who we knew would be 6 ft or more in 16 years). I confess that as a parent of young children I had tastes and parenting preferences that ran against the grain. We didn’t buy swings, high chairs, and cribs. I had visions of them all ending in landfill and mostly our children were happiest co-sitting, co-sleeping etc with us. We had slings rather than automatic swings and our active squirmy children wouldn’t stay in high chairs or cribs anyway. They usually, when young, slept with us. When slightly older, slept on futons or mattresses on our floor, graduating to their own rooms at a slightly more advanced age than the typical North American child.

I might have been a bit preachy about it all and for that, I’m sorry. There are lots of different ways to be a good parent. Breast feeding and co-sleeping suited us. Luckily I didn’t blog then so there’s no self-righteous me coming back to haunt this blog. Phew.

And while we were definitely minimalist when it came to kid furniture, we still bought bookshelves, tables, sofas and chairs. We never took the big step of going furniture free. It never even occurred to me back then in the days before electronic book and music storage. It was the era of giant, wide TV screens that definitely required furniture.

Here’s this piece on parenting without furniture, which I loved, even if they went to extremes with it.

Why did this family choose to go furniture free?

Here’s the dad speaking:

As a biomechanist, I understand the relationship between musculoskeletal function and the immune system, bone robusticity (density and shape), and functions like digestion and breathing. Having furniture isn’t an option for us, in the same way a cupboard full of junk food isn’t an option for many others. Furniture creates a development-crippling environment in that the stuff literally shapes our body, both in the now and in the future. – See more at: http://slowmama.com/parenting-children/parenting-against-the-grain-going-furniture-free/#sthash.HYxNuezQ.dpuf

Here’s one room in their house:

Love it!

My point is that I’ve thinking about the politics of the family (see written work on this here) and about furniture for awhile. Lately it’s been my sore back that’s got me thinking about furniture design. And that’s been nudged along by all the health worries about sitting.

We all know the mantra, “Move more. Sit less.” See Chairs are evil (once again).

Yes, well, easier said than done. Even for me whose back hurts if I sit for very long at all.

We sit at desks all day, drive home in cars, and then sit at the dinner table and then sit on sofas at night. Hard not to sit though I’ve been bucking the trend and eating standing up if it’s just me alone. See It’s okay to eat while standing.

But that’s not comfy for Netflix watching. Or reading.

And surely all chairs aren’t evil. They’ve been around for awhile right? People all over the world use them don’t they?

(Turns out the answers to these questions are “no” and no.”)

See The chair conspiracy!

According to Colin McSwiggen, recent studies and reporting about sitting describe the problem in ways that mislead. He writes, “They make it look like the problem is just that we sit too much. The real problem is that sitting, in our society, usually means putting your body in a raised seat with back support — a chair. Sitting wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t sit on things that are bad for us.”

But you might wonder, what’s new about this? Weren’t there always chairs? How are we just learning now that they’re bad?

First, chairs aren’t universal. In lots of places people engage in what erognomics types call “active sitting.” Squatting, sitting cross legged, leaning….all of these postures are a bit like sitting but they aren’t bad for you the way chair sitting is. Indeed, if McSwiggen is right we should swap slogans. It’s not sitting that’s the new smoking. Rather, it’s chairs that are the new evil. New? Yes.

Second, according to McSwiggen’s fascinating history of the chair,Against Chairs, they’re also a relatively new thing. he dates the mass adoption of chairs to the Industrial Revolution.

“Suddenly chairs were being made cheaply in factories and more people could afford to sit like the rich. At the same time, labor was being sedentarized: as workers moved en masse from agriculture to factories and offices, laborers spent more and more time sitting in those newly mass-producible chairs. As usual, class aspirations determined what people bought: body-conscious innovations like patent chairs, which were adjustable, and rocking chairs, which encouraged movement, sadly received only marginal acceptance from the wealthy and saw limited use.

And so it was that from the turn of the twentieth century on, chairs had society in their clutches.”

Third, you might be tempted to think the answer lies in a better chair. But it’s not clear what a good chair would even be. You’ve all seen the many variations: the kneeling chair, the stability ball as chair, the wobbly stool as chair..to list just some examples.

Here’s McSwiggen again on the range of chairs out there:

“No one even knows what a “good” chair would have to do, hypothetically, let alone how to make one. Some ergonomists have argued that the spine should be allowed to round forward and down in a C-shaped position to prevent muscular strain, but this pressurizes the internal organs and can cause spinal discs to rupture over time. Others advocate for lumbar support, but the forced convexity that this creates is not much better in the short run and can be worse in the long: it weakens the musculature of the lumbar region, increasing the likelihood of the very injuries it’s meant to prevent. There are similar debates over seat height, angle and depth; head, foot and arm support; and padding.

Galen Cranz, a sociologist of architecture and perhaps the world’s preeminent chair scholar, has called ergonomics “confused and even silly.” For designers without a scientific background, it’s a clusterfuck.”

Children know how to sit comfortably without chairs. They squat and do it very well.

In traditional societies, without so many chairs, adults can do this too. (And don’t get me started on toilets. Right Shannon?)

Or you sit cross legged or kneel.

My point is that we have choices. It’s not just sitting too much. It’s how we sit. Active sitting, with lots of movement, is better for us. I’m not quite buying the whole “chair conspiracy” but I do think, for a whole host of reasons, we’d be better off with less furniture.

Could you sleep in a bed like this?

Would you like modular floor pillows as a sofa?

How about having dinner like this?

How about you? Could you live without furniture? Give up all the chairs and sofas?

fitness

Ride the bike rally with the feminist fitness bloggers?

Sam B6 Comments

If you’ve been following the blog for awhile you likely know that I’ve been riding the Toronto to Montreal Bike Rally to raise money for the Toronto People with Aids Foundation.

“Every July for the past 17 years more than 300 Riders and Crew have been departing from Toronto on a 6-day, 600 km journey to Montréal for PWA’s Friends For Life Bike Rally. This annual fundraising event has raised more than $14 million dollars and is the sustaining fundraiser for the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation (PWA). The funds raised through the Bike Rally enable PWA to provide critical services and support to individuals living with HIV/AIDS in Toronto.”

Year 1 was me and my friend David.

df

Year 2 was me and my friend Susan.

susanandme

Year 3 will be me and David and Susan and Nat and Catherine and Sarah (fingers crossed). Lots of feminist fitness bloggers!

Want to ride with us? The good news is that you don’t have to commit to the entire 6 day ride. This year there is a one day option. Find out more here. You can ride the inaugural 1-Day, 108 km pilot Ride from Toronto to Port Hope.

Just 108 km! July 24, 2016.

Or you could just sponsor me instead. You can do that here, https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/FundraisingPage.aspx?registrationID=3017487&langPref=en-CA#&panel1-1.

 

Weekends with Womack

Industry and Nature side by side: urban kayaking in Adelaide

catherine w2 Comments

Kayaking is an activity you can enjoy just about anywhere there’s water. Of course you have to pay attention to features like tide, current and wind patterns, the topography of the area, bigger boat traffic, and also any natural predators or dangerous plants or animals. For instance, I went to the beach Saturday at Semaphor Beach in Adelaide, South Australia, with friends, when I encountered this sign:

semaphor

Snakes? There are SNAKES here at the beach? What am I supposed to do about this?

I was told that snakes can hang out in the dunes, so don’t go walking there. Okay, I guarantee I won’t. And I didn’t. And my beach experience was snake-free. Yay.

Sunday I had a reserved a kayak with Adventure Kayaking SA (South Australia), pretty much the only outfit I could find that rents kayaks at a launch site relatively close to downtown Adelaide. They are great—they rent both kayaks and SUPs, offer instruction and tours, and their staff are knowledgeable and friendly. Here is their facebook page if you’re in the area.

To get to the launch spot I had to drive basically through the Port of Adelaide, which looks like a port area—lots of warehouses, shipping containers and cranes, and other big industrial structures. Then, turning onto Garden Island Road, I saw a large power plant, with this sign:

Screen Shot 2015-11-08 at 9.50.46 PM

“Inlet temperatures may exceed safe swimming limits.” That made me wonder just what the melting point of my kayak is— not information I had previously considered salient, but there you go.

Driving on, I stopped and took this picture of what was behind me.

road2

I was starting to get the feeling that the kayaking place was right next to a nuclear testing site. But on I drove. And I arrived to see a nice-looking park with the kayaks all set up and ready to go. Whew.

The Adventure Kayaking SA folks were able to provide me with everything I needed as a slightly more experienced kayaker. I got a better fitting (more snug, with narrower cockpit) boat, dry bag, better paddle, and no need to spend time on instruction once they determined I knew what I was up to. They just made suggestions on where to go, and helped me launch. And I was off!

There are two big draws to this area for kayakers. One is that you get to kayak in a dolphin sanctuary. You’re not allowed to approach them, but they end up swimming near you anyway—they’re smart and friendly and playful. I took a ton of pictures, but it turns out it’s rather hard to get a good picture of a dolphin 1) with your phone; 2) from your boat; and 3) while the dolphins are above the surface or doing something interesting. This was the best I got, which was actually much closer than it looks here:

dolphins

On the facebook page for the kayak place, they have a lot better photos. This one was taken with a SUP group that was out when I was there. You can actually see them:

sup-dolphins

The area where we saw the dolphins is bordered on one side by a mangrove swamp, which looks like this:

mangroves

If you continue down the inlet, however, you get to this:

barriers

Those are barriers across the inlet keeping you from that power plant, I mentioned. Not able to stop myself, I did put my hand in the water, which was warm, but not the temperature implied by the sign. Whew again.   Here’s another shot of the mangroves plus powerlines.

powerlines-boat

The other draw for boaters in this area is the Ships Graveyard.  In the larger area, about 40 abandoned remains of ships are sunk or partially sunk in shallow waters. I got to paddle right up to a few of them. Here’s a view of one wreck:

wreck1

You can actually go all the way around it—here it is, in its rusty beauty, from the other side, viewed from the bow of my boat:

wreck2

Again, we ran into barriers not much further along, as that power plant takes up a lot of space. However, there was enough nature and water to keep me happy for a few hours on a very sunny and hot spring day (33 C/91 F).

Somehow I keep experiencing (and posting about) the urban or industrial outdoors. What’s so great about it? I mean, isn’t it much nicer to find some more pristine natural area like here:

pristine1

Or here:

pristine2

Yes, these are gorgeous, travelogue-like images of what being outdoorsy means. Trips like these are great, where you’re far away from life and civilization. But—we don’t always have the time, the money, the access, the organization or logistics to go far away. We do, however, often have the time and access to natural spots near our own backyards.

My kayak instructor Spencer talked to us about the local adventures he sets up for himself and friends. His trips often take place less than 20 miles from where he lives, but involve challenges of elements—wind, tide, temperature, rain, snow, maybe even dark of night—in places he knows very well. I like that idea—it’s a good one to keep in mind when you need a quick or cheap or easy jaunt to sweep out the everyday cobwebs, just in time to return home to dinner.

My next local cheap urban-y outing will be when I return to Sydney in late November. My plans are to swim in as many of their tidal sea baths in the area as I possibly can. Some of them are here and they are beautiful. I doubt I’ll get to all 44 listed here but will report back on my progress. In the meantime, readers, where have you gone close to home that gave you nature plus urban/industry experiences?

Sat with Nat

getting outside while the getting’s good

natalieh (she/her)11 Comments

wpid-IMG_87411478859263.jpegIt’s November in Canada and that usually means it’s cold, like REALLY cold, but this year it has been warm, REALLY warm, like 20C warm. I’m super pumped to get out on my bike this weekend while the getting is good. Any day now the temperature could take the plunge so I’m looking forward to a ride with friends Sunday. This morning I’m heading out for my long, slow distance run.

I had a good running week with hills on Monday and a pace run on Thursday that was my fastest pace since 2011. I’ve not much data on my runs but I hang consistently around the same pace so a little drop like Thursday in my time made me pretty happy. I need a longer route to get my 30 minutes in and that felt pretty good.

Switching to Daylight Saving Time has really messed with my sleep schedule, old people and babies hate the time change I hear 🙂

One thing I’ve noticed as it gets occasionally colder is I’m much stiffer in the morning, I mean painfully limping kind of stiff but by the time I’m ready to walk to work the worst has subsided. It’s weird to be so slow getting going in the morning. I was the twenty year old who could roll out of bed shit, shower, shave and be out the door in about twenty minutes. Now I need a good hour of coffee before I can even think about a shower.

I’m thinking hard about how to stay active over the cold months when I’d rather be under a blanket with a variety of hot beverages. The indoor trainer and running outside are part of that but I may join a different gym, still thinking on that. If you live on the part of the globe that’s getting colder what are you doing to keep moving?

cycling · fitness

Proper Bike Fit. . .Because You Are Worth It

Susan Tarshis11 Comments

Remember that old chestnut? “Because you are worth it”

Back in my day, when people still watched television and you couldn’t avoid commercials, a $13 box of hair colour was touted as the ultimate luxury. It was worth forking out the extra bucks every month to hide the grey or spice up your look or whatever it was you were supposed to be doing. Certainly, the luscious, vibrant locks on that beautiful actress were desirable. My hair never looked like that, no matter what I did.

But this post isn’t about hair colouring products or beauty standards. This post is about spending a lot of money on a proper bike fit. I’m just going to put that up front. Road biking is expensive. The bikes are expensive. The gear is expensive. The time is expensive. You need hours of “free” time to do this sport. It’s not accessible to most people as a casual hobby. Like horseback riding, you are either in the business of it and doing it for love (putting all your resources to this one passion) or you can access it because of privilege.

So, I know that this post isn’t going to apply to everyone, but I think it’s still worth talking about because a lot of women in fitness/sports issues came up as I was going through the process.

I took up road biking just over a year ago. First, I did it to reach the ridiculous goal of 660 kms in 6 days that is the Friends For Life Bike Rally (see here). On the way to that goal, I kinda decided I really liked it. It was a great sport for my body. It had the potential to be really social or quiet. There is no doubt, it’s cool.

Here is Canada's new Prime Minister on a road bike. It has to be cool.
Here is Canada’s new Prime Minister on a road bike. It has to be cool.

I did realize, however, that as good as this was for my body, I was having some pain issues while on the bike for extended periods. I assumed it was just me. Now that is interesting. I recognize that I came to fitness after around 30 years of thinking I was no good at sports and just “couldn’t” do hard things. I was struggling on the bike with rides over 40 km. Instead of thinking something was going on with my kit, I just thought it was a physical problem with me that I’d have to either work hard to get over or endure. This attitude was not helped by my first bike shop where I bought the bike. The more I asked about fit and other things, the more I realized they were not taking me seriously. They were neither excited about what I was preparing for nor did they offer much help. The fit I received at that time was an eyeball “looks good” sort of thing.

As I continued to learn and talk to more experienced people, I realized that perhaps what I needed to do was take the whole process more seriously. What I mean by that is, if I have the resources, time and energy to do this thing and I really like it, why not do it right? And why not? I’m worth it!

This fit was $150 plus HST. It took 2.5 hours. It involved technology like videos of me with those sticker things on my joints and wireless pressure pads on my seat. Dave, the owner of the Flying Monkey Bike Shop and Coffee Bar (I KNOW! Isn’t that the best thing ever?), assessed the situation and then asked me what my goals were  on the bike. Because I was taking this seriously, I think that helped him to give me the best advice he could. I told him I want first and foremost to do everything I can to ease the pain in my rear and shoulder blade. After that, I’d love to be faster. I wanted to be able to do 100 km rides and keep up with my friends. I wanted joy instead of tears at the end of the ride to Adolphustown next year (it’s 130 kms).

He bought in and we started from the bottom up so to speak. I tried 5 different saddles. Then he nearly drove himself off the deep end trying to adjust the angle with the seat post I had on my bike. I finally said, “what about a different seat post”? He said, “I’m trying to save you some money”. I said, “I’m worth it”. So I have a sexy seat post with infinite increments in which to adjust the saddle angle. He adjusted my cleats and the saddle position and then, we had to consider (cue the music, da, da, daaaaaa) the drop.

Before this year, I had no idea what drop was. It’s the angle of your saddle relative to the top of the handle bars. Mine was pretty shallow because I’m not racing and it’s comfort over style for the most part. I had read enough snark on the internet to know that my handle bar set up was a little dorky. Although looking up at that pic of the PM on his bike, I don’t think his angle it to aggressive either, so perhaps I’m still cool enough. Anyway, Dave told me flat out he wasn’t touching that part of the bike. He wanted me to go away, ride and report back. Once I’ve had all the improvements I can with the new set up, we can consider adjusting the stem of the handle bars.

I was left with the impression that he thought I was a superstar for taking my comfort and fun seriously. I was amused he didn’t believe how old I was (ya, that stuff still gives me a thrill). I did drop quite a bit of money at that store but amortized over the lifetime of my riding this bike, it’s not that bad. Besides. . .I’m worth it!!

Me with my scraggly non Loreal looking hair. But. . .selfies!
Me with my scraggly non Loreal looking hair. But. . .selfies!
body image · fat · fitness

Can we train the shame away? (Guest Post)

meganeeze

MeganSpoiler alert: I don’t think so.

I started hating my arms when I was very young. They were much too big and too jiggly, and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out ways to hide my arms from anyone’s view (while spending a similar amount of time staring at them in the mirror).

Then, sometime during high school, I started lifting weights. At first I didn’t want to do upper body exercises because I thought it might make my arms bigger (perish the thought!). But eventually I got bored with lunges and gave it a try. I cranked out my first “real” pushup, and then five, and then ten, and something started to change. I started appreciating my arms. I even kinda liked them. I don’t think the size of my arms actually changed much. They didn’t look much different either. But they felt different. My experience of them changed. Instead of feeling like frustratingly flabby and unattractive appendages, my arms felt strong and capable of doing cool things. As a nice side benefit, I didn’t mind so much if people saw them, and I spent a lot less time poking at them in the mirror.

A few years later I came across this Jezebel post where blogger Erin Gloria Ryan describes the ways running improved her relationship with her body. The “contempt and animosity” she felt for her body faded as running took her from “worrying [that] a plate of spaghetti would go straight to [her] thighs” to “worrying that it wouldn’t.” Readers wrote to Ryan sharing similar experiences, explaining that “using their bodies in physically demanding ways has helped them appreciate themselves as more than pretty little knickknacks with attached boobs.”

This resonated with my own experiences and got me really excited about exercise, but not for the usual “this new regime is surely going to get me six pack abs in five weeks or less” kind of reason. I got excited (and am still excited) about the power of certain kinds of exercise to change the way we think about, feel, and experience our bodies.

I argued in my MA thesis that certain kinds of exercise can improve our relationships with our bodies when asserting “I love my body” over and over again fails. And cultivating positive bodily experiences through exercise can undercut the unwarranted shame many people—especially women and fat people—feel about their bodies. Since we live in a society where women and fat people are regularly shamed for “publicly flaunting” bodies that—gasp!—take up space, or for “daring” to wear shorts or a bathing suit while having cellulite or stretch marks, this is a huge deal. In fact, it’s the best feminist reason for exercise that I’ve come across.

So, shall we all go out and get pumped and rid ourselves of sexist fat phobic body shame once and for all?

I was pretty optimistic about this once. But now, not so much.

Here’s the thing: body shame is like a weed. It’s stubborn. No matter how agile, graceful, or strong you feel when dancing or running or lifting, it only takes some laughing kids, a snide remark or sideways glance, or bathing suit shopping for shame to return. I recently attended a yoga class where the instructor told us to do extra chaturangas in order to “burn off those chicken wings” as she jiggled her arms suggestively at us; I was so ashamed I contemplated hiding under my mat (would not recommend that class, if you were wondering).

If we think that exercise is good because it helps us get rid of body shame, the apparent response to stubborn shame is to work out more or better. But I don’t think stubborn body shame is a sign that we need to work out harder. I think it’s a sign of the limits of what exercise can do for us.

We aren’t just pretty (or not so pretty) knickknacks, and we aren’t isolated hermits either. (Do contemporary hermits have wifi?) We live in communities that consider women’s bodies and fat bodies disgusting and shameful. Even if we disagree with this (I certainly do), the fact remains that we belong to these communities. And most of us care about our moral standing in our communities; we want to be decent people and we want others to know we are decent. When people see us as shameful, we might feel ashamed because we care about what they think—even if we disagree with their evaluation of us.* In short, stubborn body shame might be a sign that we care about our moral community. And caring about our community is good, even when that community has reprehensibly sexist and fat phobic standards.

I’m still thinking through these things (and would love to hear your thoughts!) but here’s where I’m at today: we can do a lot to improve our own relationships with our bodies through physical activity and engagement in smallish supportive communities like at this blog. And this is marvelous! But our experiences of ourselves are also partly made up within our larger communities, communities that we care about and want to have good standing in, even though those communities have sexist, fat-phobic views about which bodies are shameful. If we really want to do away with unwarranted body shame, then, maybe we need to change our communities, not just our workouts.

*This idea comes from Calhoun, Cheshire. “An Apology for Moral Shame.” Journal of Political Philosophy 12, no. 2 (June 1, 2004): 127–46. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9760.2004.00194.x.

Megan Dean is a PhD student in Philosophy at Georgetown University. She’s interested in thinking critically about the ways we understand and experience our bodies. She’s also interested in watching sci fi, doing whatever exercises make her back feel better, and keeping her balcony garden alive for as long as possible. Her research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Georgetown University. You can check out some of what this support enables her to do at https://georgetown.academia.edu/MeganDean

fitness

New Research Finding! Fat-Shaming and Fat Stigma Don’t Lead to Change in Behavior #tbt

Sam B

An early post on fat shaming and how ineffective it really is…

fitness

Sports Bras, AGAIN

Tracy I19 Comments

Sports bras. We’ve blogged about them a few times already. Way back in the early days, still among our most popular posts (because “nipple,” don’t you know), Sam posted “Padded sports bras and nipple phobia.” She hates padding in general, and hates the reason for it (nipple phobia) even more.

Then I jumped into it, with “The sports bra dilemma.” I want a bra that fits comfortably, doesn’t chafe, and dries quickly. Not so easy to find, especially because most do not dry quickly. Which means that after the triathlon swim, you can pretty much count on a wet bra for the rest of the event.  But that’s a comparatively minor complaint. I reported on a study in which out of 1285 women marathoners who responded to a survey, 75% of them said they’re unhappy with their sports bra. That’s a lot of athletes!

Then Sam: “What’s wrong with sports bras? One more time…” and “Success on the bra front: Oiselle bras reviewed.”  Bra success is a huge deal, worth a whole post about.

So why write about sports bras again? The thing is, we care a lot about sports bras because dealing with bouncing breasts is uncomfortable and sports bras just don’t do the job we’d like them to do a lot of time. And there is no more obvious issue where there is not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution. So we keep the discussion alive.

As does this recent article from Racked, “Why are sports bras so terrrible?”  And more than that, can we expect them to get any better? Well, now that sport clothing manufacturers are starting to realize a phenomenal business opportunity, the answer is: maybe.

The Racked article gives an interesting history of breast support and athletics, noting that sports bras were patented as early as 1906 but never caught on. Then:

Finally, in 1977 — the same year Victoria’s Secret was founded — the sports bra as we know it was invented by Lisa Lindahl and Polly Smith, with the help of designer and runner Hinda Miller. That first sports bra was simply two jockstraps sewn together. It wasn’t just that jockstraps were the right size, they were also the right idea. “We said, what we really need to do is what men have been doing: pull everything close to the body,” Miller later told researchers. They called this new bra the Jockbra, but quickly changed it to Jogbra after store owners in South Carolina deemed the name offensive.

During its first year on the market, Jogbra moved 25,000 units. Two decades later, in 1998, the sports bra industry sold $412 million worth of product. A 2002 study estimated that sports bras accounted for about 6 percent of the then-$4.5 billion bra market. Today, the bra market is worth about $15 billion. Factor in that female participation in sports is increasing every year and athleisure appears to be heretostay, and it’s no wonder that from Lululemon to Under Armour to Victoria’s Secret, brands are turning their attention to sports bras.

There are researchers who study breast motion.  Breasts have no muscle. They’re basically just fat, glands, and connective tissue. If anything keeps them in place at all, it’s skin. And so they bounce around:

Understanding the biomechanics of bouncing is key to understanding how to make it stop, but it’s a field that’s only recently gained traction. And since breast size, placement, and density are different for every woman, researchers need to look at a large sample to get a good idea of what’s going on.

Jenny White from the University of Portsmouth and Julie Steele from the University of Wollongong are two researchers who study breast movement during exercise. Both say that:

there’s a constant battle going on between controlling the bounce and making bras comfortable. You could squash the breasts tightly against the body, but that makes it hard to breathe. The most common complaint, in the long list of ways in which sports bras are painful, is that the straps are too tight, sometimes even causing them to break.

It’s worth noting that wearing the wrong sports bra isn’t just a matter of discomfort or annoyance. Studies have shown that breast discomfort is a leading reason women stop participating in sports. And in extreme cases, an ill-fitting bra can actually do nerve damage. Bra straps generally cross over the brachial plexus, the nerve bundle that sends impulses to and from the arm. Women who wear bras with too-tight straps can damage that bundle, causing pain and numbness.

If breast discomfort, pain, and numbness are driving women away from sport and/or causing them permanent damage, that’s a serious issue.

Steele and White also worry about sizing.  Some surveys have shown that “literally 100 percent of women are wearing the wrong sized bra.” That may seem impossible, but you have to agree that bra sizing is “confusing, imprecise, and variable.”

Research is getting more sophisticated. Soon researchers will be placing tiny sensors on the breasts to gather GPS and acceleration data. This method will give more information about exactly what the breast is doing during activity. They will also allow for “field testing” as opposed to having to be set up in a lab. So that’s coming, and should yield more useful data once the technology is developed.

The racked article provides an interesting commentary on some of the fashion developments in sports bras. More and more, it’s not just athletic clothing manufacturers that are in the sport bra business.

Victoria’s Secret has waged war on “the uniboob” that has come to be associated with the compression-type sports bras. But:

Well guess what, sometimes the uniboob is in fact the best way to reduce breast motion and pain. But women are constantly being told that even their sports bra should be sexy. Styles with spaghetti straps and low V’s and padded cups win out over wide straps and good support. “Women feel like they have to present themselves in the best possible breasted way that will appeal sexually,” says Schultz.

If this sounds familiar, it is. Just a different riff on the “play hard, look cute” theme. Functional fitness wear is one thing, but if it doesn’t also look good, it’s not good enough:

A bra can’t just be a good bra, it also has to be fashionable and womanly. It has to hold the girls nicely, without diminishing their size and shape. And when forced to chose between those two things, bra manufacturers almost invariably chose look over function.

Why would women who are serious about their athletic activity sacrifice comfort for fashion while working out? Do you think men worry about how their jock straps look? No, they just want to contain their man-bits and keep them safe.

The researchers say the same thing: for women to choose it, it has to look good and make them look good. What if the designers came up with the world’s best sports bra?

Something comfortable and supportive and soft and easy to put on and take off. Something that wicks away sweat while providing coverage. Something that doesn’t pinch the shoulders or squeeze the rib cage. But if that sports bra isn’t cute, it wouldn’t matter.

When I look at my collection of sports bras, none of them is particularly “cute.” My Champion compression bras are funky colours, but they’re fairly standard in all other respects. My Under Armor bras offer more support and have padded cups, but they are plain black with greenish-blue trim. I find them comfortable–they don’t pinch or squeeze or chafe and the coverage is good. They even wick away the sweat to some degree, or at least they’re made of a fabric that doesn’t get waterlogged. Despite their lack of cuteness, I bought them anyway.

I wonder sometimes whether the researchers might be wrong about what makes us buy a sports bra. Considering that sports bras are mostly under our clothes anyway, do women really put fashion ahead of function, comfort, and support when choosing what to buy? And even if they did, is it really so hard to design a sports bra that’s stylish and supportive? I mean, despite that the first sports bras were made of jockstraps strung together, they’ve come a long way, haven’t they?

Almost every woman I know who is active on a regular basis has found a sports bra that works for her–the go-to that she favours while the others sit languishing in the drawer, under-used or completed unused. This, in my view, doesn’t set them apart from regular bras, which many of us toss aside as soon as we get in the door at the end of the day.

Maybe it’s just the nature of the task and of the bouncing breast that sports bras will never be perfect. But you have to wonder what the state of bra technology would be today if they were essential sports equipment for men.