Month: May 2016

Guest Post · inclusiveness · training

A morning with Mara Yamauchi – Part Two – Ways to engage more women in sport (Guest post)

kai_morgan3 Comments

I recently attended a Project 500 Networking Day for female sports coaches called: Women in Sport – The next steps.

(Project 500 is an initiative to address the imbalance of female to male coaches in England – you can read more below, or on their website).

A major highlight of the event was the opportunity to hear a presentation by guest speaker Mara Yamauchi about her experiences as a female athlete, and her more recent move into coaching – you can read about it here.

For the second half of her presentation, Mara answered questions, and facilitated a discussion on issues relating to local women’s participation in sport – and “what works” to minimise any such barriers and increase engagement.

Just for clarity, these were personal views and experiences shared by the attendees (all local female sports coaches and volunteers) and do not represent in any way the views of Project 500; or Coaching Hampshire and Active Surrey who organised the event.

Competition and self-esteem

One issue that came up was that of women marathon runners not having other women to train with, and becoming demoralised if they trained with men and couldn’t keep up. A potential solution to this is to use a “garland” running course, so that mixed ability runners can complete the number of loops they wish to in their own time, while still training alongside others for companionship.

We also talked about how some (although by no means all) women dislike competition, and can benefit more from process goals, as opposed to outcome goals. These might include consistency of training, posture, recovery periods and so on.

Technology – help or hindrance?

We also talked about technology, as a mixed blessing. Mara expressed concerns that she sees a lot of runners get over-fixated on their GPS watches and other devices, and believe that they are the key to better performance. Whereas in fact, in Mara’s view, nothing beats good old-fashioned hard training 🙂

Mara also made the point that monitoring your speed and distance are not the be-all and end-all in training. In fact, things like using different terrains, and a mix of speed and recovery can be very effective training methods.

Another crucial skill is learning to be aware of and judge your own effort, and know how it feels to be at different intensities. As one participant explained it, At 50% you can still get your words out. At 90% you can’t!

For all these reasons, Mara sometimes just advises her athletes to leave their watches and other gadgets at home. We agreed that it was ironic that running is such a simple sport in itself – but people have become so very hung-up on their kit and technology these days.

Technology and gender . . . ?

Technology looks set to increase in importance. It’s very visible in the new UK Government’s Sports Strategy: Sporting Future: A New Strategy for an Active Nation, as an area to take forward:

Wearable technology which encourages people to be more physically active through quantifying their activity or competition and websites that enable simpler access to facilities have already transformed how people engage in sport and physical activity.

The increasing use of technology is one of the strongest examples of how meeting the needs and the demands of consumers can drive up levels of activity. Apps like MapMyRun and Strava and wearable technology like Fitbit and Jawbone have made participants in sport far more aware of what activity they have done, and introduced competition with both other people and themselves, for those that derive motivation that way. The ability of these apps and devices to capture data and encourage increased levels of activity will define the world of sport and physical activity in the coming decade (page 25)

But quite a few of us challenged this unquestioning championing of technology, as we believe it doesn’t necessarily appeal to all women. One woman said that she knew a coach who taught by Skype – and was finding it to be very popular with men, but had no female take-up at all.

Although we acknowledged the definite benefits of technology – for example allowing you to avoid a flooded road and find another path, there was also some discussion about how men seem to enjoy using technology in sport more, whereas for the women we coach (and ourselves too) the social side seems to be more important.

Obviously it’s undesirable to generalise too much. Plenty of women enjoy fitness technology – see for example Sarah Millin’s recent post on the excitement of upgrading to the Microsoft Band. But the general experience and view of all the coaches present seemed to be that women tend to be less keen on using sports technology.

We also discussed the pressures that technology can place on women and girls to feel that they need to look good while training or competing, especially since nowadays with social media use, photos of anyone and everyone appear on social media. When in fact, your appearance is probably the last thing you want to be worrying about during sporting activity.

We agreed that as noted above, technology is a mixed blessing, and has definitely done a lot of good to engage people who wouldn’t otherwise train. We need to try hard to get the most out of it, and do our best to stop it impacting negatively on our athletes.

Women from minority ethnic and cultural backgrounds

Several of the coaches present spoke about the ways they supported local women from minority ethnic and cultural backgrounds to participate in sport. Obviously coming from an ethnic minority is not a barrier in itself; and many women from these groups engage easily in sport. The focus of our discussion was on supporting women from specific local communities within our area, where barriers to participation in sports do appear to exist for some women.

One prominent issue was women fearing to be seen out and about engaging in sport, either by other members of their community, or just in general. For some women, engaging in sport in public would be seen as shameful. One (cycling) coach said that she overcomes this by taking students out in large groups, and separating men and women into two groups, especially in the first instance while participants get used to doing sport.

Another issue that several coaches often came across was women wearing unsuitable clothing for sport, including “floaty” national dress and flip-flops. There was agreement that this needed to be gently challenged for safety reasons. If the women could not wear other clothes, there were various safety options available such as removing long, flowing scarves, and tying dresses. Some women were uncomfortable removing their scarves to wear a helmet, and leaving it on could create risks, if not done safely.

One coach added that she felt it important to dress in a relatively modest way herself, so as not to make the women from minority ethnic and cultural backgrounds feel uncomfortable.

Some of the coaches also said that women from these groups sometimes started out quite overweight, and with low levels of fitness, due to their lack of previous exercise.

As a general point (going beyond ethnicity or culture), it was agreed to be important not to take on too many adult beginners at once, and to ensure that there were enough experienced participants to support them.

The support of men

It was agreed that when women came from cultures which discouraged them from participating in sports clubs, the support and influence of men could be enormous (either positively or negatively).

We then moved on to talking about women’s participation in general, and the number of women who can appear to be fearful and unconfident in a sports setting. One participant queried as to whether some of the Project 500 marketing should in fact be aimed at men, to enlist their support for the programme goals.

All in all, it was a great experience to meet with local female sports leaders and discuss these issues as a like-minded group . . .

_____________________

About Project 500: Project 500 started life in 2013 as an exciting initiative in the South East of England, to help address the imbalance of female to male coaches by recruiting, developing, deploying and retaining 500 female coaches.

Research from sports coach UK shows that just 30% of sports coaches are female and of newly qualified coaches each year, only 17% are women.

The initial two-year pilot was really successful, and recruited and retained over 530 female coaches across a variety of sports.

In celebration of this – and with an eye to the future – Coaching Hampshire and Active Surrey held a women-only networking day on 13 March 2016, which I attended on behalf of my dojo. This discussion was part of the day’ programme.

_____________________

Kai Morgan is a martial arts blogger. You can read more of her stories and articles at www.budo-inochi.com, or follow her Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/kaimorg

 

 

 

A mind full of mindfulness—sorting out and lining up elements of change
diets · fitness

A mind full of mindfulness—sorting out and lining up elements of change

catherine w4 Comments

Last Sunday I went to off to a five-day workshop on mindfulness and behavior change at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health.  The actual title of the workshop is The Kripalu Approach to Diet: An Integrative Weight Loss Program, but it was really almost entirely about ways to incorporate mindfulness into our lives to promote our own health goals.

I am totally down with this.  For years I’ve been (trying to) incorporate mindfulness techniques for stress reduction around everything, including eating.  I took a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course that incorporated meditation and yoga, and off and on I’ve used meditation CDs by Jon Kabat-Zinn,the originator of the program.

Lately, though, my meditation practice has been way more off than on.  Which has not been good.  Since returning from my sabbatical in Australia, I’ve been struggling with anxiety and sadness.  My long-term relationship ended over the past year, a body blow that’s taking a very long time to recover from.  I have wonderful friends and colleagues and community for support, which is a blessing.  I restarted yoga in January, thanks to my friend Norah and the lovely and welcoming  Artemis Yoga studio near my house (thanks to you, too, Liz!)  I’ve been back on the bike, training for the PWA Friends for Life Bike Rally, too.  All of this has helped.

But still I’ve been eating and  in ways that make my body feel bad, and not moving enough in ways that make my body feel good.  Enter Kripalu program as vacation from my stuck habits, in hopes of getting myself unstuck.

It worked.

Really?  What does that mean?

This:  we did a bunch of practices at Kripalu, uninterrupted by phone or internet (access and use are severely restricted).  No laundry or bill paying or dog walking or meal preparation or grading (actually, I finished submitting my grades while there– what can you do?) or driving, or any of those things that take up our time and head space.

Let me say that I am excruciatingly aware of the position of extreme privilege I was (and am) in.  This program is expensive and time-consuming, both very scarce and precious resources that almost all of the planet doesn’t have.  And I am grateful that I have what I have (another blog post on this issue later on).

The practices we did included daily yoga, meditation, movement, discussion and sharing in our group (18 women and one man), some powerpoint lectures on weight and nutrition (more on those in later posts), guided writing exercises, and mindful eating at exquisitely delicious meals.

Seriously, the food here is so unbelievably good (and mostly vegan and vegetarian), that I recommend a trip here just to chow down.  And the chef, Jeremy Rock Smith, gives cooking demos that are as hilarious as they are useful.  You can find a zillion of his yummy recipes here.

There is also a 5-week online followup component of the course, with online discussion, weekly phone meetings, and lots of opportunities to interact, reflect and write about the processes we are going through.

My biggest revelation from the past week is twofold:  1) I get full very quickly when I eat mindfully (that is, while not distracted).  Seriously, what seems to me like a small amount of food fills me up in a comfortable satisfied way.  Huh– interesting.  2) I get hungry 1–2 hours before the next meal, but the hunger isn’t painful or unpleasant or compelling.  It is a feeling that comes and goes, and once I eat, it goes away again.  I’m hungry right now while typing this, but it’s not a bad feeling at all.  I will get around to eating as soon as I finish the blog.

Right now, what’s in line for changes are a few things.  As best I can, get rid of artificial sweeteners in my diet.  I got back on diet coke and also artificially sweetened ice tea mix.  There’s some evidence that they are correlated with increased risk of weight gain, type I diabetes, and some other conditions, but the jury is still out.  However, I’m getting rid of them.  The diet coke is very bad for my acid reflux, so out it goes (again).

I’m also eating at least one meal a day silently, and working on eating more meals undistracted by phone, internet, TV, radio, or even reading.  At Kripalu every breakast was silent for everyone at the center.  Eating breakfast silently is super-satisfying. It’s not boring at all. I know you don’t believe me even a little bit. But that’s okay. I didn’t believe it either. Until now.

I’m also focusing on meditating each day, right after coffee and before breakfast. I simply cannot even countenance meditating right after waking up. I must be caffeine-fueled in order to focus on anything other than “where’s the caffeine”.  Don’t judge me.

I’m planning one week at a time. Right now the focus is movement—continuing bike training, and planning on activity during a conference this week. I fly to Dallas Wednesday for a conference, and fly home Sunday.  Maintaining movement and eating that is healthy-for-me is always a challenge while traveling.  I’ve put together a plan, with backup options.

As always, this is a work in progress.  So many things came up at this workshop that it’s going to take a long time to sort them out, line them up, and either put them in place or say “no thank you” to them.  So stay tuned.

Before you go, though, check this out:  Kripalu will, for the low low price of $30, take a photograph of your aura.  They have a machine for this.  Who knew?  🙂 So here’s mine– I’m all green (love) and blue (communication).  This machine definitely has my number.

Screen Shot 2016-05-14 at 12.03.25 PM

Namaste, y’all– have a great week.

 

 

 

weight loss

Keeping weight off: Can you put a positive spin on vigilance even knowing vigilance is no guarantee?

Sam B4 Comments

 

We know that keeping the weight you’ve lost off can be nearly impossible.

But some people do it. I’ve written here before about those rare beasts, the weight loss unicorns. See What are the habits of weight loss unicorns? Recently Gretchen Reynolds answered weight loss questions in the Globe and Mail, including the question of why do some people manage to stay at the new lower weight when others can’t. What traits do those people share?

She writes, “Anecdotal reports by people who have succeeded in keeping weight off tend to have a common theme: constant vigilance, keeping close track of weight, controlling what food is eaten and how much (often by weighing and measuring food), exercising often, putting up with hunger and resisting cravings to the best of their ability. Those who maintain a modest weight loss often report less of a struggle than those trying to keep off large amounts of weight.”

I’m going to write another post about the difference between modest weight loss and getting down to your desired goal, or as I’ve called it, the difference between being a unicorn and an alpaca. But for now, I want to talk about “constant vigilance.”

It’s a common phrase when it comes to maintaining weight loss. In my review of Timothy Caulfield’s book I wrote,

The bit that I found hard to take, though I don’t doubt he’s right, was Caulfield’s assessment of what’s required for long term weight loss and maintenance. People who lose weight and keep weight off in the long run have some traits in common. And this group, because they’re rare, have been studied closely.  First, constant vigilance. They remain as focused and determined as they were when losing weight and they log and track just as carefully as when they started. Second, they exercise a lot. Third, they also don’t eat very much. Yikes.

I’ve wondered if there are other ways to think about the kind of dedication that’s required to maintain long term weight loss. Can we rebrand constant vigilance?

Here’s Yoni Freedhoff in Vox writing about people in a weight loss registry who have managed to keep weight off.

Today there are more than 10,000 registrants who on average have lost 66 pounds and kept it off for five and a half years. Registrants have lost weight every which way. Some have lost rapidly, while for others it took years. Some lost weight with low-fat diets, others low-carb. Some used diet books for guidance, others self-directed, and others still went to weight loss programs for help.

The key to your success is actually liking the life and diet you’re living with while you’re losing weight

Looking to their success stories, published both online and as highlighted by Anne Fletcher in her book exploring the registrants, Thin for Life, the one common theme is that while maintaining their losses requires ongoing effort, that effort isn’t perceived by these weight loss masters as a hardship but rather as just living with new lifestyles, and lifestyles that they enjoy.

Okay, is there a kind of “constant vigilance” that could fit into a life I love? What’s “constant vigilance” even amount to in day to day life?

  • People who lose weight and keep it off continue to track and measure food.
  • People who lose weight and keep it off exercise pretty much everyday.
  • People who lose weight and keep it off tend to weigh themselves daily.

Put that way it doesn’t sound so bad to me. (Note that I ignored the not eating very much part.) I do lots of this anyway. Well, except for the weighing part. And possibly the not eating very much part but I’m ignoring that.

(One of the women interviewed in Caulfield’s book says that since losing weight she’s never had a full size entree at a restaurant, only ever a salad and an appetizer. Also, no dessert. Ever.)

Back to constant vigilance. Here’s the thing. It’s no guarantee.

It might be true that everyone who maintains a new lower weight does these three things. You might be like me, thinking about this, and thinking, “I could do that.” But while everyone who keeps weight off does these three things, it might also be true that not everyone who does these three things keeps the weight off.

To put in terms philosophers like to use, these three traits might be necessary for successful long term weight maintenance but it doesn’t follow that they’re sufficient.  You could lose the weight, remain constantly vigilant, and still gain it back. Constant vigilance is no guarantee of long term success. That’s a tough pill to swallow even if you do manage to find a way to make peace with constant vigilance.

If “necessary” and “sufficient” talk is new to you, here’s an explanation. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LqNm9d2__I

Sat with Nat

Walking faster DAGNABBIT 

natalieh (she/her)1 Comment

I noticed the past couple of weeks my 2 km walking commute is now taking 20 minutes. While my walk to work got shorter by half a kilometer when I changed jobs the time it takes has dropped drastically. 

A couple years ago it took 45 minutes to walk 2.5 km and about 3,500 steps. This week I averaged 20 minutes for 2 km and steps were well under 3,000. 

My stride has lengthened as my body has adapted to walking and my pace has increased. Great! Except this means my commute no longer gaurentees an hour of walking and hitting 10,000 steps. DAGNABBIT!

For me it is a reminder that my body adapts to movement, always seeking the most efficient path. This is at odds with my fitness goals of compensating for a sedentary job. It means I must add more movement to my schedule to keep hitting that 1 hour mark. 

It makes me a touch cranky that what I need to do to be healthy is shifting. Well. It makes me a parody of cranky. 


Oh and please peruse our awesome merch, net proceeds go to The Toronto People With AIDS Foundation. 

fitness

I know the mistake they made: The biggest losers just stopped exercising

Sam B

That’s where they went wrong.

They didn’t lose muscle and not fat. Nope.

They didn’t mistakenly lose the weight too quickly. Nope.

The next line of response to the Biggest Loser study I hear is this: I bet the mistake they made was slipping back into their old habits. I bet they didn’t keep up the exercise without personal trainers to yell at them everyday.

You might think that. But you’d be wrong. As Savita points out in her analysis of the Biggest Loser study, “the subjects maintained their high levels of physical activity.” She goes on to say that “these subjects clearly showed that they had a tremendous amount of discipline in maintaining their exercise regimen, probably because they were under intense public scrutiny.”

(It’s true that some of them kept some weight off. I’m going to write about that later.)

Can you imagine the discipline required to continue exercising while regaining weight even though weight loss was your main reason for exercising in the first place? I can. I’ve been there. Not about exercise. That I do because I love it. It’s my idea of fun. But eating less than I’d like isn’t easy for me. At times in my life I’ve been carefully tracking food and watching what I eat while the numbers on the scale climb. It’s not easy.

The biggest losers didn’t make a mistake.

See some past posts:

fitness · Guest Post

Rethinking measurement and PRs

marthafitat55

Business gesture indicating success

by MarthaFitat55

The past two months have been a journey of discovery. Probably the most obvious change was starting work with a new trainer who is also a good friend of mine, so the transition to a new mode of training has been smooth.

My new trainer worked with my previous trainer, so there are some similarities in approach. But Vicky brings her own style to her workout programming, and I’ve been enjoying new exercises.

Yes, enjoying. I will be honest and note I still haven’t embraced split squats with the same joy I bring to using the ab wheel, but there is always something positive to take away. Like finally rehabbing my knee to a point where I can do split squats on the floor instead of a raised platform.

Because this is a new training relationship, we have spent time figuring out how to work together while maintaining the recovery focus. I took some time to read up on my hip problem and we’ve built in exercises that help strengthen that cranky joint.

It’s been great fun to try new things and to work out what my capacity is. Sometimes it’s like when your optometrist asks you “is this is a little better or a little worse,” when they change lenses, except Vicky asks me how much more can I do in a series of reps.

After two years, my previous trainer was an expert at recognizing when I was ready to fold and when I needed that extra push. Now I am working with someone new who is working at understanding how my body performs, where we need to be careful, and where we can push harder.

It’s meant that I am looking at what I do in the gym and after, and I have been really listening hard to the cues my body sends and documenting the results in the gym. I haven’t always tracked my personal records (PRs) because showing up to the gym twice a week consistently has been such a huge accomplishment for me.

Because of my own lack of consistency in the past with fitness, I trust my trainer to keep me moving forward. The fact is, I know the next day or the day after when we’ve bumped up the weight or the reps by how deeply different muscles ache to remind me of the work we have done.

Tracking anything else has just not been my thing. Occasionally I make notes to remind myself of key milestones, but for the most part my focus is “hey, I can do this now,” or “I can do it better/faster,” and I’m good. So you can imagine my surprise when Vicky mentioned the weighted glute bridge I’ve been doing regularly the last six weeks to strengthen the hip joints was now at 130 pounds.

“Go on,” I said, disbelief written all over my face. “Well, how much did you think it was?” she asked me. “I figured it was about 50 pounds,” was my response.

Nope. I was lifting 130 pounds without effort, even with wonky hip joints. That my friends is equal to a Spanish ibex or a slightly underfed aardvark. Of course, then I had to think about the weights I use for the deadlift, military press, bench, and hack squat. The range falls in between a jaguar (80kg) for the deadlift and a cheetah (54 kg) for the squat.

Oh yes, the animals. This started a few years ago when Vicky found a site that plotted your weights lifted in terms of animals. It’s a nice visual for me since trying to grasp what poundage looks and feels like as a set of plates isn’t all that useful to me. You can use this list to find your own: http://thewebsiteofeverything.com/animals/mammals/adult-weight.html

Anyway, here I am, looking at measurement and tracking in a whole new way. I started thinking about the roots of my (passive) resistance to tracking. I’ve come to the conclusion that I avoid it, mostly because traditionally, the standards for progress in fitness have been based on weight loss and inches lost.

Yes, PRs matter, but they haven’t always been given the same pride of place in society as they could be for women. As a feminist, I look at things with a gender lens, and it has always bothered me that we measure women’s success in fitness by how we look and measure to a particular “feminine” ideal, that isn’t necessarily realistic nor respectful of the diversity expressed in what we think of as cis-gender female bodies.

And so I’ve been thinking about my own work to achieve fitness, and realize that there is no endpoint. I may have chosen to label my goal/blogname as MarthaFitat55, but the fact is I am fitter than I was when I started, I will be fitter at 55 than I am now, and I’ll be fitter when I am 60, and so on. As the other Martha is fond of saying, that’s a good thing.

— Martha is a writer living in St. John’s whose next lifting goal will be one of Santa’s reindeer (101kg).

Aikido · fitness · Guest Post · health · martial arts

Fitness after chemotherapy (Guest post)

Michelle Lynne Goodfellow2 Comments

IMG_7638

This is a photo of me, on my first day back to aikido class after five months of chemotherapy for breast cancer. I look pretty happy, don’t I? Aikido classes are an important part of my life that I had to put on hold during my treatment. This blog post is about my personal experience getting back to aikido (and other physical activity) after chemo.

I have Sam to thank for introducing me to aikido. For a couple of years she kept suggesting that I come out to her dojo, and try this unusual Japanese martial art that focuses on self-defense. My only regret is that I waited so long. Aikido has become the central physical activity of my life, and I believe it has also helped me mentally and emotionally deal with my breast cancer diagnosis and fear of death from cancer.

After my double mastectomy, I rushed back to aikido as soon as humanly possible (after my surgeon gave me the okay, two weeks post-op). Aikido made me feel strong and centred, and connected to a community that I love. Being able to do aikido was healing for me.

So when my chemo started, it was really hard for me to come to terms with the fact that it was probably best for my health if I stopped attending classes until my chemo was over.

Chemo kills fast-growing cells like cancer, but it also attacks healthy fast-growing cells like hair follicles (leading to the hair loss typically associated with chemo) and bone marrow, where white blood cells are made. Low white blood cell counts then leave you vulnerable to germs and infections, and if you get an infection while your immunity is low on chemo, it could become a life-threatening emergency called febrile neutropenia.

My dojo is in a busy community centre full of families with kids coming and going, and I started chemo right at the beginning of flu and cold season. Yeah. Not a good combination. Add to that the fact that aikido involves close physical contact with several others during class, and two of our weekly adult classes are held immediately following children’s aikido classes…  You get the idea. So I reluctantly gave up aikido classes for the length of my chemotherapy treatment – 18 weeks in total.

Thankfully, a black belt friend of mine visited me at my home every few weeks during my chemo, when my blood cell counts were at their highest before each infusion, and marked through techniques with me for a few hours. (I also memorized the Japanese names of most of the common techniques during my practice with him – something that will be useful, since all of my future belt tests will be in Japanese.) Apart from those cherished days, however, I went into serious aikido withdrawal during chemo.

Why did I miss aikido so much? Most classes (which are one hour or one-and-a-half hours long) are a decent workout – lots of full-body movements, calisthenics, breakfall (rolling) practice, and technique practice, which involves being thrown to the ground and getting up over and over again. But aikido also engages me mentally, as I try to master and recall the Japanese names of the techniques, as well as the techniques themselves. There are so many tiny details to learn, which is why the study of aikido can take decades. There are hundreds or even thousands of possible combinations of attacks, controls and pins, and on top of that there’s an element of coordination and patience required to blend effectively with your opponent’s energy, and redirect it without using excess effort. Done well, aikido is like dancing, and makes me feel like I’m flying, both literally and figuratively.

I’ve written on this blog about some of the other ways that I exercised during my chemo treatment. Don’t think that I’m some sort of superwoman, though. I wrote that blog post half-way through the 18 weeks of chemo, and the final nine weeks were much more debilitating that I expected. By my last chemo infusion I was spending most of the first week following each infusion in bed, sleeping and feverish. Exercise was not a priority, except to increase my white blood cell counts. I tried doing gentle qigong exercises every day, and that was about it as far as exercise was concerned.

So when my chemo was finished, and my white blood cell counts were finally back to normal, I was on fire to get back to aikido again. My doctor gave me the okay on a Tuesday morning; Tuesday night, I was dressed in my uniform and ready to roll. Literally.

Don’t think that I immediately reached my pre-cancer fitness level, though. Aikido classes were actually a humbling measuring stick for my stamina, and I was surprised by how much strength and endurance I’d lost. That first class, I had to sit down after the warm-up and watch the rest of class. And for about three or four weeks I had to stop frequently during each class and rest before playing again.

I feel pretty lucky that I didn’t experience too much lasting fatigue from my chemo, but there’s definitely been some. (Thankfully I didn’t have radiation treatments, which can also increase fatigue.) As I write this, it’s been seven weeks since I’ve been back at aikido, and truthfully only in the last week or so has my endurance felt like it’s returned to my pre-cancer levels. I had several injuries (knees, right ankle, right wrist) that I was nursing before my cancer treatment; since going back to aikido, they’ve all been acting up again, which has also put the brakes on overdoing anything.

My dojo offers classes six days a week, and I attend them all. But right now I only get on the mat for three or four classes per week. The rest of the time I just watch. I have a belt test coming up (the same belt test that Sam did, here), and I’ve been focused on getting as much practice as I can without stressing my body too much.

In addition to time on the mat, I also help set up and put away our dojo mats for each class, which is a nice, light aerobic and weight training activity. And I’m still doing qigong as often as I can, which usually ends up being three or four times per week.

In my experience, if you’re facing chemotherapy and you’ve already been fairly active before your cancer diagnosis, using your favourite activities as rewards to look forward to at the end of your treatment can be a great way to stay motivated and quickly get back to movement after your chemo is done. I know that for me, aikido was definitely the carrot on the end of the stick that made chemo more bearable, and I’m positive that my quick recovery from chemo has been at least partly due to my regular aikido practice.

___

You may also be interested in these blog posts by Michelle about her breast cancer experience:

Michelle Lynne Goodfellow works in nonprofit and small business communications by day, and also enjoys writing, taking photographs, making art and doing aikido. You can find more of her work at michellelynnegoodfellow.com. Michelle has also written about her breast cancer journey on her blog, Kitchen Sink Wisdom.

fitness

Exciting News: “See How She Runs” Table of Contents

Tracy I

There are all sorts of cool opportunities that Sam and I are privileged to have come our way as feminist philosophers. Back in January 2015, we posted a CFP (call for papers) here for a special issue of The International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics that we are guest editing. The theme of our issue is: See How She Runs: Feminists Rethink Fitness.

What better theme could there be for us, considering that every day, on this very blog, we and our amazing group of guest bloggers are finding ways to rethink fitness along feminist lines.

We’ve been working on it for what seems like ages. And slowly, slowly, we’ve seen it come together. On Tuesday, the editorial office sent us the Table of Contents. Shortly after that I got an email from Sam from Austria: “This makes me happy,” she said.

In the hopes that it might also make you happy, here’s the table of contents of our special issue, due out (I don’t even know when it’s due out…in the fall I think. We will announce that too).

CONTENTS

See How She Runs: Feminists Rethink Fitness

         Tracy Isaacs and Samantha Brennan

ESSAYS

Exercising Moral Authority: The Power of Guilt in Health and Fitness Discourses

          Anita Harman

Core Workout:  A Feminist Critique of Definitions, Hyperfeminity, and the Medicalization of Fitness

          Charlene Weaving, Pamela R. Sailors, and Sarah Teetzel

Trampled Autonomy: Women, Athleticism, and Health

           Sylvia Burrow

(Hip) Throwing Like a Girl: Martial Arts and Norms of Feminine Body Comportment

           Audrey Yap

Fitness, Well-Being, and Preparation for Death

           Moire Howes

Choose Your Battles: Agonism and Identity in Narratives of Feminist Fitnesses

          Michelle Parrinello-Cason

COMMENTARY

Should Feminists Defend Self-Defense?

         Ann J. Cahill and Grayson Hunt

NARRATIVES

Gender Identity, Gendered Spaces, and Figuring Out What You Love

          Rebecca Kukla

Doctor’s Orders: Menopause, Weight Change, and Feminism

           Kathryn Norlock

Beyond the Fishnets: Female Empowerment through Roller Derby

            Ula Klein

REVIEW ESSAY

Pick It Up: Older Women Show Us How It’s Done

What Makes Olga Run? The Mystery of the 90-Something Track Star and What She Can Teach Us about Living Longer, Happier Lives, by Bruce Grierson. New York: Henry Holt, 2014

Older Faster Stronger: What Women Runners Can Teach Us All About Living Younger, Longer, by Margaret Webb. New York: Rodale, 2014.

           Alison Conway

 REVIEWS

Harriet Brown, Body of Truth: How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight—and What We Can Do about It (Da Capo Press, 2015)

               Cheryl Madliger

Kristin Zeiler and Lisa Folkmarson Käll, eds. Feminist Phenomenology and Medicine.(State University of New York Press, 2014)

               Bryan Kibbe

We’re proud of this project. You will recognize many of the authors as guest bloggers right here at Fit Is a Feminist Issue. The blog gives us a venue for thinking about topis that interest us, but for obvious reasons blog posts aren’t the right place for more scholarly engagement with these issues. At the same time, we’ve brought a bit of the blog into the scholarly journal, making sure to include personal narratives as well as essays, commentary, and reviews.

When we were sitting down to write the introduction, Sam and I tried our best to articulate why we think fitness is a feminist issue, mapping out four major themes that all of the pieces in the special issue engage with: equality, inclusivity, empowerment, and the aesthetics of feminine embodiment. Feminist approaches to fitness culture, practice, and discourse provide a rich set of alternatives to dominant understandings.

As we say in the intro:

We have no desire to claim that feminist issues in fitness are the only feminist issues worth discussing. It would be absurd to deny that other pressing feminist issues exist. Nevertheless, to the extent that a feminist consideration of fitness takes up issues of equality, inclusivity, empowerment, and the feminine aesthetic and embodiment, we can see that the impact on women’s lives of dominant discourses, practices, assumptions and attitudes is not trivial. Consider “See How She Runs” and the contributions in it as an invitation to think seriously and critically about fitness as a feminist issue.

Meanwhile, huge thanks to the editorial team at IJFAB–Mary, Kate, and PJ–, to all of the referees who read and provided comments on submissions, and of course to all the authors. It’s been amazing to see the issue evolve from an idea into an exciting collection.

We’ll let you know when it’s available.

fitness

Fear and its many faces (Guest post)

fieldpoppy9 Comments

I got on my road bike for the first time this season two weeks ago, and I actually did a tiny dance of joy when I put my cleats on, tap tapping against my wood floor.  I love putting on the gear, wheeling my bike out the gate of my condo courtyard, turning on the strava and resetting the bike computer, thinking about where I’m going to go.

And, as soon as I started riding, navigating streetcar tracks and left turns, I felt that flicker of not-quite-fear, the anxiety that thrums at me the whole time I’m riding in cleats.  Will I be able to unclip if I need to?  What about my plan to go up Brimley Hill — what if I get the gear ratios wrong and topple over?

I did my 30K ride and exulted in the sunshine, the sensation of my body and bike completely one, the flow you only get clipped to a bike that fits you perfectly.  I rode up Brimley Hill and I DID get my gears wrong, and there was one steep bit where toppling was just one hard thrust away.  I didn’t fall — but I also didn’t trust myself to stop and take off my jacket even as I overheated.  I powered through the hill because I was too nervous to stop.

I’ve been thinking a lot about fear lately. It shows up everywhere, of course —  Tracy wrote about her fear of riding in traffic a few months ago, and Nat wrote about cleats, and Catherine about learning to scuba dive. I talked a lot about fear when I interviewed my friend Pamela about ski racing. Fear is easy to see in relation to our physical stuff — we can see where it stops us from trying things, or inhibits us from going hard, or just provides a steady soundtrack. For me, understanding and overcoming my physical fears is part of understanding all of the other fears in my life.

I met someone recently who seemed like a very chill and relaxed person, but as I got to know her better, started to see a long list of things she felt like she “couldn’t” do because they felt too risky.  Travel outside North America, go on water in any way, ride a bike anywhere but a bike path, be in an enclosed space. For some reason, her list of fears triggered me far more than anyone else’s emotional landscape should.

I finally realized it’s because I’m a really fearful person who masquerades as brave.  And one of my biggest fears is letting my fears control my life. I have always been anxious. When I was younger I was afraid of fire, drowning, heights, people vomiting, dogs, bears, food poisoning, strange men on the street at night, being alone in the house at night, flying, missing flights, being locked out, being in enclosed spaces. I once yelled at my then-partner because she accidentally abandoned me at a rest stop in New Brunswick and I was momentarily panicked that she would never come back.  It’s awful to live that way. When you spend your life trying to avoid your fears, you shut off possibilities, and sometimes put way too much pressure on the people around you to make you feel safe.

The same year I started running, when I was 30, something about my relationship to fear shifted. As I let myself feel the discomfort that comes with trying something new, pushing my body, I let go of my tight clench around other fears. That same year, I went on a wilderness canoe trip and announced at the beginning that I was there to confront my fear of the woods. It turned out to be an amazing trip to Temagami, marked by the magical experience of lying in a canoe on a lake for hours during a full moon watching the August meteor showers.

Since then, I’ve almost fetishized confronting fears. I’ve run marathons, hung over the edge of sheer drops mountaineering in Scotland, bungee jumped off a bridge, forced myself back underwater to pass a scuba test even when I panicked and shot out of the water the first time, rappelled down a cliff, learned to ride in cleats when fatigued.  Hiked up mountains and traveled alone in Myanmar, Iceland, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Vietnam, China.  Faced emotional pain head on.

I’m still anxious about many things.  But I think I understand more about what fear does now.  I think we feel fear and either just freeze, or try to decide whether it’s rational or not, assess and avoid risk. I see different categories now, different and distinct threads of anxiety. For me, fear and anxiety rush up as a proxy for these questions:  Will I be able to cope if something goes wrong? Will I look foolish? Will I be in pain? Will I cause others pain?  Will I be able to emotionally manage it if I injure myself in a permanent way? Am I in danger of losing something important to me?

I think physical fear tangos with our own individual emotional anxieties to create the fear that blocks us from doing things.  Fear of injury or incompetence doing physical things taps into our biggest fears about being human — if I end up injured and need help, will my people stick around? If I end up in pain, will I be able to cope with grace?  Will people judge me?  Will I end up alone?   (Fill in your own darkest fears here).

To me, these “big” fears are closely linked to the things we list as our physical fears, are all tangled up.  But if we can untangle them and find emotional fortitude, physical strength and trust in our competence, something changes.  For me, it’s about distinguishing between reckless risks and risks I can take a big deep breath and just step into, because stepping in makes me more of myself.

Sometimes stepping in is about forcing myself through my fear — and sometimes it’s about pulling apart fear of looking foolish from understanding real risk.  I’ve actually crashed on my bike because of my clips many times — always while stopped or going slowly. I look stupid and end up bruised,  but it’s not really serious.  If I have the mindfulness to work my way through “will I know what to do?” I realize I DO know what to do — practice unclipping, develop competence at the sequence of anticipate/slow/unclip/stop.  Get better at gear ratios on uphills.  If I can mentally work my way through this, gain mindful physical competence, the big fears recede.

I know I do some things that feel reckless to other people, because they make me feel alive — whipping down a hill on my bike where one bump could send me flying, riding behind a friend on a fast motorcycle in a country with lousy healthcare, running even as my body ages and strains, hiking or traveling by myself. Traveling to places where there is threat of unrest.

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And, everyone’s lines are different and “real” risk starts to break down when you look at it closely. Every week someone marvels at the fact that I ride my bike to work meetings because they could “never” ride in traffic, or others tell me they could never go on a silent meditation retreat.  And we all know people who are seriously injured doing things that aren’t remotely “risky” — I have a colleague who is battling a severe concussion caused when she tripped and hit her head on the desk getting up to pee in a hotel room in the middle of the night two months ago.

I’m not fearless in any way.  But there’s something profoundly important to me about stepping into the wrap of fear that constantly shows up.  Yes, it’s about feeling strong in every sense, but it’s also about something else — it’s about knowing that even though I have a carefully cultivated store of existential fear, it doesn’t control my life.  That every time I navigate a dicey turn or don’t get agitated by a truck behind me on my bike, when I get off a plane in a country where I know no one, or when I let myself float like a mermaid among the fishes, I’m choosing to be fully in my body, fully in my life. To be here, now.

fitness

More on the mistakes the biggest losers make: But what about muscle?

Sam B5 Comments

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As I said here the reaction I most often hear in response to the Biggest Loser study is that they lost the weight the WRONG WAY. In that post I talked about the claim that they did it too quickly.

The next most common–that can’t be right!–response is to focus on the Biggest Loser’s exercise program. People say that the problem is that they did too much cardio and didn’t lift enough weights. They worried about pounds and not about  lean body mass. For successful long term weight loss, so this story goes, you need to think about body composition. You can keep your metabolism revving by building muscle.

Now aesthetically speaking I’m a fan of muscle. Functionally too, muscles are cool. But sadly, according to Gretchen Reynolds, they aren’t the key to sustaining weight loss. Here’s her talking about muscles and metabolism in the Globe and Mail, answering questions about weight loss.

If you build muscle with exercise, including weightlifting, will you be able to maintain a higher metabolism?

Muscle burns more calories than fat, so it might stand to reason that the more muscle you have, the faster you will burn calories. But it turns out that building muscle has almost no effect on resting metabolism, which determines how many calories a person burns when at rest. The reason is that any muscle you add is small compared with the total amount of skeletal muscle on your body. And most of the time that muscle is at rest. (You can’t go around flexing your biceps non-stop.) Muscles have a very low metabolic rate at rest. One researcher calculated that if a man weighing about 175 pounds lifts weights and puts on about 4.5 lbs of muscle – a typical amount for men who lift weights for 12 weeks – he will burn an extra 24 calories a day, the amount in a couple of Life Saver candies.