Feminist reflections on fitness, sport, and health
Here’s the story:
Here’s Shannon’s response in a guest post a few years back:
Reflections on the exercise pill by a reluctant desk potato (Guest post)
How about you? Would you take it? Let us know in the comments below.
I have dreamt of owning a Brompton since Sam bought hers. It turns out Catherine has owned one even longer. I have also wanted an e-bike for a year or so. My plan (eventually) is to replace my car with an e-cargo bike.
So last December when someone in my circle of cycling acquaintances posted about a Brompton e-bike for sale I jumped on the opportunity. It’s not a cargo bike, but I plan to buy a trailer that will make it very handy for shopping.
I made the purchase during the first big storm of the winter, so my first chance to play with it came during false spring in early March. My friend Florence invited me to join her for dinner at a restaurant about 6 km away. I was tired after a busy week so decided to test the Brompton. Did I mention whee?
I was easily able to keep up with Florence, my knees didn’t hurt, I could tuck it under the table so no worry about theft, and it was a fun conversation starter with others waiting for a seat.
People sometimes try to claim that riding an e-bike is “cheating”. Alisa Joy wrote about some great reasons to use an e-bike back in 2018. All those reasons are still valid. Plus it’s fair to ask the question”cheating compared to what? Driving a car?”.
Almost exactly 4 years ago– March 22, 2020– I wrote about developing my Zoom identity. Back then, most of us were noobs at Zooming, but we quickly adapted to Zoom-versions of everything from therapy to French class to bedtime stories to Zoom-Zumba.
Back then, I touted the benefits that Zoom yoga classes provide– namely, they made me more comfortable doing (easier) modifications of poses, or holding them for shorter periods, taking a pause, and then resuming. It felt liberating to be un-visible (different from invisible, obvs), free to move or stretch or be still in ways that suited me in the moment.
Yeah. That was sooo four years ago.
Mind you, I am massively appreciative of videoconferencing technology. It made possible the continuation (after a fashion) of so much of my pre-pandemic life: teaching Zoom classes, going to Zoom parties, weddings, funerals, faculty meetings, book club sessions, even attending Zoom church. And of course, those Zoom yoga and exercise classes.
Now, in March of 2024, we all have a lot of experience with the pros and cons of non-in-person meetings, conferences, medical appointments, physical activity classes, etc.
For Zoom physical activity classes, there are definitely some pros:
But there are most definitely cons.
Zoom yoga (for me, at least) is soooo inferior an experience compared to in-person yoga. Being in the same room with a teacher and other people is motivating, companionable, probably safer (e.g. we would be more protected from harmful variations on poses), more conducive to learning and developing a deeper practice, and just more fun.
And I promise you that singing bowls sound way cooler and more cosmic in person than on video. To wit:
Another sort-of con (at least for me) is the wholesale availability of Zoom versions of yoga, meditation and exercise classes. The problem for me is that inertia plus habit plus any suboptimal daily circumstances makes me think, “oh, I’ll just do this over Zoom instead.” At which point either I don’t Zoom at all, or I Zoom and participate in a less committed way.
Of course your mileage may vary. But it’s so tempting to try to multitask during Zoom-anything because we CAN. About six months into the pandemic, I was on Zoom church, when I saw one person doing core exercises on their living room floor during the sermon. They had forgotten to turn their camera off– oops! And yes, we all know that more embarrassing things have been spotted during Zoom sessions, but that’s not my point here. It’s rather that so many things pull us in the directions of doing much more (e.g. multitasking) or doing much less (not participating in the class exercises or poses, etc.) when we are on Zoom.
It’s not Zoom’s fault, and it’s not totally our fault, either. But, I’m now facing a choice: muster a bit more oomph for in-person activity, or develop a more active Zoom identity (or some of both).
Readers, where are you on Zoom physical activity classes? Are you over them, or are they now a big part of your life? I’d love to hear from you.
Thing 1
I entered my 100th workout in the 224 workout in 2024 group. Nothing exciting–personal training–but I did it. I showed up (even though we woke up less than 45 minutes before training started and we had to drive there!) Today was deadbugs, and steps ups, and face pulls, and kettlebell deadlifting, and push ups and squats. And more, but I don’t remember. It’s a bit of a blur but a great way to start the day.
Thing 2
You might not know it, but it’s the first day is spring. You might think that means this,
But instead, we got this,
I knew I shouldn’t have complained about missing the snow this year. Still, it’s spring and I’ll take it.
Thing 3
There’s ramen for dinner. Yum!
Yes, it’s true. Given the chance, I will literally boss ANYTHING around.
To be clear though, I have been trying to boss my neck/shoulder/upper body muscles around for a while (Pain in the Neck, Pah Humbug) but I was less than completely successful. I found some ease but that knot in my neck/shoulder was just hanging around and causing trouble.
(If this is where you want to jump in and say that I might have had more success if I had invited them to relax instead of trying to order them around, please know that I ALSO did relaxation exercises and meditation and lay around on pillows, foam shapes and massage balls of various sizes. This has been a multi-faceted process.)
This weekend, though, I decided to put a lot of effort into bossing those muscles around. I really wanted them to remember that they LIKE moving with ease and that they would feel better if they went along with my plan instead of staying all tense and knotted.
I started with this video from Yoga with Adriene. I’ve found it helpful before and I thought it might help again.
It did.
When I finished, I felt better but I had time to do a bit more so I tried some Neck CARS (Controlled Articular Rotations).
This video helped A LOT and I could feel things loosening up as I repeated the rotations.
I then meant to try some shoulder CARs but happened upon this video for scapular rotations instead and I gave it a whirl. I mean, I gave it a controlled, careful attempt.
I only did the first type of scapula CARs from this video but they were extremely helpful. I could feel all kinds of places loosening up as I went through the movements.
So, I am so glad I decided to boss those muscles around on Saturday and follow that up with more bossing around on Sunday and Monday.
My upper body feels more relaxed than it has in a very long time, even before the knot appeared in my neck/shoulder, and I can tell that there is still a lot of muscle relaxing to do in that area.
So obviously, I will keep bossing my muscles into being good to themselves and, of course, into being good to me.
And, in return, the more they relax, the more I will be able to do the kind of exercises they like – more TKD practice, more time on the rowing machine, more yoga.
I think it’s a win-win situation.
I didn’t ever think I’d say this, but I miss the snow. ❄️
I’ve struggled to like winter for years. It wasn’t until I discovered running and cross country skiing and later, fat biking, that I came to enjoy winter. I needed to keep moving and stay warm. But those activities require snow, and we’re getting fewer and fewer snowy days.
I read this recently, and it really hit home.
This winter, we haven’t had the fat bikes out at all. We did get two fun winter weekends in.
You can read about them here.
Our Australian relatives visited over the Christmas holidays, hoping for snow, but we had to drive them far enough north to where they were making snow so we could go tubing.
I know that in the grand scheme of climate change and environmental disasters, my personally missing snow is small potatoes.
But still, I may need to find a new approach to winter physical and mental health.
Cross country skiing and fat biking friends, how are you coping?
Daylight is back! For the first time in awhile, here in Ontario, we have more than 12 hours of daylight. Thanks, Kate, for pointing that out and supplying the graphic. Whatever you think of springing forward (I’m fan–I like being able to ride my bike in the evening light) I think we can all (almost all?) agree that more daylight is better, however it’s distributed. Whee!
New orthotics! I no longer need orthotics to support my knees. My new knees are doing just fine all on their very own, thank you very much. Believe it or not though I still need orthotics, and thanks to having a job with benefits, I now have new orthotics. These are just designed to help my arthritic toes. I took them out for a walk in my new Hokas, accompanied by an excellent audiobook and one very good dog.
Tough Broad! My copy of the book I recommended last week arrived in the mail. I’m an aspiring tough broad who is looking forward to more active, outdoor adventure in my life and I’m looking to be inspired. I’ll report back soon.
As a person who does philosophy in her day job, I know that some questions are eternal– we keep asking them over and over, looking for better answers. Questions like these:
Yes, we are just not satisfied with the answers we get to the “how many steps a day?” question. Why? Because we get so many different answers: 10K, 5K, 4K, 2.2K among them.
Well, worry no more: the paper of record, the New York Times, has once again come to our rescue. Their answer to our question is this: it’s not how many steps you walk, but how you walk that matters. They break it down nicely for us into a list.
Is it just me, or has the New York Times become kind of bossy lately? Well, if you think they’re bossy, don’t read the comments section. There were numerous folks chiming in, touting their own regimens.
There was one voice that saw the truth and wasn’t afraid to say it:
The comments: when did competitive aging become such a thing?
Yes to this! People spend a lot of time worrying and comparing and pushing and adding and tweaking, looking for the perfect alchemical formula for… what? Health? Fitness? Anti-aging? In fact, movement (which means walking for those of us who can, when we can) can be good and good for us.
When it comes to advice, though, sometimes there’s no school like the old school. Witness this comment:
A friend in Cleveland was advised to walk 6 miles a day by his doctor. After a month he called the doctor to ask how to get home from Detroit.
Don’t forget to tip your waitresses, folks…
I just started following Alex Rotas Photography on Facebook. Her photos of Masters track and field athletes are stunning, in both the quality of the photography and in how she captures the focus, competitive fires, and sense of community and friendship amongst the athletes.
Her photography challenges notions of ageing such as older adults can’t learn new things and should not exercise, it’s too dangerous, they’ll just get injured. The idea that gentle movement is preferable to high-intensity exercise. We will all grow old as grannies sitting in rocking chairs and knitting. And all such nonsense.
Well. I have a new motto: You are stronger than you know. That’s what I tell my fellow female Masters swimmers. More on that later.
By engaging in training and competition, Masters athletes challenge those notions of ageing. Many Masters athletes are continuing what they used to do when they were younger. Some join Masters teams when their children do sports. But many are learning new ways of being active, and finding out that it brings them joy. The joy of being physically fit. The joy of feeling strong. The joy of friendship and community. The joy of improving and fine-tuning their skills, and pushing themselves with demanding training regimens.
The motto for Masters swimming is “Fun, Friendship and Fitness”. Notice the emphasis on fun and friendship. As Alex notes in the article, the one thing that keeps Masters athletes engaged is the community of like-minded people with a shared passion for training and competition and achieving excellence in their sport. You build friendships, some that are enduring. There is a shared understanding that the competition is not between your team-mates or other people; it’s with yourself.
She makes special mention of older women and their participation in athletics. Here’s a quote from the article that will resonate with many of us:
“I think that sport is especially important to women of my age and older because we grew up in an era when sport was associated with masculinity: it was something that boys did, but it wasn’t so okay for girls to be competitive and fiercely focused and determined on the sports field. You had to police how you showed your body, you had to be ‘ladylike’.”
Right? Back in the day, I was known as a “tomboy”. My mom would dress me up in the pretty little dresses she made (yes, made, again in those days when clothing was expensive), did up my hair, and (to her horror) I would promptly go outside and muck around in the backyard. While I was no athlete at the time, it was the same body- and tone-policing about how a girl ought to look and behave. By daring to be sweaty and strong and competitive, we challenge conventional notions of femininity.
One awesome thing Alex is doing is showing her photos to a younger crowd; children in elementary school. When she asks them what an old person looks or acts like, they all invariably stand with a stooped posture and hobble around holding imaginary walking sticks. Then she shows them the photos, and the kids are gobsmacked. And inspired! Wow! Old people can do THAT?!
Alex is amazed that she can use photography to re-define perceptions of ageing. What she wants is for Masters sports to be treated as just another branch of sports within mainstream media coverage. To normalize athletic competition in later life. To normalize “grey hair and muscles!” She is now collaborating with a filmmaker to bring the lives of four older female Masters athletes to the world. Here’s the trailer:
Now, back to my motto:
You are stronger than you know. The inspiration for my motto came from a Stevie Nicks song, Leather and Lace. To me, it’s one of the most beautiful ballads ever written and sung. In it, she sings to her lover:
I have my own life
And I am stronger than you know
She is saying that she alone knows her strength. So I flipped it to mean that you may not be aware of the strength within you as you get older. That you can tap into it, develop it, and push yourself to achieve athletic feats you never thought possible in later life.
I have always loved swimming, but before I joined a Masters swim team, I never thought about swimming competitively. I never knew I could swim 2300-2500 metres in an hour practice, and enjoy it. To be still doing this at the age of 58 (59 in July!) sometimes blows my mind. I am indeed stronger than I knew.
So, dear readers, what do you think? Have you surprised yourself with your strength, your endurance, or how you enjoyed pushing your body through a tough training regimen? Do you feel joy in being sweaty, strong and taking up space?
Image of a woman in a swimsuit, cap and goggles in front of a swimming pool. She also has a BIG smile on her face and is dripping water after her swim!
You may associate today with doom and gloom thanks to the Ides of March, but did you know it is also World Sleep Day? Now that’s a holiday I can really get behind.
I used to be a very good sleeper. I was able to fall asleep quickly and sleep through the night without any difficulties. When I was younger I would be able to function on minimal sleep or string together a few hours here and there to be able to keep a fun social calendar. These days I roll my eyes if my friends want to stay out past 8pm. I’ve always been a night owl but I now need a long time to unwind from any sort of activity before trying to fall asleep.
It’s easy to think about sleep from our individual perspectives – we know how much (or how little) we sleep, thoughts or circumstances that keep us from sleeping, and all sorts of data around our own sleep patterns. But the World Sleep Society has collected data on the impact of sleep across different cultures and countries. Their 2024 theme for World Sleep Day is “Sleep Equity for Global Health.” They state:
“Sleep is essential to health, but measurable differences in sleep health persist across populations across the world, creating additional burdens and reinforcing health inequities.”
While I don’t love linking sleep metrics to productivity and GDP loss it may be a critical component toward equity across regions and countries. This link instead brings me back to The Nap Ministry’s framework of “Rest is Resistance,” which we’ve written about before (Tracy, Martha). They state:
“We believe rest is a form of resistance and name sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue.”
It may not matter which approach you take, so long as you “celebrate” World Sleep Day by getting some rest. Some ways you could enjoy the day include taking a nap (my personal favorite), practicing good sleep hygiene, or attending a community sleep-in or sleep awareness event.
Which way(s) will you recognize World Sleep Day this year?
Amy Smith is a professor of Media & Communication and a communication consultant who lives north of Boston. Her research interests include gender communication and community building. Amy spends her movement time riding the basement bicycle to nowhere, walking her two dogs, and waiting for it to get warm enough for outdoor swimming in New England.
