Tag: athletic performance

body image · diets · fitness

50,000 Hits and Counting: Why Is “She May Look Healthy But” So Popular?

Tracy I3 Comments

suits-fitness-figure

A couple of years ago, just before I left for a sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands, I whipped up a quick post questioning the health of fitness models. A few days later, when I managed to find a wifi connection on shore (at Foxy’s Beach Bar), the stats blew my mind. The post was racking up hits as if we’d hit the jackpot on a slot machine. Never before had we posted anything that attracted readers to the blog by the thousands.

“She May Look Heathy But.. Why Fitness Models Aren’t Models of Health” is still sailing strong, by far our most read post. Surpassing 50,000 hits over the weekend, it’s had more than double the exposure of the other two old stand-bys, “The Shape of an Athlete” and “Why the Thigh Gap Makes Me Sad,” each standing now at around 24,000. Close behind them: “Crotch Shots, Upskirts, Sports Reporting, and the Objectification of Female Athletes” and “Padded Sports Bras and Nipple Phobia.”

Some weeks, these and a few other of our stalwart reliables get more traffic than any of the new content. But “She May Look Healthy But..” takes first prize. And we’re kind of baffled as to why.

It’s not the tags. We have lots of posts tagged or categorized with some combination of “body image, diets, fitness, health.”

And it’s not as if it’s one of the most indepth or well-written posts on our blog. I cribbed most of it (with credit to the original, of course) from this interview with a fitness instructor who decided to prep for a women’s figure competition. And I got the rest from our friend, colleague, and figure competitor, Shay Welch.

My post made a point that I think is worth repeating: that the healthy and fit look so many aspire to, the well-defined and sculpted body we see in magazines and competitions, is attained usually through not-so-healthy, temporary routines. The routines’ primary purpose is to produce a body that looks like that, not to promote health or fitness. And the look is not sustainable even for the people who achieve it.  It’s how you appear on game day, but not on most other days.

The disconnect between looking fit and healthy, on the one hand, and being fit and healthy, on the other hand, shines through like bright sunlight on a clear day when we read her story and also the experience of Shay, fellow-philosopher, friend, and fitness figure competitor, who told me this:

I usually am at 1200-1400 calories during off season just to maintain (which is about 25 lbs over what I should be on stage) and then at about 800 calories in the final stretch, working out twice a day for around 4 hours.  everyday.  I do a lot of crying and very little sleeping.  Off season is relatively healthy but your body will change weight super easy because the metabolism crashes to nothing.  But the final stretch is super duper uper unhealthy.  But I can’t do any other sports and I love being athletically competitive so I deal.  Most people I know who do this cannot maintain a real job.  They are almost always fitness trainers because they’re the only ones who can really endure this.  I’ve known more than a few people who had to quit their regular job because they became obsessed with dieting and being on stage.  I throw all my trophies away because I am always trying to remember that this is just a hobby.  And no one maintains except professional fitness people and they get paid to starve year round.

The post generated tons of comments. Lots of people agreed with the key idea.

But we also heard from competitors who said that the tone of my post was unduly discouraging.  They defended these competitions and the possibility of prepping in a way that isn’t as difficult, or at least isn’t any more demanding than prepping for any other physically demanding undertaking.

Competitors expressed gratitude for the support of friends and family, talking about how rewarding an experience it’s been for them. Trainers took issue with some of the claims about how restrictive the plans were.

The fact is, you’re not going to convince me that the central point is wrong. Fitness figure competitors, like any other competitors, train for specific competitions. In their case, the goal is to look a certain way for their events, or, if they’re models, for their photo shoots.

They’re the first to admit that they don’t look this way all the time. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not ready to run a marathon all the time either. No one, not wrestlers or power-lifters or rowers, “makes weight” every day.

Where things go wrong is that in the popular imaginary, we have come to associate the way the fitness models and figure competitors look with what it means to be/look healthy and fit.

It’s not just ironic. It’s downright harmful. So no. You are not going to convince me that equating health and fitness with looking like a fitness model ready for competition is a good thing. It’s not a fair or accurate representation of fitness or health.

If that’s the main message people pick up from reading our post, then I couldn’t be happier that so many read it every week. We have a good range of views represented in the comments on the original post, which is why they’re now closed.

We haven’t solved the mystery of why the spotlight lands on that post every day. But we’re grateful that it attracts a steady audience, and we hope that at least some of those readers click through to the other good content on the blog.

Thanks for reading!

body image · diets · eating · fat · fitness · motivation · sports nutrition

“Nutrition is the foundation of health and fitness. You simply cannot out train a poor diet.”

Sam B21 Comments

The quotation above is from Greg Glassman, the founder of Crossfit. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between nutrition and fitness and thinking about where there’s room for improvement in my efforts to be the ‘fittest by fifty.’

Unlike my co-blogger Tracy who has decided that sports nutrition counseling isn’t for her and who has stepped away from the scale, I’m continuing with habit based nutrition counseling. I’m a numbers geek, I like tracking, and I’m looking forward to getting leaner in the year ahead.

It’s not about hating the body I’m got, I’m quite fond of it thanks, and it can do amazing things, but I need reminders to give it the love and attention it deserves. With three kids and a busy career, I sometimes struggle to take care of myself. I’m not quite the opposite of the food obsessed dieter but it’s true that for me, more often than not, convenience and the needs of others, take precedence over my own food choices.

Whether it’s a banana and a protein bar before Crossfit, a drive thru coffee and bagel on the way to rowing, a pizza slice post Aikido or instant oatmeal as a warm bedtime snack, some of my food choices aren’t the best. And given the demands I place on my body, I need to do better.

For some reason, for me, physical activity is easy. I love it, can’t get enough of it, but nutrition is another matter. And yet, eating well supports everything else I do. And I do a lot so I need to eat very well. So I’m setting out to work on the foundation this year, to try to pay as much attention to nutrition as I do to other aspects of sports performance. I’m trying to think of eating as part of sports training. Nutrition counseling helps serve as a reminder that this matters.

I’ve blogged here about my reasons for wanting to be leaner but I need to balance that goal with making sure I eat enough to support my physical activity.

I just did another check in at the Bod Pod this week and I’m happy with my progress so far. I’ve lost another 4 lbs overall but more importantly, as part of that overall, I’ve also gained 2 lbs of muscle since my last check in, and so my per cent body fat is down 2%. Yay Crossfit! Yippee new muscles! I’ve joined Tracy in the merely “excess fat” category, heading towards “moderately lean.”

I’m also now following the Lean Eating program at Precision Nutrition.

You’ve probably read a few wonderful rants I’ve linked to by Krista Scott Dixon. Here’s my faves:

In addition to having put together the best women’s weight lifting site on the web, and having a PhD in Women’s Studies she’s also the Coaching Program Director for Precision Nutrition.  I’m actually working with another Precision Nutrition Krista though. Krista Chaus is another woman with a pretty impressive bio.

“Since beginning her competitive career as a strength athlete 10 year ago, Krista has become one of the Canadian Powerlifting Union’s Top 20 Female Powerlifters. She is also a National champion, provincial record holder and two times Commonwealth Championship medalist.

Recently, Krista has turned her competitive attention to the physique side of the industry, capturing 7 overall finishes in bodybuilding in 2008 and placing 5th at the 2009 Arnolds Amateur Bodybuilding Championships.  She’s currently working towards a National bench press record with the Canadian Powerlifting Association.” from her PN bio

It’s not a diet, in terms of short term change. Instead, I’m trying new habits on for size and trying to make them part of my life. The first big change for me is that one will sound familiar to those who’ve been following the blog: slow mindful eating.

There’ll be no vibrating forks for me though. I’m hoping to pay more attention to my food and less attention to electronic gadgets at the dinner table.

Anyway, wish me luck.

body image

Athletic versus Aesthetic Values in the Pursuit of Fitness

Sam B23 Comments

As anyone who’s been reading this blog knows as part of our “fittest by fifty” campaign both Tracy and I are looking for ways to track improvements in fitness that aren’t about the way we look. No “firmer thighs, visible abs” goals for me. I care much more about being fit (how fast I ride, or how much I can lift) than I do about looking fit.

Staying clear of caring about looks is a challenge in our culture, whether it’s looking fit or looking fashionable. For me I find refuge from our culture’s hyper emphasis on looks  in the values of athleticism.

What’s different about athletes? Athletes care about competing and about winning, not about what you look like. It’s a very different world than mainstream culture in which looks play such an enormous role. Generally speaking, among people who view themselves as athletes, people respect you for what you can do. (Of course, athletes do run up against mainstream cultural values. Consider the case of advertising dollars and who gets them, the best athlete or the most conventionally feminine one?)

In environments where there are a lot of athletes no one seems surprised at what I do in terms of physical activity. This is different from fitness clubs and other environments where it’s assumed that non-thin people are just starting out.

The Fowler Kennedy Clinic at Western, for example, sees a lot of older athletes and their standard list of questions asks what physical activities or sports you usually do in the run of a week. No one blinks as a I rhyme off my list. They don’t assume from that you can make any conclusions about how active someone is from what they look like.  The physiotherapists and I chat and bond over recent sporting news and I’m not a weirdo to them. “Fit and overweight, how can that be?” is a question that never occurs to them. They see a lot of athletes and there I’m just part of the mosaic.

For what it’s worth, I love their honesty. They never ever mention weight so occasionally I ask. Would my knees be happier if I lost a few kilos? Maybe. We don’t know. Try it and see how it feels.

Yes, exactly so. Thank you.

Focusing on what your body can do can be tremendously liberating. I loved being pregnant and even took a great deal of satisfaction in giving birth. Yes, it was hard work but my body was doing this amazing thing and doing it so well. Wow. All of sudden, the shape of my body made sense to me. Ah, that’s what these hips are good for? Yes.

I recognize this isn’t true for everyone. There are limits to what our bodies can do that those limits are different for different people. That’s true in both childbirth and in sports. We start with different raw material. Able bodied and disabled persons both face limits in terms of performance in sports. But I find that’s not a distinction that is so meaningful when it comes to sports.  Certainly, some of the best athletes I’ve known have been disabled but with adaptive gear have been able to compete at high levels. And thinking about sports you soon realize that everyone uses specialized equipment. It’s just different specialized equipment.

Here’s two other examples that help make my point.

In the rowing room there are very large mirrors besides the erg machines. And it is true that when I first started I immediately looked and noticed my chubby tummy and my messy hair. But after a few training sessions of working on form, I lost all self-consciousness about my shape and instead paid attention to whether my arms were moving quickly on the return and on whether I was bending from the hips in that way I’d been taught. I was still evaluating, yes, but what I was evaluating was something that actually matters for the sport.

Many sports feature clothing that’s designed for speed, not looks. Time trial cyclists in the velodrome wear a skin suit to help minimize wind resistance. Few women I know like the way they look in a skin suit. But once you realize you’re there to win, you get over worrying about how you look in a skin suit. Likewise, rowers compete in something called a unisuit. You can see some pics here.

Almost all the athletes I’ve met have a relationship to their bodies that’s healthier than that of the average gym goer. Certainly there’s no mincing about behind towels in the changing room. We’re all pretty comfortable with the flesh we’ve got. Ditto with healthier attitudes towards eating. Food is fuel for performance. The women cyclists I know all joke about how cycling has influenced our shapes. But it’s not weight or leanness that we talk about. It’s the important stuff, like finding jeans and boots that go over our calves.

So identifying as an athlete helps me avoid the focus on “looking fit” that’s so pervasive in our culture. But identifying as an athlete or as an athletic person isn’t something I was always comfortable doing. After all, I’m not a professional athlete and I wasn’t even a college level athlete.  If I’m joking I sometimes say “adult onset athlete” or weekend warrior. More seriously, I tend to describe myself as a recreational athlete or club-level athlete or masters swimmer/cyclist/rower etc but that’s enough of an ‘in/ for me to feel I can learn from and share in the values of athleticism.

An interesting question is how much of these values–caring about bodily competence not looks–we can transport back into the everyday world.

And yes, not all is rosy in the land of athletic values. It’s not a perfect world. Consider what’s happening as the competitiveness of  professional competition sneaks into amateur athletics. See Wider Testing Reveals Doping Among Amateur Cyclists, Too.

But in terms of providing alternative values to those that rule in the land of looks and beauty, the world of athletics has something to offer women. Let’s sing the praises of our bodies for what they can do, not the way they look. In my own pursuit of fitness. I’ll take athletics over aesthetics any day.

addiction · training

Coffee, the best tasting performance enhancing drug

Sam B6 Comments

I’m planning on teaching a course on sports ethics in the near future and one of the hot topics in that field is performance enhancing substances and the criteria we use to ban such substances in sports competition.

I’m very happy though that my favourite performance drug doesn’t run afoul of any of the rules.

Like many athletes, both recreational and pro, I love my cup of coffee before riding a bike, running, rowing…

Here’s two of my favourite exercise science reporters for the NY Times on the ability of caffeine to enhance athletic performance.

How Coffee Can Galvanize Your Workout

Gretchen Reynolds: Scientists and many athletes have known for years, of course, that a cup of coffee before a workout jolts athletic performance, especially in endurance sports like distance running and cycling. Caffeine has been proven to increase the number of fatty acids circulating in the bloodstream, which enables people to run or pedal longer (since their muscles can absorb and burn that fat for fuel and save the body’s limited stores of carbohydrates until later in the workout). As a result, caffeine, which is legal under International Olympic Committee rules, is the most popular drug in sports. More than two-thirds of about 20,680 Olympic athletes studied for a recent report had caffeine in their urine, with use highest among triathletes, cyclists and rowers.

It’s Time to Make a Coffee Run

Gina Kolata: Caffeine, it turns out, actually works. And it is legal, one of the few performance enhancers that is not banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. So even as sports stars from baseball players to cyclists to sprinters are pilloried for using performance enhancing drugs, one of the best studied performance enhancers is fine for them or anyone else to use. And it is right there in a cup of coffee or a can of soda. Exercise physiologists have studied caffeine’s effects in nearly every iteration: Does it help sprinters? Marathon runners? Cyclists? Rowers? Swimmers? Athletes whose sports involve stopping and starting like tennis players? The answers are yes and yes and yes and yes. Starting as long ago as 1978, researchers have been publishing caffeine studies. And in study after study, they concluded that caffeine actually does improve performance. In fact, some experts, like Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky of McMaster University in Canada, are just incredulous that anyone could even ask if caffeine has a performance effect. “There is so much data on this that it’s unbelievable,” he said. “It’s just unequivocal that caffeine improves performance. It’s been shown in well-respected labs in multiple places around the world.”

fitness · injury · training

Why are painful workouts so much fun? (And other questions about suffering and athletic performance)

Sam B18 Comments

What makes painful workouts so much fun? Or assuming there’s some self selection at work here, we could ask the question a little bit differently: Why do athletes find painful workouts so much fun?

Now not all of the workouts I do are painful. Most days of the week I workout out twice a day and I wouldn’t be able to take that kind of intensity all the time. Nor does it make sense from a training point of view. But still the best workouts, the ones that are the most fun, are the painful ones. And as philosopher, I find this appreciation for pain more than a little puzzling.

But let me begin by describing two of the painful workouts I’ve done this week.

Here’s Monday’s Crossfit workout: The snatch ladder (be mature, no sexual jokes please, we’re all grown ups here)

The snatch ladder from the Crossfit Games looks like this

30 Snatch (M 75 / F 45 lbs)
30 Snatch (M 135 / F 75 lbs)
30 Snatch (M 165 / F 100 lbs)
Max Rep Snatch (M 210 / F 120 lbs)

“This workout begins from the standing position. The athlete will complete all reps at the first weight before advancing to the next weight. Score is total reps completed in 10min.”

We tried this event as our workout of the day on Monday. I’ve got to say it was 10 min of torture. Yet, lots of us loved it and therein lies in the puzzle.

Tuesday’s rowing workout was more painful though and more fun. Rowing workouts are notoriously tough. A friend regularly does something she calls “the erg of death.” I get that.

Though I’m new to the rowing world, cycling workouts are much the same. The best series of cycling training videos, for indoor workouts on the trainer or the rollers, is called The Sufferfest.

Gallows humour about throwing up and passing out is routine. Like the Crossfit tshirt says, “Yes, you will pass out before you die.” And we all know the sayings: Pain is weakness leaving the body. What doesn’t kill you…etc etc etc.

The rowing torture took place on the erg at the London Rowing Club. Here’s the drill: 2000 m for time, rest 3 min, 1500 m for time, rest 3 min, 1000 m for time, rest 3 min, 500 m for time. Collapse on the floor gasping a mere shadow of your former self. Crawl to car, drive home.

I won’t bore you with all the gory details but I did manage the final 500 in 1 minutes and 56 seconds. I was very happy that I finished faster than I started even after all that effort. But I had nothing left in the tank at the end. My legs were screaming for those final 200 m and I was gasping for air. It helped that I had a coach and some other rowers who’d finished ahead of me cheering me on but still that last bit of our workout really hurt.

And I loved it.

So here are some questions about pain and athletic training and performance I’ll be talking about in the coming weeks. Here I just want to raise the questions. Later I hope to say more about them. In the future I’d like to write a philosophical paper on pain in the context of sports training.

1. Are athletes masochists? Now before we all snicker, let me say I don’t mean sexual masochists necessarily. Sexual masochists take sexual pleasure from pain delivered in a sexual context. But you needn’t find sexual pleasure in pain to find pain enjoyable.

Here’s Lance Armstrong:

“Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing. The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain… Once, someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long. ’Pleasure?’ I said. ’I don’t understand the question.’ I didn’t do it for pleasure, I did it for pain.”

And my former track session leader at the Forest City Velodrome used to run from one corner of the track to the other yelling “suffer” as we did 500 m efforts.

2. Are we right to use the language of pain and suffering here at all? While some of us relish talking this way–guilty as charged–others are put off by talk of how much the efforts hurt. They find it demoralizing. As with childbirth (another kind of pain with which I’m intimately familiar) some athletes prefer to talk about intense sensations rather than about pain.

“Wow, that was an intense workout.”

And it’s true that athletic pain from effort is different from pain from injury. It’s not like someone is chopping your arm off without anesthesia. I’ve often compared childbirth which I’ve experienced three times, all without pain relief, to the pain of athletic effort. And I do tell friends that if you’re familiar with that sort of pain, childbirth will be, to that extent, familiar.

I’m not even sure I’d erase the pain, if I could magically do that without drugs, from the experience of childbirth. It felt like an accomplishment much the same way that finishing an endurance sporting event does.

3. Cyclists sometimes say that the person who can suffer the most will win the race. The ability to suffer, to take it, is highly valued. It’s a fascinating question I think, the psychological limits of our ability withstand great suffering.

Consider the article The Transcendent Pain from Bicycling Magazine: “In which we dig deep into the history and the latest research of the revered art of suffering and discover some good news: You can always go harder. Or is that the bad news?”

4. Athletes are known to have high pain tolerances and medical researchers have sometimes wondered what makes athletes different. Is it just self selection (people who don’t like pain quit sports) or is there something more? Can the ability to tolerate pain be learned?

From the journal Pain, “Higher pain tolerance in athletes may hold clues for pain management,”  http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/ehs-hpt051512.php.

5. What tricks or techniques do athletes use to push through the pain?

“Your mindset plays a huge part in your ability to tolerate pain. If you want to be a competitive cyclist, you have to know how to go deep into the pain cave.  A cyclist’s ability to suffer often determines who steps onto the podium and who is standing off to the side. Whether you’re climbing a 10% grade, bridging a gap, or sprinting for the finish, there will be times when you need to dig deep and go harder than you ever thought possible – so how do you it? “I’ll tell you what racing’s about. It’s about suffering. It’s about pain – racing hurts.” Andrew Juskaitis.”

In the article “Suffering: Preparing to Push Yourself through a Hard Effort,” in the journal Podium details a variety of methods cyclists use to cope with pain.

I’ve tried some of them–counting to 20 before I’m allowing to downshift when climbing, for example–but others are new to me. I thought I’d try some out and report back.

6. Finally, what does it mean to talk about the ‘good pain’ of a really tough workout? I gave a talk on gender and cycling at the Trent University and some audience members were genuinely puzzled, claiming never to have experienced anything they’d call a good pain. All the athletes in the audience though knew exactly what I meant. I think for another blog post I’ll try to answer that question. Wish me luck!