word power – FIT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

The vocabulary of fitness is wearing me out.

I was already bored to tears with all the phrasing around burning fat/calories, trimming inches, and sculpting parts of our bodies. That stuff is so common that aside from the occasional eyeroll, I usually just skim over it when I see/hear it. I hate it but…meh.

However, as I have been seeking out more challenging videos lately I have been, to use the local vernacular, absolutely drove by the vocab that is supposed to motivate me.

I don’t want to ‘crush’ anything. Nor am I interested in a video that has the word ‘attack’ in the title. I don’t want to ‘destroy’ my abs or my glutes or my biceps. I don’t want to leave any of my muscles ‘screaming.’*

Sure, this is cute but it doesn’t feel, to me, like a way to encourage your muscles to work with you to get stronger. Image description: a GIF of a curly haired girl crushing a can in her right hand. Text below reads ‘We must crush them!!!!!!’

And despite being a martial artist who loves to practice punching and kicking, it bugs me that a lot of videos that incorporate those movements are called ‘body combat.’**

When I read titles with those words in them or when I hear the instructor use them during a workout, I don’t feel charged up and motivated, I feel tired.

And, shockingly, that is NOT what I am looking for when I’m exercising.

I want to be encouraged to work hard. I want to be told that I can do it. I want to be guided to forge ahead, to persist. I don’t want to feel like my exercise is supposed to be painful or punishing.

I thought we had left the whole ‘No Pain, No Gain’ thing behind but all of this language of destruction makes me feel like that attitude has snuck back into the party wearing different clothes and is waiting to see if we catch on.

And, as Tracy noted when I mentioned my irritation with these words, it’s frustrating and sad that we are all assumed to be in battle with our bodies all the time.

I am not fighting against my body in the quest to increase my fitness level.

My body and brain are working TOGETHER to move toward increased mobility and strength and a feeling of wellbeing. Any video titles or peppy encouragements that invite me to pit my brain against my body end up sapping my energy and leaving me feeling defeated.

Accurate depiction of my energy levels upon being invited to crush/attack/destroy some part of my body on a workout. Image description: a GIF of a kid in a dress hanging on to one pole of a small merry-go-round. As the machine turns the kid is being dragged along. Text in the upper left reads ‘Status:’

I know that, culturally, many people’s bodies are seen as problematic and unruly – always being relentlessly human instead of a perfectly managed creation. This vocabulary thing ties into that, of course – an unruly body must be managed and defeated so it will look and behave in acceptable ways.

And I also know that the phrasing I am describing will seem like no big deal to some. In fact, I’m sure lots of people would tell me to just ignore it’ but I can’t do that.

I’m a writer and storyteller and I spend a long time making sure that the words I choose serve the purpose I want them to serves.

Words matter. Words have power. Words carry messages above and beyond their direct meaning.

And these destruction-themed words can drag all kinds of social expectations into my exercise time. My workouts are hard enough without also lifting cultural baggage at the same time.

How do you feel about these words? Do you find them motivating? Frustrating? Or do you not even notice them?

*If those words help you to power up, please feel free to completely ignore this post. I’m talking about my feelings and frustrations. not laying down a law about what can and cannot be said in a workout.

**The combat part I totally get but calling it body combat really makes it sound like you are fighting your own body. Ick.

If I fall behind on a program I am doing – exercise or otherwise – I have a bad habit of trying to ‘catch up.’

This either leads to me trying to jam multiple sessions into one day, or to me avoiding the activity entirely because there is too much to do to rejoin the group (even if it is a self-paced program.)

Lately, though, I have realized that I don’t always *have* to catch up and neither do you!

Sure, some graduated programs require us to do every step, but most of the time we can just jump right into the plan for a given day. We might be a little in over our heads for the first bit, but we’ll adjust.

(And, of course, if you feel stressed about jumping in, you can always skim the missing material without doing it all.)

And if we DO need to do every step in order for the program to make sense?

Then we harness our word power again.

If saying that we are trying to catch up gives us that stressed feeling of being ‘behind’ perhaps we can call it restarting or recalibrating.

For me, both of those words have a sense of bringing experience and new information to our plans. That experience/information can help us to proceed in a way that better serves us.

And they let us pick up where we left off without the feeling that we should be at another point in the process.

So, if you haven’t been able to follow the program that you set for yourself, don’t feel that you need to catch up.

Instead, you can choose to jump forward or recalibrate.

The key is that you keep going in a way that feels freeing.

Please don’t let what you haven’t done drag you down and keep you from continuing.

Here’s your gold star for today’s plans for jumping, recalibration or for staying the course.

You can do this!