(no subject)

[sebastienne]

Medical professionals are so fond of telling us that regular exercise is great for our physical and mental health, but for a lot of us that's about as much use as prescribing chamomile tea to a chronic insomniac.

There's a huge amount of privilege involved in being able to take regular exercise. Factors that make it difficult or impossible to exercise might include: disabilities and pain conditions; long working hours; family/caring commitments; lack of access to safe or appropriate spaces for exercise; lack of access to specialist equipment or clothing; lack of interest in exercising.

For me, it was all about being fat.

Read more at the Lashings blog >>

Comments

[x_mass.livejournal.com]

there is a women only power lifting session in Oxford - where - please tell me where?
I lift at Oxsrad http://www.oxsrad.org/ which for me has been the friendliest gym I have ever been in.
I was lifting regularly 2 years ago but illness and stress knocked me back and I've only just returned
I use NROL although i know people who say goo things about starting strength
Do you know about the ladies who lift courses and http://strengthambassadors.com/what-we-do/

[sebastienne]

They operate out of Linacre College - where the vice-principal broke power-lifting world-records last year. Sadly they've locked down membership at the moment due to over-subscription; but I'm trying to persuade them that they want to run two nights a week instead of locking down and I'll let you know if they do start accepting new members again.

To be honest I'm really kind of clueless about anything lifting-related outside the Linacre Ladies That Lift bubble.. I've never read a book about it or visited any other training course. I just lift what the coach tells me every week!

[x_mass.livejournal.com]

having a coach tell you what to lift is probably the best way
I certainly like the new rules of lifting -
its written by a journalist who makes the whole thing very approachable

strength ambassodors rock and they have lots of useful videos

I know someone who lifts and who apparently appears to doctors as being signicantly obese, apparently she loves seing their faces when they test her thinking that she will be all but diabetic and get scores that say she is in excelent physical shape, i suspect they would say she is an aberation...

personally about 6 months ago I finally managed to get myself back onto what is for me a good diet after 18 months of off the wagon and damaging myself. With diets I recommend people read or watch gary taubes http://youtu.be/PFOogvab2TA (6 minutes on diet and thermodynamics) and do what I did - made my own mind up!

I would say I hope your well but if your lifting and your not you soon will be

I love Lifting!!!

kate

[sebastienne]

Hah, yeah, I've spent my whole life having doctors assume that I'll have various fat-related health conditions - I feel your friend's pain.

I'm conflicted about that video -- it starts off by problematising "calories in, calories out", which, great! But then I had to stop watching because he started talking like my body is a problem, part of an epidemic, which I have no time for at all.

[x_mass.livejournal.com]

I'm soory
Gary is a great journalist but at times he can be a poor communicator. The key thought in the video is that human beings bodies are diverse, its not about calories in calories out - it's not about physics its biology, its about biology, endocrinology, physiology, - as he says elsewhere in early twentieth century german doctors recognised that children would eat more food and grow bigger, taller, stronger.
So yes the law of thermodynamics is true but it says nothing about causality - a star that is getting bigger contains more energy, a room with lots of people in it had at least at one time more people entering then leaving.
And what is equally true is that humans bodies sre diverse, we recognise that people have a huge variety of bodies and yet we have this insanity in medicine that apply a specific set of values to people without any evidence that they are universally true.
Its like 5 foot eight was the correct height and everybody had to be that: thus short people to be put on wracks and tall people to have surgery to make them the right size!
The champions in sports often are often succesful because of their genetics, when they train their bodies respond better to create bodies that are the pinncale for that sport, in sumo we have athletes who combine immense strength with high weight because that is the winning formula. Yet because of big business bullshit its paula radcliffe that commonly lauded not Hildeborg Hugdal or Sue Hollands.

[x_mass.livejournal.com]

"I've spent my whole life having doctors assume that I'll have various fat-related health conditions - I feel your friend's pain"

I get the impression that it's not pain - its Joy - in doctors tripping themselves up by their own stupid discrimitory assumptions - its watching people faceplant and then try to act like nothing has happened!

I suppose its shadenfreude and richly deserved as well!

[vass]

Women-only powerlifting class? *jealous*

[rmc28]

Hi. kaberett linked to you as I am just starting to add some weight training after ~2 years of slowly building up running via C25k, and I wrote up how intimidating I found my assessment session. So much of what you write here I agree with.

[sebastienne]

Hi, nice to meet you :)

[highfantastical.livejournal.com]

Really good and interesting post! I enjoyed that a lot. I have complicated feelings about exercise rhetoric ... technically I 'exercise' (do physio) very 'regularly', but my practice and my embodiment are so far off most cultural narratives of exercising, and even most narratives of physio, that being able (strictly speaking) to tell myself -- 'I do exercise' -- doesn't begin to dent my underlying massively damaged/damaging feelings in the subject. It was so thought-provoking to read your personal narrative; I'm sure I'll be reflecting on it for a bit. <3