Laura, thank you! 🙏 So grateful I found your Substack. This post is awesome. Can’t wait to read more about your experience with fighting.
And to anyone doubting or concerned about women building muscle through weight lifting, they should get educated on health basics and go spend time with elderly women and men. Most elderly people who didn’t spend time in their midlife building or maintaining muscle, will have more health issues later in life. Health > stigmas. Respect for what you’re doing, in the ring and outside of it. 👊
"But the solidness of the bar, the solidness of the ground beneath my feet: it’s an anchor, it’s a space to slow down and take a long breath, it’s a space to practice self-belief through the act of laying the weight on your body and then moving that weight however you need to."
What an incredible description of how weightlifting can make you feel. You're leading the way in cutting against the stigma of women lifting.
I'd love to read more about your experiences w/ the barbell.
Yes. To all of this. Lifting weights, then powerlifting, totally reconfigured what I thought I knew about myself and my body. Like you said, there’s that feeling of lifting the weight off you, of controlling the stress, that absolutely bleeds out into other aspects of life outside the gym. I thought it was funny you mentioned people being worried about you lifting, and then also about the stigma of women being strong. I think there is a general stigma about lifting heavy that gets recycled time and time again and intensifies according to sex/gender.
Could definitely talk at length about this, but from my research, lifting heavy (as opposed to sport-specific lifting) has always kind of been relegated as a “misfit sport.” Lifting became a LITTLE more structured as a “sport” in the 19th century, then came into the Olympics in the 1896 games, then in the mid-20th century is when we see a big outgrowth of lifting athletic associations. But people weren’t super hyped on it because they still had weird misgivings about exercising for the sole purpose of self-improvement until about the 1970s, with it really becoming normalized in the 1980s. I think its perceived solitary nature has always made people less likely to rally around it, and so their perceptions grow in opposition to the science because they don’t really know what we’re doing here.
Laura, thank you! 🙏 So grateful I found your Substack. This post is awesome. Can’t wait to read more about your experience with fighting.
And to anyone doubting or concerned about women building muscle through weight lifting, they should get educated on health basics and go spend time with elderly women and men. Most elderly people who didn’t spend time in their midlife building or maintaining muscle, will have more health issues later in life. Health > stigmas. Respect for what you’re doing, in the ring and outside of it. 👊
Thanks, Matt!
"But the solidness of the bar, the solidness of the ground beneath my feet: it’s an anchor, it’s a space to slow down and take a long breath, it’s a space to practice self-belief through the act of laying the weight on your body and then moving that weight however you need to."
What an incredible description of how weightlifting can make you feel. You're leading the way in cutting against the stigma of women lifting.
I'd love to read more about your experiences w/ the barbell.
Thank you, Willis!
Yes. To all of this. Lifting weights, then powerlifting, totally reconfigured what I thought I knew about myself and my body. Like you said, there’s that feeling of lifting the weight off you, of controlling the stress, that absolutely bleeds out into other aspects of life outside the gym. I thought it was funny you mentioned people being worried about you lifting, and then also about the stigma of women being strong. I think there is a general stigma about lifting heavy that gets recycled time and time again and intensifies according to sex/gender.
That's so interesting re a general stigma around lifting heavy. I wonder where that comes from?
Could definitely talk at length about this, but from my research, lifting heavy (as opposed to sport-specific lifting) has always kind of been relegated as a “misfit sport.” Lifting became a LITTLE more structured as a “sport” in the 19th century, then came into the Olympics in the 1896 games, then in the mid-20th century is when we see a big outgrowth of lifting athletic associations. But people weren’t super hyped on it because they still had weird misgivings about exercising for the sole purpose of self-improvement until about the 1970s, with it really becoming normalized in the 1980s. I think its perceived solitary nature has always made people less likely to rally around it, and so their perceptions grow in opposition to the science because they don’t really know what we’re doing here.
That is super interesting--thank you for sharing!