Strong! (the Movie)

Last night, I joined two friends of mine and went to see this movie, about Cheryl Haworth, a three-time Olympic athlete.  The website for the movie has the following blurb:

"A formidable figure, standing at 5'8" and weighing over 300 pounds, Cheryl Haworth struggles to defend her champion status as her lifetime weightlifting career inches towards its inevitable end. Strong! chronicles her journey and the challenges this unusual elite athlete faces, exploring popular notions of power, strength, beauty, and health."

There were two themes in the movie that deeply resonated with me.  The first was in dealing with injuries, and I'm not going to jump into that discussion here beyond stating that I absolutely understood the frustration of feeling like you're losing ground and time while you bounce from doctor to specialist trying to figure out what is wrong.   And if it's frustrating for an average athlete like me, how much worse it must be for an elite athlete preparing to compete in the Olympics, knowing that this could be the last time she gets a shot.   Although she never asks for sympathy and would probably cringe to hear it, my heart just went out to her instantly.

The second theme that really captivated me was around the question of weight/body image.   This is where I'll spend the rest of tonight's blogtime, and if you are disinterested in hearing about me and my big ass, now is the time to leave the post.  I'm not whining, and I do not want anyone's sympathy--you cannot know how little interest I have in your sympathy on this topic, because I do not feel pitiful.  If I sound bummed or bitter, I'm not.  To the contrary, I often feel amazed at what my body can do, but that has never, ever erased wanting to be smaller than I am at present, nor does it erase my incredulity at what is going on with my ass.  And that, my friends, annoys the shit out of me.

The theme that I found the most fascinating was that even at the elite Olympic level, when you have *factual* information--lifts you've made, medals you've won, people you've beaten--FACTS to *prove* you kick ass, you can still be left confronting this head trip about body image.  One thing Cheryl shares in the film is how she'd like to be smaller, but she understands that "mass moves mass" and it's her explicit job to move mass.   She can't go on a diet and lose 100# because she's expected to total in snatch and clean & jerk, and she's expected to help her team earn spots at the Olympics, and she's vital to that team.   She needs all her muscle, and her body weight was part of the reason she earned a bronze medal at the damn Olympics.   THE OLYMPICS.   We are not talking about some ordinary regional competition.   Cheryl is the real damn deal; she is a legit badass, and she's talking about wanting to be thinner and how she knows people don't want women that look like her.

It blows my mind.  

There she is in the movie, sitting on the same stupid pointless seesaw that I sit on, both of us unconditionally loving what our (relative) strength feels like and loving what our bodies can do, and yet, feeling all sorts of frustration that the prerequisite for that strength is a body that we just cannot find a way to love in the same unconditional way?

I mean, it's one thing when you are me--a near-middle-aged woman lifting pretty ordinary weights.  I'm certainly not Olympic material, nor anything special when it comes to lifting heavy.  But here is a bronze medalist who Clean and Jerks about three times what I can (or could, before rehab of the infamous dead butt), and we are both saying the same stuff?

It blows. My. Mind.   How can she feel that way when she is so FACTUALLY amazing? 

And here's the really-reals from this side of the fence, as an ordinary person who will never be Olympic caliber.

Nobody signs up for a fitness regimen with the thought of "Oh, hey, let's see what I can do about gaining that final 35# I've been meaning to add to my body".  Maybe pencil-necked 14 year old boys who want to impress potential paramours do, but most people don't go into a new gym with that idea.  And yet, that is precisely what happened to me.   Even more awesome: that paleo diet that helped everyone you ever met drop weight effortlessly?   Paleo eating accelerated the weight increase for me--in fact, 10# of that weight jumped on in the single month I ate 100% pure paleo back in 2010.   I gained weight on friggin' Atkins.

Truth.

It just does not happen this way for most people.   Most people join CrossFit and manage to achieve the same type of strength gains I saw, or similar, without the commensurate body weight gain.  And I can already hear you saying it, because it's what everyone says to me when I tell them this story.  "But it's MUSCLE," you gamely protest.   "Muscle is good!"    For the record, no one can gain 35# of muscle in a year without benefit of steroids, and I am not on steroids.  

And really, what else are you going to say, beyond "Dear Baby Jesus, please do NOT let that be me, ever."   And trust me, I know you're thinking it, because I certainly would be if I were in your shoes.  Only one person in the history of time has anyone ever said exactly what I'd have said, which is "I don't think this shit is working for you".   I laughed then, and I laugh now. 

So let's go there for a moment.  Don't worry! You can come back to your existing body in a moment.  But first, imagine that this happened to you.  You started running or CrossFitting or MMA or whatever you do for fitness.  Regardless of why you started...to increase your fitness, for mental reasons, for fun, for building endurance or whatever the hell your reasons were...imagine that you gained those things in spades, (as I did--I think in some ways, CrossFit has literally saved my life) but you ALSO gained 35# in a single year.   Sit there in your chair or wherever you're reading this, and imagine where those 35# would land on you.  Fuck it, I'll even say you can add it entirely in muscle (which is not what happened to me).   Imagine how it would feel to try to do pullups with 35 extra, or running, or handstand pushups.   I guarantee it is not easier to do these things even with all your new-found strength.  The many legion of you who lost weight can attest how losing weight helped you in your workouts, most likely.

Now, with that extra 35#, hear everyone around you talking about getting so much leaner after starting CrossFit and try not to punch them square in the face.  My body fat percentage is now at 27%.   Twenty motherfucking seven.  It grinds my gears, big time.

Would you continue to CrossFit, if this happened to you?  Would you be delighted about the new weight?  Would you take the same joy in buying a whole new wardrobe if you were going up 4 sizes instead of down?

 
And yet, I am still CrossFitting.

 
In October of 2009, just before I found the awesome that is CrossFit, I weighed 135#.  It says so right on my online WeightWatchers tracker.  I stand 5'4".   Ever since my high school athlete days, I have carried more muscle than an average woman, so despite the height/weight ratio, I wore a size six or a size eight, depending on who makes the clothes (thanks, vanity sizing in the clothing industry--I still love you for that size 4 I once wore).  I still possess some of the sixes and the eights--they're hanging out in a spare closet for the mythical day when I fit back into them, which will probably happen right after they finally dig up Jimmy Hoffa and we ride my pet unicorn together. 

One year after starting Crossfit, I hit an all-time high of 170# (+26%).  I'm down to 160 now (still +19% vs. original weight), after reining in the really heavy lifting to rehab my dead butt, but I am pretty certain it will come back when I start hitting the weights hard again.

And yet...I am clearly designed to lift heavy shit, because when I do it, and when I eat to support that activity (which I'll interpret here as eating Paleo), I get insanely strong in a ridiculously short amount of time.  I look at a barbell and I get stronger.  My deadlift went from 65# to 255# (+292%) in that same year that I gained 35#--lifted using only 2/3 of my ass to do it, no less.   It was barely difficult to achieve that deadlift PR.   I did no special training to get there--no Wendler, no conjugate--I didn't even have a special focus on any one lift.   I just followed regular CrossFit programming, 2 or 3x/week, and that is only one statistic I could throw at you.  I improved lots of lifts by at least 100% in that same first year.  Every time I walked into the box, I set a new PR.  

However, performing my best and strongest also took me to the point where people were saying, to my face, "wow, you're really getting bulky!"   It's a damned hard thing to hear, especially as a woman, and most especially, as someone who is not and will never ever be an elite athlete.

Here's the other thing: it's become tragically uncool to say that you want to lose weight in CrossFitland.  We're not supposed to want that.  We are supposed to want to get "stronger", "fitter", "healthier".   Check, check, and check.  What insane person does not want these things?  Of course you do, and you should.   Fuck all that noise about looking like supermodels and wanting cheekbones and vascularity and ab muscles!   I wonder what people from the box will think if they read this--and I feel very naked exposing all of this.  I take solace in knowing I can pull this post if I want to.

Once again, I think of Cheryl.  Does she feel naked, seeing herself on a big screen talking about these same things?   Does she wish she hadn't said that stuff?  I am grateful that she did, because it makes me feel slightly less insane.

I did say I had no plans to quit CrossFit, and I mean that.  I really believe the things it has done for me are life changing in ways I can't even go into here.  I do still regularly get a charge out of what my body has learned how to do.  Tonight I banged out 10 pullups, strung, just because I felt like it.  I could go on and on and on about what I can do now that was inconceivable 3 years ago.   I don't hate my body--in fact I think my arms are pretty amazing and my ass, despite no longer fitting into any of my pants, is a hell of a lot nicer than it was before.  Don't even get me started on my beautiful callouses--seriously.  It's ten minutes out of your life that you'll wish you had back.

But I still wish I was smaller.  Those are Cheryl's words (perhaps verbatim) and I echo them.  I truly envy the people--male or female--who can just say, "Fuck it: I yam what I yam and I lift heavy and I'm happy at this weight or any weight because I love everything there is about me."  I've never been so evolved and may never be--and I'm not sure I can ever be happy staying at the weight I hit at my apex of strength.  I have no idea what I will do when I start going heavy again and the scale once again creeps up.  I have no idea what I will do if I can't see gains if I keep dieting.  I have no idea what I will do if I have to someday confront the choice--really confront it--between getting smaller or getting stronger.   


More to come.