I started weightlifting in September last year. I didn’t have any expectations for it. My thoughts on weightlifting were the same as I hear from all my sports-doing friends. You lift weights to improve your real sport, not as an activity in its own right. Real good for you, that weightlifting, but so boring. I mean, reps of rows and curls? The early gains are fun, but weightlifting is monotonous and pointless. But more and more in the evenings, when it was time to pack up for our Ultimate pick-up game I didn’t want to. I had loved Ultimate so very much, but I was drifting away. I didn’t know if I would go back to it, but I knew I was out of shape and I figured that weightlifting would prepare me for whatever real sport I did next.
There wasn’t any question about which gym I’d go to. I’d watched it open several years ago, the alterno, non-chain gym. The one with all the plants and no mirrors and the revolving art show. I didn’t even consider any other gyms or shop around, so I got incredibly lucky. They are very serious about everyone developing full strength and full movement. Everyone is all friendly and nice, and they expect everyone who walks in to lift heavy shit.
I had no idea, wouldn’t have predicted it myself, but it turns out that I really like to lift heavy things. It suits me perfectly. First, it is super technical. When you’re picking up the heaviest things you can, every single piece of your body alignment matters. A year into it, there is still more to a single bench press than I can hold in my head on each attempt. I still haven’t mastered my form for the three major lifts; I still have to concentrate on a couple things each time. If I internalize those, the rest of the list of things to improve is blissfully long. I’ve always been a technician*, so this is great. I suppose that if I ever get good at deadlift, bench press and squats, I could move up to the actually hard moves, the olympic lifts, where you jump under the bar. Second, it is fast. I’ll never understand you people who run or cycle long distances. I just plain don’t have the discipline for that. All out exertion for a few seconds is way better.
The mental parts of weightlifting are just right for me, and it seems my body is pretty good for the physical parts of weightlifting. With no training, I walked in there strong. I wouldn’t have known, because I had no reference for what is a little weight and a lot of weight. But people would do asides to each other, or notice my bar and their eyebrows would go up. I eventually caught that if other women joined my workouts, the trainer would set their high weights at surprisingly low numbers. Now I gloat about being freakishly strong and make sure to point it out at any lull in a conversation. But I didn’t know it at first.
So I settled into weightlifting. Within a couple months I knew I’d found my next thing. The feeling was back, the feeling of wanting the evening to come so I could go to my sport. The abiding interest and the show-offy feeling of being a promising new student. I’ve got strong monomaniacal tendencies; when I did tkd and Ultimate they were all-consuming. I hope that intensity is fading with age, because I don’t need the swirly eyes again, but it seems like I’ve found a pretty good cult to be in for ten years. I like the people so far. The goal, to be very strong, turns out to be handy in real life. I heft stuff and growing boys and move big things with noticeably less effort*. So I’m in love with an activity again and happy it is a rich and useful one. The only other interesting part is how my body has changed.
*Which is why I am positive I can teach anyone to throw a disc.
**If this is how you always live, men, you have no idea how relatively convenient and easy it makes life. Or, if you haven’t thought about it, you have no idea how hard the women who do the same things (grocery shopping, handywork around the house) as you are working. Of course, if they’ve given up in favor of your doing it, I’d rather they started building strength.