Searching for meaning in my training

July 20, 2018July 20, 2018 / thementallifeofweightlifting / Leave a comment

It’s funny when the same thing comes up again and again, over and over. This time, it was about my growing strength.

The first conversation was with my classmate, to whom I found myself saying “I’m the strongest I’ve ever been.” “Ever?” He said. “Yes, ever. This is the strongest I’ve ever been in my life.” It felt good to say that and mean it.

My body has been ready for this my whole life: To be strong. I have become tired of not being able to carry my own weight, to feel burdened by my body and its history.

The second time it happened came from the other direction. My coach and I were talking about various aspects of training, including the fact that my body is recomposing rather than losing pounds (meaning, the eating plan I’m on has me gaining more muscle and losing more fat, but the pounds are staying about the same). He said, “That’s actually a really good place to be. You’re the strongest you’ve ever been.” “It’s really true,” I said.

My whole life, I’ve felt like my body was capable of being really strong, thick, powerful, and capable. I’ve never been much of a dancer (although in fourth grade I did a school-wide performance where I interpretive danced to a Eurythmics song). I’m not particularly nimble or sproingy by nature. But I am a damn good deadlifter, and can carry five giant bags of groceries all at once. (#TrainingLifeGoalz)

But this training program I’m doing right now, where I’m training for a specific goal rather than just putting in work, does something to me psychologically. It gives me a purpose, a meaning to the work I am putting in. I tell myself it’s about the contest in September, but really I think I just need a purpose outside my immediate situation to help me keep track of the long-game. To stay in the immediate feeling is too much, too overwhelming sometimes. If there is some kind of destination, even though that destination is not the “end”, it helps me keep going when the accessory work gets boring and the lifts get heavy. Having a long view takes the pressure off of having to be good at what I’m doing right now. It reminds me that there is something else I’m lifting for.

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust concentration camps, expanded on Nietzche’s idea of having our own “why” in life: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Frankl’s life experience led him to understand that if one can find meaning in their situation, one becomes more prepared to survive it. Witnessing the lives of the people in the concentration camp where he lived, the sickness and the misery, he noted that those who maintained a sense of meaning– be it keeping family and loved ones in mind, or in Frankl’s case, writing a book on scraps of paper that he kept hidden in his bedding– stayed healthier. People need a sense of meaning in order to keep going.

Though I am in no way trying to compare our situations, Frankl’s experience and mind has helped me through many dark times in my life. Training is by no means a “dark time,” but it certainly challenges me to put my all into everything and survive what feels like a momentary potential of death or serious injury. It is a psychological game as much as a physical one, and teaches me to trust my body, trust my coach, trust my history, and trust myself to show up for these moments where the implement feels heavy, scary, and overwhelming. It’s a small laboratory which helps me experiment with how I might handle the more terrible things in life.

We are now in a situation in this country where children are again being stolen from their parents (this happened with impunity to Black people and Indigenous people for centuries here, and it is happening again) and locked away in camps. Hard-won rights are at risk of being lost, and it’s being plainly exposed that those “rights” are built for some but not for all. Like the right to bear arms. Philando Castile was a licensed gun owner and shot in front of his partner and daughter because the officer was racist. This is our country. We can’t pretend it “doesn’t happen here.”

The meaning we find in it all has to come from somewhere. If my body is strong I can be strong for the people who need me. I can think more clearly about my actions and how they support or antagonize my white supremacist indoctrination. I can know more readily where I am located in this system. I can survive my own white fragility and turn my anger to where it needs to go: Toward finding alternative systems, alternative structures, and an end to the way oppression plays out over and over again in this country built on bloodshed, genocide, and terror.

I can carry my own weight when I’m strong, so I can better help carry those whom I have wounded by my structural position over generations as a colonizer. That is my bigger purpose, the long game: It is Audre Lorde’s words, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

A gender discussion

July 9, 2018July 9, 2018 / thementallifeofweightlifting / Leave a comment

I’ve always struggled with the gender divide in sports. As a person who sometimes identifies as a woman, and sometimes more on the masculine end of the spectrum, and mostly something else or in-between, but am cis-female passing, I struggle with gender binaries in general. But this kind of bullshit here reinforces my frustration with separating competitive sports by sex:

notice the difference in winnings? *cough* BULLSHIT *cough*

I’ve heard the very accurate and important argument that prior to Title IX, there was no equity for women in competitive sports. (See the picture to the left to remind you that we still have a long way to go.) I totally get, and agree, that having a men’s and women’s division is actually really important in establishing equal access to competitive and recreational athletics. I totally support this. But the problems that gender flexible, transgender and non-binary athletes face in regards to how their gender is determined by competition organizers, and thus how and whether they can participate in competitive sports, bothers me.

A typical argument about why a transgender woman shouldn’t be allowed to compete with cisgender women goes like this: “Well she has a biological advantage because of her testosterone levels!” In fact, a trans woman who has undergone hormone therapy has about as much estrogen and testosterone as your “average” cis woman. And goodness knows each woman has a different hormone balance anyway regardless of her sex assignment at birth. (Check out this article by Washington Post with further links.)

But, I think what bothers me more is that there is a gender binary in these sports at all. It’s hard when every time I sign up for a competition I have to choose between genders, neither of which fit me. I get that women have a position in competitive sport because of the tremendous power and force from my ancestors like Billie Jean King, Althea Gibson, and Kathrine Switzer. These women fought for (cisgender) women to have increased access to sports traditionally populated by cisgender men. Just as we used to expect only men to participate in most sports, we have now come to expect a gender binary. So, yes, massive change has occurred; but we still have a long way to go before there is gender justice in sport.

This is where cisgender women (and cis-passing “women” like me who are comfortable-ish enough in our cis-passing bodies most of the time) have leverage. For decades we have had access to sports that have traditionally been reserved for cis men (though still with inequitable cash payouts in some sports). Cisgender women are in a powerful position to advocate for inclusivity when it comes to our trans siblings. It’s up to us to continue to fight for inclusion and equity for all people wishing to compete in this sport.

And, to speak to the picture above: When we are fighting solely against the patriarchy and the misogyny of the oppressor, we limit our fight. We also have to fight for something, for inclusivity, and we can do this by remembering our wins and that we have a lot of wins left to make for true equity in sport. We can do this by continuing to fight for cisgender women making the same amount of money cisgender men make in our athletic (and other) careers, AND use our platforms to leverage those of us who are not making anything at all, because the folks who can’t fit into someone else’s idea of the gender binary are not allowed to compete.

Culture and community can provide safety, structure, shared experience, and connection. But many cultures, including cultures of sport, can become exclusive and insular. With the emergence of CrossFit (which is a notoriously white space on the elite level), some women are increasingly likely to feel socially permitted to be strong, muscular, and physically powerful. But in addition to being a primarily white sport, CrossFit is also a heavily gender-binary sport, and historically has not allowed out trans athletes to compete on the elite level.

I hope we can bust through the binary in strength sports by being thoughtful about our positions and privileges when it comes to gender, and advocate for folks who are still trying to get access to competition space.

I’m super interested in hearing from trans and non-binary athletes to hear your experiences in sport, and your thoughts about what I’m saying here and what I can do better to improve access to sporting spaces and eliminate bias and divide. Feel free to email me privately through my contact page.

When showing up for civil liberties and human rights takes priority over training

July 4, 2018July 5, 2018 / thementallifeofweightlifting / Leave a comment

As you can probably tell, getting to Nationals well-prepared is super important to me. I consider my training a part-time job and am as committed to my work in the gym as I am to my work as a therapist. Inside me, they take up the same quality of space and energy, and I am equally as dedicated to being a good therapist as I am to being a good lifter.

But sometimes, the rights of the greater community take precedence. I recognize that I work, lift, love, play, and persevere in a society that is unjust and commodified, where the prison industrial complex profits off the mass incarceration of primarily black and brown people, and where borders and nations are increasingly rigid and punitive, while body sovereignty is eroding. When families seeking refuge are being torn apart, I will speak up.

On Saturdays, I usually train Strongman events with my team and during open gym. It’s the one time of the week when I see my community and can get support with the lifts and implements that are more challenging to set up. I benefit from the experience of the group, and our diverse ways of approaching challenging experiences. And because I work full-time while pursuing a doctorate degree in psychoanalysis, I have limited hours during which I can practice some of these more uncommon lifts.

However, this past Saturday, I chose to skip my Strongman class even though it meant I would have to modify my training program for the week and potentially skip some of the programming. It’s a small tradeoff, really, to exercise my privilege to attend the Families Belong Together demonstration outside the West County Detention Center in Richmond, CA. It is my civil right to demonstrate, and when someone organizes against oppression and injustice, I will do my best to show up.

Around five thousand of us positioned ourselves in the parking lot of the detention center, sandwiched between manzanita bushes, the sparkling bay waters, and the two-story cement jail. Dozens of police officers stood in the shade of the beige building while thousands of us chanted, “Families Belong Together!” Music, posters, revolutionary messages, personal stories of immigration detention and the appellate process, and protest speeches moved my heart.

Boundaries between people keep us healthy. Borders between nations are fictional and arbitrary. We are all shaped by where we are born, and that is no fault of our own. To seek out a better life is part of the “American Dream,” and if this opportunity was open to my ancestors, it should be open to all. Speaking of my white ancestors: I have a lot of ancestral repair to do and part of that is to become someone who can see things differently from them. Unlike my ancestors, who believed that only some should be considered human and therefore some lives were more valuable than others, I believe that what is open to some, should be open to all.

Part of that belief has me calling into question, was America ever really open to me and my ancestors? In fact, I think we just took what we wanted and started making decisions about who gets what.

America is not mine to take; it is not mine to own; and it is not mine to say who gets to come and who must leave.

No Ban. No Wall. Sanctuary for All. Decolonize NOW. I have a lot of work to do on myself as a colonizer- and that work is just as important as anything else I do in my life. In fact, I doubt I could do any of this (psychotherapy, weightlifting, life) without simultaneously working on my own historical status as a colonizer and beneficiary of slavery.

Lifting weights helps me get stronger to hold all the truths I must uncover. Being a therapist helps me navigate complex emotional territory. Staying awake means staying aware of how I am always in a position of structural power- and that I must learn to let that go, no matter the “inconvenience” or if it jeopardizes my plans for myself. I’ve benefitted for much too long from other people’s pain, whether I know it or not. Better to know so I can start to un-do.

I’m training for more than just making the lift. I’m training so that I can own my shit and stop myself and my lineage from perpetuating harm on susceptible and marginalized communities. I’m training so that others can have a chance to be better, and be more themselves, just like I can.

Me holding a sign that reads, “No Ban! No Wall! Sanctuary for All! Families Belong Together”