Gentlemen and the Gym.

I read this great article in the Sydney Morning Herald about women’s fear of entering the weights section of a gym (you can read it here http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/blogs/chew-on-this/gender-and-the-gym-20120827-24w32.html).  It detailed how for no real reason the gym tends to split its’ space into a female/male division as if to say, women shouldn’t be near weights. Bollocks!

The journalist who wrote the article, Paula Goodyer, admitted to going to the same gym for a decade before getting the strength to walk over to the weights. It’s ironic that she needed strength to go where strength is built.

I will admit I too had this same trepidation about treading where testosterone dominated… and then I joined Crossfit, where the only way to look like  this is to get amongst it and GET LIFTING.

Anyone who knows me knows how absolutely besotted I am with this training and if you don’t know about it, let me tell you, it gets ugly! I simultaneously look my worst while feeling my best every day that I do it. I never would have believed that I would unmask myself and expose that vulnerability to a room full of shirtless men if anyone had told me I would a year ago. It is truly one of the most freeing things I have ever experienced.

In my previous life, my insecurities would have me run to a dressing room before I even contemplated a dead lift, I’d sooner die than part ways with my eyeliner and I’d bury my pride in cosmetics before attempting a bench press - until I finally got to experience what it meant to be a part of this great team, to be encouraged by some pretty fabulous and fun-loving men and to work out in an environment that harnessed growth rather than stifled it with judgement.

The first time we were given a team workout to complete, my heart sank. I knew I’d be letting the team down. I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t fit enough and the fittest guy in the room was going to be frustrated by my deficiencies. Not so.

He encouraged. He cheered. He was even impressed at how hard I was trying. There was no judgement. There was no condescension, only camaraderie and respect. He gained mine that day too.

Stepping into a Crossfit gym meant my ego was left at the door but all other team members had to do the same and that’s the thing about jumping in with the boys - we all become equals; united in shared struggle and nobody sees gender.

I know it’s an admission that most women will hate and maybe judge me for but many of us love to be validated by a man’s attention. Yes, we should hold our own. Yes, we should have the personal strength, self-belief and security that we never need a compliment but unlike you (who are obviously very intelligent and sophisticated and friendly and attractive and perfect), I like to be told on occasion (particularly when out of my comfort zone or working hard) that I’m doing great or doing the right thing. That’s where the fun and fabulousness of mixing with the macho men of a gym comes in.

When I’m done with a workout, there’s usually a boy who will offer to pack my weights away (they may not do this at home but the gym is a domain where they like to flex their domestic muscles and occasionally I’ll let them and enjoy it). When I’m too puffed out to run another metre, there’s a male cheer squad telling you to keep treading the road less travelled. This is a huge perk.When you’re on your last round of repetitions and the uber fit and super-hot and occasionally shirtless tell you that you can do what you thought you couldn’t – you’re doing that rep dammit!

Great friendships have been formed amidst weight plates where I work-out. Amidst our struggle while I sweat enough to end a drought, while my frizzy hair channels Diana Ross’, while my heart beats so fast I can barely breathe and while my cheeks are a lovely shade of beetroot, somehow I still feel beautiful, confident and strong and since it’s neither cosmetics or clothing that inspire this, I’d have to put it down to the people that surround me and that make the place a platform for my best self to step forward. Thank you ladies AND gentlemen.

While I’m first to say I can’t when someone is doing a handstand pushup, a pull up or a range of other movements, what I’ve learnt and what both the men and women around me have taught me is that there isn’t a thing a woman can’t do unless she says she can’t and at my gym there isn’t a man who would (or should) dare stop her.

One of our coaches is thinking to tell the men that sign up to the gym that he’ll in fact “make a woman out of them” (his words not mine). He says this because he believes women are far stronger than men and that it’s the men that could do with a lesson or two from us – he knows what he’s on about and it’s time you realized it too.

Real life has both men and women walking similar paths with only a few small differences. The gym is a microcosm of that. People overcoming tribulation. Together but alone (in that it still requires you to give it all you’ve got to pull yourself through).

While you’re worried about sweating in front of them – when they see it, it somehow earns you their respect.

While you’re worried about not being in your best outfit – they’re more interested in the body you have without clothes.

While you’re worried about that bit of fat wobbling and warding them off, they’re thinking how strong you are to do something to get rid of it.

The quickest route to confidence is in knowing how to do something. The only way to know is if you try. The only way to try is to step out of your comfort zone and before you know it, that comfort zone will be redefined and will have a few fit bodies strengthening that foundation.

Is Love Ever Enough…

The titling of this blog is already wrong. You see, I’d never grab pompoms and cheer on the side of love and blissful ignorance. As idealistic as I may be, I’ve never believed that love alone would be enough to sustain a relationship – but recently I’ve been forced to see differently. Bring it I say.

The rule books have been thrown out of the window, women are courting, sleeping around, dating and loving like men and men are relishing it – or are they?

I have a friend who has been positively whipped by the woman in his life. He used to have a long list of essential criterion to qualify a woman into his heart, his psyche, his love bed. Then he met lady love, let’s call her, Lolita. Lolita is a 21^st century woman, forward thinking, flirtatious, in control of her sexuality, beautiful, career focused and in a word, fabulous. She was also besotted with my friend. His love duly followed.

It was only a matter of time that love would strike his seemingly asexual, unfeeling heart. I know that sounds harsh, but he always struck me as the man that would flirt with the idea of love but never fall in love, he was a little bit too in love with himself to let anyone else in. As a friend, his vanity was hilarious, his transformation was even funnier (shocking and stupefying too).

 She no longer needed equal proportions in breasts and booty, she no longer needed a chopping board for abs, she didn’t need a manicure, she didn’t need a degree, she just needed to love him, as he was. She was “just a girl, looking at a boy, asking him to love her,” (thank you Notting Hill). He did.

I’ve often argued that we need to be complete to be our best selves in our relationships, so we’re not too reliant, not too needy, not high maintenance and ultimately not going to lose a guy in ten dates or less. (I never got that movie, why would anyone want to lose Matthew McConaughey if they had the chance to have him at all)? Anyway, I’ve always thought that we did our best to be complete so the flashing ‘vacant’ signs on our foreheads didn’t wreak of desperation and emptiness….then I was challenged to think differently.

Another (worse written relationship blog so don’t go searching for it) said that perhaps we had to be vulnerable to find love because that was when we were most likely to allow our figuratively naked selves out. Only then would we subject ourselves to the hurt, the heartache, the hysteria and the hyperboles of love.

My mate has completely mellowed, he’s been stripped of his bravado (*except when speaking about how he would protect her, in which case he is a stoic handsome , muscular Greek godlike soldier on a white horse – he  practically becomes Old Spice guy). Feminists please do not go comment crazy, speaking about how women do not need to be rescued. They certainly don’t. This is not a fairytale but if I’m going to be in a relationship I want to know that my man is a man who can pull his weight ,uplift me when I’m down and tell me I’m beautiful daily (or else what’s the point – I’ll make exceptions for the latter point…maybe).

The above was true for my mate. His heart was incomplete until completed by his woman and in having her love him, warts and all, he found happiness incomparable to anything he had experienced. He was thankful that of all the toads in all the town, she'd chosen him to be hers. He felt like a prince and placed her high above himself. She rescued his heart. Love was enough.

The same is true of another friend of mine. She is busily planning a wedding. She is a woman who has dreamt of her big day from the womb. She even dreamt this fiancée up and weeks later he manifested – something is to be said of her clairvoyant abilities but we’ll get to that later. I asked if she could dream me up partner but her premonitions weren’t working that day (of course). Wedding planning is when the cookie cut relationship crumbles for many. Church or no church – white dress – red dress – reception – honeymoon – bridesmaids – dresses – flower girls – guests – invitations – bombonierres – the list is so long (and so well-rehearsed you’d think I’d done this before) and so tedious to work through that it’s bound to burst a few dream bubbles and potentially erupt into emotional lava that spills, boils, bubbles and destroys you dream day. Not so for my friend. In her blissful bridal mental waltz, she is happily dancing around her fiancée’s requests for a chance at true love. I think they call this compromise. Her level of compromise grew proportionately to the love she felt and the love she was given.

The man made the wait worth it. She is in love and at the moment it suffices. It is everything. It is all that matters. He filled her in a way she couldn't ask because before him, this love was unquantifiable and she was thankful for him and she would do her utmost to keep this joy (and this boy).

Love is so profound and when we have it we want to believe that that version of love is the greatest we can give and be given. Love needs to be enough because we invest so much of ourselves into it that for it not to be enough is an assault on our uninhibited expression of it. Charles Dickens said “men want to believe they are the first person to have ever loved their woman,” maybe even when we’ve dated others, you can be the first men to love us in the way that you do. Dickens continued to say “women want to be a man’s last romance,” easily fixed with a ring or a promise to commit. If all we are seeking is companionship and exclusivity, maybe love is all we need to complete us and then all of our petty criteria becomes just that…petty.