a-notanotherfitnessblog

[a-notanotherfitnessblog]

Social Media is like crack and crack my friends is WACK.

In my 23 years of life the world has gone through a time of huge technological advancement, I remember dial-up internet and now everyone has an iPhone X, and you can get WiFi in the tube, which to me is still weird. And during this we witnessed the birth of what came to be called Social Media, starting with Facebook and MySpace, then Blogger and Bebo, now Instagram and Pinterest, how many incarnations of these platforms have we lived through already? It all came from this deep primative urge we humans have to socialise and connect with others, these platforms were built for exactly that to create connections between us. Facebook’s slogan was “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” More hilarious and I think apt options for Facebook slogans can be found here. The funny thing is although made with this purpose in mind, social media has been found to do the exact opposite,  it pushes us away from each other and into our devices. It may have been the creators intention but “Connection” is not a word I would use for SM now, the more accessible all these platforms have become to us the less time people spend actually connecting. Which is where my first issue with SM lies, it’s removing us all from the MOMENT, instead of letting an event or feeling happen, we have to tweet it or capture it and post it. When this comes to health and fitness it means you’re distracted from the actually doing of the fitness and more interested in putting up an Insta-story of you post-workout shake. Outside of fitness, I mean come on, how many times have you been sat in with friends and they’re all so sucked into their phones they aren’t even listening, it’s maddening how involved and invested we’ve become with something that’s not even real. Psychology Today which is a great website for any of you who like geeking out about everyday things has a great article linked here all about the different ways social media ruins everything, which sounds extreme but their reasons are pretty accurate. 

Being the first generation of teens to be ‘plugged in’ and living with social media, I have experienced first-hand how much all this tech can impact your self-esteem and if anything this fact has only become more apparent with ‘influencers’ and bloggers showing you exactly what your life “should” look like, it’s hard to not take a serious self esteem hit every time you go online. Working in the fitness industry it’s hard to not feel that pressure of what your life should be like, if it’s not the fittest and healthiest life, one where you train every day, constantly motivated, getting a great night’s sleep every night and eating 100% clean. And that’s pretty hard to keep up when you remember that we’re all actually HUMAN and trying to balance living and surviving in London, attempting to maintain a social life, maybe even a relationship and stay sane. Some days it’s completely impossible.

Specifically I find that “Fitness” and “Wellness” accounts are the worst culprits of this, out of all the people you follow, how many tell you about how sh*t their workout was yesterday or how this morning they couldn’t fit in their yoga class because they just couldn’t sleep last night, I would hazard a guess at less than 1 out of every 100. It’s not hard to assume that only a hand full are transparent about how they’re training, how much they’re training and how they really feel day-to-day. I’d also like to point out that fitness accounts on social media is very clone-like, if you’re not super lean blonde tall tanned and head-to-toe in Gym Shark, then you’re not fit. I call BS. Fitness is not a size, a skin colour, a hair texture, a height, a body fat %, it’s just not. And that’s not to say that if you are a person who is naturally quite lean, or you’re blonde, or you wear gymshark that I’m sending for you because I’m really not, more power to you, but what I am trying to highlight to everyone is that COMPARISON WILL NEVER BRING YOU JOY ON YOUR FITNESS JOURNEY. 

Now don’t get me wrong I think social media can be used as a great tool, if used in a productive way and I’m not perfect up here on my soap box, I’ve followed people who I know made me feel shitty about myself because it’s almost addictive to scroll infinitely through beautiful images of beautiful people. And I caught myself completely craving that gratification we seem to get from likes and comments on new photos. But if unchecked it can wreak havoc on our mental health. So, if you’ve never done this before I am recommending a social media PURGE. Go through each stream that you have be them Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and UNFOLLOW every single person that makes you feel even vaguely bad about yourself, your body, face, life, fitness level, all of it, get them OFF OF YOUR FEEDS. Because that is the first step to reclaiming your social media as YOUR OWN.  

Social Media is just a highlight reel, most people on their especially those who are getting paid to post or advertise are not showing you a full well rounded version of their lives, they’re showing you the best bits. Thankfully, we are learning and children in schools now are being taught how to manage themselves online and keep themselves safe. A study found that the mere presence of a phone while people are talking interferes with their ability to feel levels of closeness, connection, and communication, so we’ve got to check ourselves, have NO TECH days, make your friends leave their phone in their BAG while you’re having dinner, make your partner turn their devices OFF on Date night, because we don’t have anyone to teach us this, we missed that boat, we’re having to figure that out for ourselves and it’s not going to be easy.

We live in an age where the infinity scroll gives you constant distraction but also gratification, where the number of likes we get reflects directly on to how we feel about ourselves. But guess what, your self-worth cannot be quantified by how many likes you get on your smoothie bowl picture and uploading a picture of said smoothie bowl doesn’t undo the pizza and McDonalds you ate last night after leaving the club and although you’re currently hungover your followers think you’re living your best life, eating well and being #fitspo.. do you see what I’m getting at? So, before you find yourself getting bogged down by social media and start question your real life and why it isn’t just like that girl on the beach in Bali with no under-eye bags, perfect hair and 6-pack abs with about 3 filters and Face Tune on it, remember that they’re probably uploading that while in their pyjamas, eating yesterday’s left overs with toothpaste on their jumper, or at least that what I’ll probably be doing when this goes up, but you’ll never know HAHAHAH. This is all to say you’re doing great, do a little social purge and keep hustling. If you’re interested in reading more about Social Media’s role in our lives and have some more science stuff thrown at you i would highly recommend “Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life” by Katherine Ormerod, you can get it on Audible, it’s a great book with loads of really great observations on our societies obsession with SM.

Signing off, lots of love, 

xox

[a-notanotherfitnessblog]

A little about me..

Hello again internet, 

I thought I’d give you a bit of a run down on what I do and who I am, so you don’t just think I’m a random person claiming knowledge that I don’t have. And by no means am I the most qualified for the fittest human in the world, definitely not. So before we really get going I thought i’d give you some background.

So, I’m 22 and from London, I like long walks on the beach and sunsets.. Kidding! I mean I do, but this isn’t a dating app profile. I work day to day half as a social media manager and half as a CrossFit coach. I am a qualified PT and I have my CrossFit level 1, I am looking to do my Olympic weightlifting certification this summer and I’m enrolled to do a specific CrossFit for kids course in March. 

I love helping others, which is really how I got into fitness in a professional capacity, but even before that I’ve always wanted to help people and I’ve always felt that if each day I can make a difference to one person then that day has been a success. 

I have a bachelors degree in Music and it was during my time at university that I found the sport of CrossFit. When I was young I was very active, gymnastics, lacrosse, track, football, swimming, you name it I was into it as a kid but when I was still in primary school I was diagnosed with a heart condition known as SVT for short, it was an issue with my hearts ability to beat consistently, if I moved suddenly or jumped it would set off a rhythm in my heart that would then try and correct itself and subsequently get faster and faster and faster. Safe to say, I couldn’t play sport or participate in my physical activity after that. Being the little bundle of energy I was I didn’t let it stop me, still climbing trees to my dad’s annoyance and joining in with PE classes when the teacher would step out of the room but I could never run for bus or be part of a sports team in any real capacity in this time. 

When I was 16 I had a heart operation to cure my irregular heart beat and thankfully it all went really well, I was cured, which if you’ve ever had any aliment for a long period of time you will know recovery can be a serious head f*ck. Being able to do stuff I couldn’t for so long was amazing but also terrifying. I kept feeling my heartbeat thinking that it was going really fast or having chest pains that weren’t really happening and that was difficult to handle, something that had been integral to my life for all those formative years was suddenly gone and my brain was trying to figure out what my ‘new’ body felt like. 

It took me a few years to settle into being ‘normal’ but looking back now I know I wouldn’t have a life anything like the one I have now if I hadn’t had the surgery and I also wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t had the heart condition, fun hey? 

So when I was at uni I found a video online of some really jacked woman lifting some barbells and I thought ‘wow, they look awesome! I wonder how they got to be so strong?’ Turns out what I was watching was a YouTube clip from the 2014 CrossFit Games. I was instantly a fan of the sport, I went back and watched all of the Games from that year and I was so into the idea that you don’t have to specialise, you can run, swim, jump, throw up a barbell, all in the same sport. From there I contacted a few CrossFit boxes in my area and one of them said I could come in and see what it was about and even do a workout to figure out if it was for me. I went along in some yoga leggings and a big hoodie, feeling completely out of place, and I was put through my paces by the owner with two movements; rowing and burpees, I was instantly obsessed. It’s been 3 years almost to the day since I first stepped foot in a CrossFit box and I believe it changed my life forever, took me from the path I was on and turned me down a completely different one.  

Since then my love of CrossFit had only grown and branched off into a knowledge and respect for all strength sports, namely, Powerlifting and Strongman. The longer I’ve trained the more I realise I want to be so strong and so capable. I’ve had my fair share of injuries mostly due to my own ignorance and lack of ability to listen to my body when it’s saying it’s had enough. But I’m working on it, I’ll talk more about that in another post. I found CrossFit and strength training right when I needed to, I don’t want to get too wacky but it does feel when I recant my life in this format like things 1000000% do happen exactly when and how they should. I was in tremendous amounts of pain and upheaval in life around that time. Not to go into too much detail here because it’s really for another time but I have had an eating disorder in the past and the main reason I started going into the gym was to punish my body for looking the way it did, which with the beauty of hindsight really wasn’t anything to worry about, but that’s why they say hindsight is perfect vision, right? 

Moving swiftly on, other that coaching and all the gym stuff I do, I also sing and write music which is really my first love. I have so many goals outside of fitness and to get my music out there is definitely one of them, but more on that another time. For now, signing of, lots of love you sassy internet humans.

xox

[a-notanotherfitnessblog]

Let’s make something really cool.

Hi there, 

Hope you’re having a great day wherever you are and how ever you are finding this. This is my first post on to this new blog that I’m making to kind of serve as an outlet for my internal monologue and to hopefully help someone out there who might be looking for a different kind of fitness platform, one not focused on aesthetics or egos but instead looking at health from all angles. Health is not something that can be quantified simply or assessed with just a glance at someone, to be truly healthy you have to look at you physical abilities yes but also how you’re sleep patterns are behaving, how you’re feeling mentally, how quickly are you recovering from exercise, etc. These are all indicators of how well we are. ‘Wellness’ is a bit of a buzz word recently and I think it’s a bit of a bullshit term if I’m quite honest. Just because you wear Lululemon and drink a green juice doesn’t mean you are healthy or good at ‘wellness’ or self-care. Wellness I think comes from a stability within yourself, being able to have a dialogue with your body and ask yourself how you’re feeling and listening to the response. And sometimes that means NOT GOING TO THE GYM, shocking I know, but we all castrate ourselves and beat ourselves up so badly for not training, not going out for a run, not going to bed at 9 to get up early for our spin class at 6, when sometimes that’s just how life happens and sometimes that’s what our bodies truly want. A friend of mine once said to me “Rachel even moderation has to happen in moderation” and something about that spoke to me deeply, we don’t have to be these perfect creatures who are always photo ready, wear new season leggings, do cardio every damn day, never get bored of working out, are always motivated, never go out late or drink too much. It’s not realistic to always live being constantly perfect; constantly in moderation. 

All of this to say, HI! I’m Rachel, some people call me Imogen, you can call me either. This is my slice of the internet and I’m hoping to make it a really great place where I will ramble about my thoughts and feelings as someone who works in the fitness industry and you guys can ask me questions or write to me with dilemmas and I can do my best to help. I will also be smashing in some informative content that will also be helpful to anyone who wants to get there geek on with me over what working out does to our bodies in a more sciencey way. 

Tomorrow I’ll be putting something out about how I got into training and my whole past to bring you up to date me with me a little. Until then, have a great one and go be awesome! 

xox