#gym bro laurelin

[laurelindorenan]

Things I'm learning while lifting weights

I lifted weights for like 6 months a little over 4 years ago. I really liked it, but I had to stop because it was taking too much of a toll on my body. For a while, I thought that lifting heavy weights was incompatible with living with fibromyalgia, but at the beginning of this summer, my family strongly encouraged me to try again – but this time going way more slowly and gently.

After 9 weeks, I'm almost at the level of strength I was at before I quit and I've completely fallen back in love with weightlifting. I'm learning so much about how to live well and thrive with chronic illness (and my own destructive thought patterns / tendencies that hold me back from living well in the body God has given me). I thought it would be really good for me to write them down.

I simply can't lift weights out of a desire to escape my physical weakness, to become a different person, or to prove something. When I used to lift weights, I kept pushing more and more and not listening to my body until I ended up frazzled and in even more pain. I think that's because I was doing it for the wrong reasons. Sure, I did it because it was fun and because I liked the way it made me feel –– but, inwardly, I also really wanted to prove something to myself and to others. I wanted somehow to escape the body I was in into a better, stronger, illness-free body and I (subconsciously) looked to weightlifting for deliverance. And, when I wasn't getting to those goals fast enough, I pushed too hard and made myself weaker, not stronger. In order to do this rightly, I can't focus on being as strong as other people as a benchmark of my own success. (I'm weaker than the average woman and even now can't even do a pushup – I have to think about what's success for me or I'll always be frustrated.) I can't fixate on how it changes my body as a benchmark of success. (My body builds visible muscle suuuuuper slowly and if I made that a goal, I'd be exasperated really fast. I might be at this for years and never ~look~ like I lift weights and I have to be 100% content with that). And I can't do this because I want to make myself autonomous and invincible. No matter how muscular I get, on a bad pain day, I'll still probably be shaky and struggle to stand. I will still need to rely on people and rely on God. And that's a good thing! My weaknesses are a beautiful opportunity for God and others to show their love to me. I could be a bodybuilder and I will always be fundamentally weak because I will always be a human being. I can either praise God for that or rebel against it (and inevitably end up injuring myself and hurting people).

The only healthy motive for weightlifting for me is love and joy. I lift weights because there are people who love me who really care about my frail body getting stronger and healthier. I lift weights because I love God and he loves my body and so I want to take care of it. I lift weights because I want to get better at helping friends move and picking up small children and have more strength and energy and vitality to offer up in service. I lift weights because I know people with fibromyalgia tend to age poorly because of lack of strength and mobility, and I want to love well the future children that God gives me (whether physical or spiritual; I of course have no guarantee of the former). I also lift weights because it helps me delight in living in my body (a good gift that I often am insufficiently grateful for) and remind me that my body is still capable of good things. (But again, not because I have anything to prove to myself.)

I have to be shockingly gentle with myself. Four years ago, I thought the whole point of weightlifting was to BREAK MYSELF DOWN and BUILD MYSELF UP. I was very macho about the whole thing (and also masochistic – sometimes I did it because I was mad at my chronically ill body and wanted to break it down and replace it with a better one). And sure, it takes discipline, and I am pushing my muscles out of their comfort zone – but it also takes just as much gentleness. If I try to bully my body into doing more than I can handle on a bad pain day, I do it with bad form and I injure myself. If I don't give myself good rest days, my muscles won't build. I'm learning that I have to stop and listen to my body and say, "okay, this isn't working for you. I don't have to hit this goal today. Let's go lighter". On my rest days, I do a lot of restorative yoga and make sure all the sore muscles get stretched out and can properly relax before I ask anything more of them. It's forcing me into a different relationship with my body: rather than treating my body as my own to control and abuse, I have to see it as God's possession that he gave me to nurture.

I have to be shockingly patient with myself. I have found one of my biggest sins is impatience. I want RESULTS and I want them NOW. But "fast" means very little in weightlifting and "sustainable" means everything. If I go too fast, I destroy my muscles instead of building them up. I messed up on weightlifting the first time around because I kept thinking in the short term. In order to do this well and faithfully, I have to stop thinking in terms of days and weeks and start thinking in terms of months and years and decades. Example: I started dumbbell Romanian deadlifts the other day and I did too much weight right off the bat. That wrecked my body all week so now I know that I have to start way slower than I anticipated. Next time I do deadlifts I'm gonna do it at 1/2 the weight. I'm really eager to get to the point where I can lift barbells and not just dumbbells, but I have to be okay with it taking a looong time. I want to be able to do full pushups and pull-ups and I think it would be extremely epic if I could someday deadlift my own body weight. But I have to be content with where I'm at now. It's humble and it's good and I'm honoring God by my quiet faithfulness, even if there aren't many flashy results yet. Again, this is SO antithetical to the way I'm wired. I have a live fast and die young kind of personality. I want to burn myself out in a blaze of glory rather than submit to long, slow, sustainable labor. All this was intensified when I first became chronically ill because I lost the ability to imagine a long-term future for myself. This year I've witnessed the pain in the eyes of the people who love me when I've chosen burnout and self-destruction over slow, patient, humble work and I've realized I have to change the way I view my own body and my own future. I have to discipline myself to look into my own future and see life and hope in it, because that's the true picture of reality and despair is both impatient and fraudulent. Weightlifting is a discipline that forces me to think long term.

[laurelindorenan]

Something delightful has happened in my weightlifting journey in the last three weeks.

Three weeks ago, I stepped into my college’s weight room for the first time. It was also probably the first time I had ever stepped into a gym. All my weightlifting this summer had just been with a set of dumbbells and a bench my family has, and I was mostly doing it alone. I couldn’t even find the weight room at first and had to ask a random dude to show me the way. I was quite intimidated. I was alone, very conscious of being the only girl in a room full of jacked men lifting at least 3x the weight I was doing, but I was determined to do a brave thing. I had to ask for help on how to adjust the bench twice from two separate strangers who seemed mildly shocked by me approaching them, but I made it through my workout and walked out feeling super proud of myself.

My next mission was to get some girls to go to the gym with me because in a few weeks I knew I’d need a spotter. For a few days it looked like I wouldn’t be able to convince anyone to take up lifting heavy weights (which I think is often intimidating to girls, even when there are girls in the weight room it’s like an 8:1 guy:girl ratio). I realized I hadn’t asked God for a gym buddy so I prayed and then posted here and asked for prayer. An HOUR and a HALF later a friend texted me and said yes (she had zero experience in this, but she loved me and needed to work out anyway). I was OVERJOYED and immediately found myself with my whopping three months of experience becoming personal trainer to my friend and frantically googling stuff because I didn’t want to injure her.

Then the next week, ANOTHER friend decided to join us. And then ANOTHER. (At this point, it has Momentum). Now I’m taking three girls with no heavy weight experience to the gym three times a week and teaching them what little I know.

Now I’m no longer the only girl in the weight room.

All three of them said they’d never have picked this up themselves and they’d be really intimidated by the thought of going there alone. My thirty minutes of courage and willingness to be the only woman in a completely alien environment has emboldened three other women to step into a completely new hobby. (And now my other friends are beginning to talk about joining us, because when there’s so many of us doing it it’s twice as attractive to them).

Oh yeah, and I did my first barbell deadlift today!! (Which took another five minutes of courage). Heck yeah! :D

[laurelindorenan]

When my friends and I were at the gym on Monday, there was a guy bench pressing who grunt-yelled with every rep. It was sooo distracting. As soon as he started going we just had to stop everything because we couldn’t focus on our bench presses because we would die laughing. (And he did SO many sets).

And then when my friend got on the bench, she started singing in a shaky vibrato with every rep to (gently) make fun of the guy behind us. She’d go 🎵 oooooooooneeeee …. twooooooooo 🎵 and we laughed SO HARD and made her stop so she could use her breath to actually do the workout.

(And then to further add insult to injury, when he was done a bible study friend of mine who had just showed up took his bench and started bench pressing the SAME weight but without any grunts or yells.)

[laurelindorenan]

I made my first big goal - I can now bench press the bar! 😁 And I also did my first ever barbell back squats! I feel like I’ve been at Level Zero since I started in June because most men and some women are able to bench the barbell from day one and I’ve just been trying to get that point for months. But now I’m at Level One!! And stronger than I’ve ever been in my life!!

[laurelindorenan]

I FOUND SOMEONE

[laurelindorenan]

💪

[laurelindorenan]

please pray that i find lifting buddies!