Reaching for another baby wipe while strategically avoiding physical contact with the “diaper situation” I don’t feel like the picture of strength. I watch Dora the explorer, puree vegetables and get stains out of laundry. While I feel that all Moms are superheros, the daily tasks don’t leave me feeling like one.
When I started going to the actual gym (after about a year of working out at home and around the neighborhood) I mostly hung out on the elliptical. I usually incorporated a few weight machines but was not satisfied. Being my defiant self I kept gazing into the free weight room (the one that women don’t seem to enter as often) and saying to myself, “I want to go do THAT.”
I started venturing in there and picking up 10lb dumbbells and doing a few moves I learned from videos I had done at home. You know, bicep curls, lunges and maybe a few squats. I was still not satisfied. I had my eye on the Olympic barbell. If you don’t know that’s the big guy, usually in the back. The bar itself weighs 45lbs and then you add weight to it.
My friend Jess lifting, fellow bad ass
I did some educating myself and drug my sister in there with me, starting out with just the bar and some simple squats. Now my week begins and ends around that bar and the feeling I get from the weight room. Weight lifting, for me, has transformed exercise from a chore or obligation to an indulgence. Every morning I go through my routine with my wee one and head off to the gym. All along the way I’m in “Mom mode,” quickly interpreting my daughters words as she points out the grocery store and tells me about her doll, helping her avoid puddles in the parking lot and then obtain her ‘My Mom paid for childcare’ hand stamp. But once she’s all settled in, running around the kids place at my gym I become a different person.
My playlist is full of music that makes me feel strong, powerful and sexy. It seems silly to admit this out loud because this is where my workouts become my own. It’s my time to block every thing from my life out and focus on me. Despite the fact that there are many others at the gym with me I feel like I’m the only one there. Me and my weight room.
This is the part where to describe the way it feels for me will border on the spiritual and I don’t want to lose you. It’s also so personal for me (though it’s done in public, oddly) that it almost feels like kissing and telling. But what I’m physically doing is lifting weights. Squats, lunges, deadlifts, various presses and on and on. Some focusing on strength building, some on muscle definition and others on balance and flexibility. I run sprint intervals and always end up on a mat facing a mirror, stretching.
At this point I’m satisfied. I feel like a superhero. I feel beautiful in a way that no one else can make me feel. I feel self-sufficient, powerful, like a broad who can change her own tires and open her own jars. Like the kind of woman you want to know, not the kind who needs anyone to know her. I feel like a bad ass. Covered in sweat that sometimes coats my shirts I feel strong in a way the rest of my day doesn’t always allow for. I change my playlist to the likes of Erykah Badu and Fiona Apple (thus giving myself away as a kindred spirit or perhaps not) and I wind it all back down. Now ready to hit my day like it’s mine, feeling high off endorphines and proud of what I can do.
Still afraid of the weight room? Thats cool. More space for me and my cape.
Check out the first in this series: why I think women don’t often lift.
Bitchin mama! This feeling (and that what it is) is almost like seeing the future unfold… Someday (I’m sure of it) women will own this ‘tude inside the weight room AND out. Because it really does carry over into our lives, this feeling of being powerful, strong, and sexy. That sums it up exactly for me – almost sensual, I call it, because it taps into my inner core. I’m only 5’3″ and not hugely muscular. I’m lean and cut and always working on more muscle. I don’t powerlift or go too crazy because of creaky joints. But, like you, I still kick major ass in the gym and feel very proud of that.
Thanks mama!