Lift heavy or go home!

As I mentally prepare for front squat push presses tonight I am plagued by the image of the women at my gym who go there to lift 5lbs of weight and then they go home. It really and truly frustrates me that these women are afraid of "bulking up". 

Let's follow the horrible bulking train of thought.

Doing some heavy weight lifting sets at the gym on a regular basis transformed a seemingly average woman into a freakish half-woman half-hulk hybrid.  Then because of the huge amounts of testosterone (because she would have to have high levels of testosterone to bulk up) she began to rage rampage around the city like a crazy female body builder version of Godzilla *insert T-Rex screech here*. Eating cars, babies and sheep she became unstoppable in her "looks like a dude" body. The end result is that her disturbingly bulky muscles left her alone and undesirable. Finally she will die a sad  death alone with her Mr. Universe physique and her 100 cats will feast on her ripped body for years to come. Because let's face it who is going to miss a hulkinator woman and all lonely women have cats...

Sound crazy? 

It is.

 
The worst part of the whole endeavor is how women define bulky. It isn't the she-hulk above, it is a body like that of Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby or Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies. A body like this is what a good program like Crossfit and a good diet will do to a woman with genetics to look like Hillary Swank and Linda Hamilton. Sadly while I would love to look like either of these women, I must face the fact that I am not either of these women. I do not have their genetics. The only thing I can hope for is the best version of myself.

This brings me to my last point. If by going to the gym and lifting five pounds 1000 times someone hopes to achieve a body like *insert celebrity name here* then they are going to be sadly disappointed. Not only is that  workout ineffective and boring, one simply won't achieve that body because they aren't that celebrity. Our quest for fitness should be just that, a quest for fitness. Striving to be the best I can and the strongest I can is my ultimate quest. I stopped comparing myself to the women above a long time ago. I am not them. Neither are you.

I use my lifting time as a time where I become intimately familiar with my body. Learning my limitations, not aspiring to have the limitations of others. I know that I get better every repetition I do and no magazine or person or conglomerate can make me want to be anything else. It it my moment of Zen where nothing exists but myself and the olympic bar. I sweat, I grunt, I sometimes even feel like dying, but I do it. No one can take it away from me. That is what real lifting does.

Be more, be strong.