FitnessFixation.com

First, a big thanks to y’all who said nice and wise things about the last post. You know I so felt that one, and nice to remember there’s so many people out there ready to give our girls good lessons and let go of all the fat talk. I went to this woman’s bloggy thing on Saturday—got to meet Stephanie from Back in Skinny Jeans in the flesh, and she’s awesome, which I already knew from her blog—and there was talk of bloggers taking over the world. Well, sort of. But if we can take one thing over, I’d love it if we royally fucked up all this stupid obesity=horror shit and that preachy, uptight fitness advice I find so appalling in most women’s magazines. I wanna blog campaign for sweaty models who don’t smile when they exercise, and more representation, and an end to the know-it-alls and the fuckers. Oh, I also wrote this thing on how we women get sold this beauty shit like it’s an act of self-love, because clearly I am on a tear lately, so don’t fuck with my roaring now. I mean, please don’t tell me my moisturizer is the road to reclaiming myself, okay? Even if it is SPF 15 too.

And somewhat related, thanks also to Shari and Stephanie for sending me this NY Times article on push ups. Basically, it says what I hold dear to the place where my heart would be if I had one, that push ups are a great measure of fitness and we should all be able to do them, and all the time. There’s a mention of Jack LaLanne, who is one of my heroes. I’ve probably mentioned that women often ask me, “Should I go for depth and do them from my knees, or should I try from my feet?” I usually give an answer like, “Try from your feet, then switch to knees, because the best way to learn to do them is to do them,” but maybe I’ll change it to, “Feet! Because we are heading up the revolution here, the one that says every man, woman and even child should be able to do push ups with a little practice and work!”

We did lots of interesting push up variations in class today, thanks to the illustrious Jessica. One was the sphinx push up, where you start from a plank-ish position on your forearms and push up to your hands. It’s less a push up than a good core exercise, and I like. Of course, with one stronger arm the raise-up can be a bit crooked, so one of our bootcampers dubbed it “the camel” because you end up getting up like one. Try it and you’ll see what I mean. Another variation was the spiderman, where you bring one knee to your elbow as you bend your arms. I think of it as “the hydrant”. Oh, and the new name for plank position at the 6am class? Morning wood. I love that.

Here’s a variation we didn’t do, but hmmm…

So anyhow, if anyone out there can’t do multiple push ups yet, please add them to your routine because we have to fuck some shit up here. I did disagree with one point in the article: the quote, “I don’t see women saying: ‘I’m in good health. Watch me drop down and do some push-ups.’” Never met me—well, not that I say, “I’m in good health” and bust out a couple, but I might say, “Fuckin’ time for some push ups, mother fuckers,” and then do some just because.

By the way, I was super tired today in the late afternoon, and I was tempted to shlump around. But somehow I made myself go running up the hill (BTW, love this cover,) and even though my ass and legs are sore, it felt good to use ‘em. Then when I got to the track I did some dips and push ups (woo!) and leg raises and negative pull ups and lunges and burpees too. Not many, but enough that I can say “some” without blushing. Then I ran some more and went home. And y’know what? I felt less tired after. Go figure. Fuck yeah.

Oh yeah, and if you get bored with push ups, try and learn how to do these. I’ll fawn at your feet, really, cuz it’s ah-mazing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 9:43 pm and is filed under body building, exercise, expert advice, healthy crap, linkorama, love, new moves, news and research, other mags, running, sanity, weight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.