Do You REALLY Have to be Able to Bench Press Your Honda?
By: Julia E Hubbel
Tags: Lifestyle, Fitness, Health, Body Image, Exercise

Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash

What does it take to be in shape?

The other day I got a gut-buster comment from Medium peep Kirsten Herman about an article on walking that was so good I had to share it. Here goes:

Thank you for the acknowledgement that walking can be badass too. Sometimes I read stuff that leaves me feeling if I’m not marathoning and bench pressing my Honda, I’m doomed:-) My walks are strenuous in the mountains, grounding, and pair well with some torso, arm and leg weight work.

After I got back up off the floor I asked permission to quote her, got it, and here we are.

Look. First of all I love her for pointing out the implied pressure that too many posts about fitness exhibit. If you aren’t doing THIS (fill in the blank, extreme this that or the other) then you are an effing SLACKER. It’s the extremity that I don’t like. As though there is only one way to be fit, as if one size fits all.

That beats all in my book given that there are some eight billion of us, or close to it, and we’re all very, very different.

Kindly. I got another note from one other reader who suffers from inflammatory arthritis. Her marathon is walking to the coffee shop. Some folks carry burdens of disease or illness or disability, which mean that there is no effing way they will ever, ever, ever be able, nor should they aspire to trying, to do some of the things that too many fitness writers recommend. Or worse, imply that we’re losers if we can’t do what they do.

To this, some time back one of my fellow writers penned a piece about feeling body shamed and fat because some (ASSHOLE) influencer with several kids, a shitload more time and money and damned good genes Insta’d her flat, cobblestone belly to the world with the hashtag #What’sYourExcuse?

Forgive me for repeating myself but the words Bitch Slap come to mind.

I am sick unto death of that kind of self-congratulatory arrogance.

Not everyone can walk, and not everyone wants to walk the way I do: uphill, at speed, panting like a hunting dog, pushing myself to the limit, only to turn around and run downhill, my hiking poles flying around like propellers. That’s MY thing, and it has a purpose.

Okay, OKAY, other than making me look like a Keystone Cop on crack that is.

Photo by Ann on Unsplash

I’m back in training for my next Big Trip. Currently, that’s in June, back to Tanzania, where I might well climb Kili again, or else something else challenging. Time for me to get my aging butt back in shape after a year full of injuries and challenges. But Kirsten isn’t me (I’m sure she thanks her lucky stars, too). AND. What I do is not for everyone.

Nobody needs to train like I do. I have the time, the equipment, the motivation and it’s part of what I do for a living — when the planes fly again that is- so it’s not just cause I love physical activity. It’s my job. That said, unless you want to do the sports I do, take the risks I do, there is no reason on earth to try to be like me. Or anyone else for that matter.

Here’s the point. I am exhausted reading about people’s weight loss successes (talk to me in thirty years, Sparky, let’s see how successful you were long term) and how they push their process onto others as in BE LIKE ME. Nobody else has their body, so nobody else is likely to duplicate their precise results.

I am exhausted reading about the Next New Exercise Craze, which some dimwit came up with after spending too much time doing tricep dips on his office chair. Now he has THE ANSWER for the rest of us bozos.

The thigh masters and the magic ab machines. Blah blah GAH.

Folks, the business of finding what works for you and me has everything to do with learning first, what we LIKE to do, what we WILL do, what our lifestyles, time and preferences allow us to plan into our days. Fitness is driven in part by being patient with our starting point, ditching the focus on perfection and finding ONLY those things which address who we are, what we are trying to achieve (like a less painful walk to the coffee shop) and not have anything to do with bragging rights or killing ourselves in the name of beauty.

I admire anyone who gets up and does, rather than sit and bitch about what they can’t. What that looks like is unique to them. As long as you and employ a measuring tape against an unrealistic ideal we will be miserable. As I am fond of saying, sells a lot of stupid shit. What’s stupid is that we allow ourselves to be made to feel less than by not having a fitness model’s body.

If you don’t mind my pointing out, fitness models don’t have much of a life. Pretty much your entire life is centered around your body: diet, exercise, diet, exercise, diet, exercise.

Oh. Yah. And diet and exercise.

Julia Hubbel

Really? If you don’t mind, I HAVE a fitness model body. AND I am nearly 68. My skin has slackened and loosened — the result of once being obese -AND I will never be a fitness model (not with these wrinkles, Skeezix). The difference is that my fitness serves a function. Every time I am out in the middle of nowhere and some irritated horse decides to throw my ass at the gallop and break my back in multiple places (yup), I can still get up, walk to the closest vehicle and get myself to safety, a hospital and a recovery program.

I give a flying shit about fitness model bodies for the looks? No. If I don’t exercise, if I’m not limber, I effing DIE.

For Kirsten, for people like Terri DelCampo-Nelson who remade her body after a horrible accident, functional fitness has a wholly different purpose. Most of us exercise because we want options. We want a better life. We want to play more, live more, do more.

For my part, that’s plenty enough.

Now if you’ll ‘scuse me, I’m gonna go bench press my Honda.