Let's talk... fitness

I am LATE. I am so late. I am screaming (singing) Beyoncé in my car as I sit in stand still traffic, watching the minutes tick by. Making my way across central Bristol, in rush hour, to get to the podcast studio. I am seriously stressed. I could have left earlier, yes, thank you for that, but I didn’t, so here we are. To make matters worse the studio has cost us £72.50. I am seeing my money disappear before me into the fumes of the city. However, I am having one stroke of luck today! My co-star Kate and our guest, George (@thegrapplingphysio) are also stuck in the same traffic so we all arrive at the same time, 30 minutes late. Bye bye £18.

We settle in and ask George some warm up questions, that will later be cut out, but it’s nice to get people comfortable speaking into the microphones at the right distance whilst wearing pretty heavy duty headphones. We have asked George, who is a physio, to come on and speak about fitness. He grew up playing rugby and trained as a PT in Australia. Due to the nature of his business he keeps on top of the fitness industry and prescribes his clients work-out programmes.

With this being a fitness episode Kate and I were ready to chat about superfoods, cool new gym exercises and any trendy new mindfulness trends. We asked George to come on because we thought he might have some different perspectives and great advice. We were not ready for the honesty he gave us. Long gone are the discussions about whether it's pilates or crossfit that gives you the best body. Forget your cliché mindset about achieving your dreambody, we no longer believe in dream bodies. George made me feel completely refreshed about the fitness industry. To be honest, even when I was practising self-love and body positivity it was always under the guise of some form of trend or instagram hype or I was buying a journal which was going to change my life sigh. No movement, not even self-love was mine and mine alone. Me and Kate didn’t know what we were in for when George started talking about his view on fitness. Roll the cameras.

It feels incredibly obvious to say that George was a breath of fresh air and it definitely feels too cliché. He spoke honestly about the fitness industry and how it is affecting men. The ‘ideal’ male physique; big shoulders, protruding pecs and, of course, big biceps! Is, George believes, very toxic. It’s causing young boys to start taking steroids which they have no business taking. We talked about how the ‘normal’ look for men, very muscle-y, fairly large, is un-achievable without steroids. But, the problem here is that men don’t want to admit to taking steroids. George shed some light on this. He thinks it could be based in the primeval hierarchical grading system that men prescribe to. When they walk into a room they give every man in there, including themselves a ranking, based off, and this might make you laugh, who they think they can fight. So, the strongest guy at the top, the weakest at the bottom. You get the gist. However! If you admit to taking steroids, your ranking will decrease. You might be big, but you will be seen as lesser because you used drugs to help you get there. I kinda get it, but not really. But it does make sense. And it does reveal why men feel they can’t be honest about their steroid taking. It makes me sad. The secretive taking means that we are now considering physiques which are achieved through steroids as ‘normal’. We see Billy Bob Joe down the gym, we ask him how he achieved his huge muscle-y body, and he tells us through consistent weight lifting and a hell of a lot of protein. Imagine thinking that gaining that much muscle is natural. Training day after day at the gym and wondering what is wrong with you. I understand why it is hard for men to admit to, but I wonder what would happen if they could be honest with each other.

George goes on to say that gaining muscle is very hard for us human beings. In fact, we are not supposed to be big. As hunter gatherers we would have needed to be lean for efficiency. It takes so much energy for a bodybuilder to simply exist compared to someone of a leaner stature. So, if food was sometimes scarce this body type wouldn’t have made any sense. I know I know, I can hear you screaming, “we aren’t living in those times and sleeping in caves anymore”. Food is everywhere. The point I am making is that we are still animals. We still have that specific genetic make-up which does not promote gaining muscle. It's difficult to put on muscle. And so it should be. We aren’t designed to do that. As someone who struggles with the gym and the pressures for women to have a big bum and a wide back to make their waists look smaller, this bought me a lot of comfort. We were built for hunting down gazelles, not lifting bars of weights up and down in an air-conditioned tin can.

Speaking of that tin can, the gym if you will. George bets that most people in there are experiencing some form of pain. The majority of training programmes focus on up and down and back and forward movement. According to an actual physio this is an extremely limited range of motion. We are dynamic creatures that use twisting and jumping and stretching daily. It is no wonder we are injuring our backs putting on socks or twisting our shoulders reaching for the remote. We are not prioritising a full range of movement! George suggests that we should conform less. We should not focus on the new trendy exercise in the gym or hyperfixate on the reimagined ‘ideal’ body that’s hot right now. We should move to live, not live to move. Here is the good news for you - you don’t need to be in the gym five nights a week killing yourself on an assault bike. A consistent two gym sessions a week should be enough to keep you ticking over. A muscle-y one and a cardio one and that's your lot. You are not going to develop defined abs or bulging biceps but you are going to be able to live your life to the fullest, and most importantly, recover from illnesses quicker. We should walk more and rotate more. Swim, play netball, join a dance club - just MOVE! In any way that makes you feel good. Don’t spend your life chasing a body that was never meant for you. Enjoy moving and living. We are animals and George thinks we have forgotten how to act as those animals. It’s time to rediscover who we are meant to be as human beings.

Love from, Lily