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Introduction
May. 7th, 2010 08:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aquaeriI think I must belong here since I already have the icon.
I've never been a big fan of strength work, but I've reached the conclusion I've got to do some to balance out my other fitness activities, particularly as I get older (there is so much osteoporosis in my family it is not funny). My personal preference is for using my own bodyweight, quick sessions (see: not really a fan), and mixing with stretching because I do like that. My current aim is to see if I can actually ever do a pull-up.
On a more personal level: I'm biologically female (regular periods, have been pregnant although I miscarried) but reasonably muscular and the one time I did do a weights workout in a gym, despite the instructor telling me "women don't bulk, they tone" and "you won't see any results for three months at least" I thought I was starting to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger's little sister after a month, and stopped*.
I figure, well, people vary, and I get to be the exception to most women, i.e. looking stronger than I actually am, and wondering what I'll look like if/when I can do a pullup. But it means I can get really touchy about gender policing. It's not that I identify strongly as a woman, but I do identify strongly as "biologically female" and I get touchy about any implication that if you look muscular, that must mean T, either "you're biologically male" or "you want to be (more) male and you're taking T". Please just let me (and anyone else like me) be biologically female who happens to be muscular. I know it's rare, but it's my (and more to the point, my family's) normal.
* Partly 'cos I enjoyed other exercise more, partly because the one reason doing weights was actually somewhat fun - namely that my favourite instructor was happy chatting with me while I did my program, ended because he moved to a different gym. Also another woman in the gym admiring my muscles and wanting to compare programs, discovering we were doing pretty much the same program, only she was doing heavier weights, because she'd been doing it for years, and I'd been there a month.
I've never been a big fan of strength work, but I've reached the conclusion I've got to do some to balance out my other fitness activities, particularly as I get older (there is so much osteoporosis in my family it is not funny). My personal preference is for using my own bodyweight, quick sessions (see: not really a fan), and mixing with stretching because I do like that. My current aim is to see if I can actually ever do a pull-up.
On a more personal level: I'm biologically female (regular periods, have been pregnant although I miscarried) but reasonably muscular and the one time I did do a weights workout in a gym, despite the instructor telling me "women don't bulk, they tone" and "you won't see any results for three months at least" I thought I was starting to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger's little sister after a month, and stopped*.
I figure, well, people vary, and I get to be the exception to most women, i.e. looking stronger than I actually am, and wondering what I'll look like if/when I can do a pullup. But it means I can get really touchy about gender policing. It's not that I identify strongly as a woman, but I do identify strongly as "biologically female" and I get touchy about any implication that if you look muscular, that must mean T, either "you're biologically male" or "you want to be (more) male and you're taking T". Please just let me (and anyone else like me) be biologically female who happens to be muscular. I know it's rare, but it's my (and more to the point, my family's) normal.
* Partly 'cos I enjoyed other exercise more, partly because the one reason doing weights was actually somewhat fun - namely that my favourite instructor was happy chatting with me while I did my program, ended because he moved to a different gym. Also another woman in the gym admiring my muscles and wanting to compare programs, discovering we were doing pretty much the same program, only she was doing heavier weights, because she'd been doing it for years, and I'd been there a month.