An ode to a strong woman on Dancing With the Stars
For all its existence, LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell has always been an e-book—until now. I’m beyond excited to announce that next week, C2B is making its debut as a paperback book you can roll up and put in your pocket, mark with your pens, gaze thoughtfully off into the distance over the edges of its pages—whatever gives you joy! Personally, I love to smell a book, just bury my nose into the spine and inhale deeply. It’s important to engage all the senses with the physical.
It’s available for pre-order now, and starts shipping December 10 from wherever you buy your books, including Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, and ugh Amazon.
I don’t have a lot of control over how it shows up across all these different websites, which again include Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, and ugh Amazon. The pages may show different dates or no cover preview image, but they are wrong; this is just part of a set of pranks and japes they like to do to independent businesswomen. The release date is December 10, and it looks like this (quick flip-through):
The illustrations! The spreadsheets!
Will the e-book version still be available? Yes, it will be available from the couchtobarbell.com website, the same as it ever was. The insides of the e-book files themselves have been updated to the same version that comes in the paperback.
And if you’d like to package a nifty copy of LIFTOFF with a few other gifts for the discerning aspiring lifter in your life, I’ll note that the embroidered She’s A Beast dad hats are now for sale! I’ve also restocked the “I’m Sore! Please Be Nice to Me” shirts by popular request, and we have a selection of other fine items in the She’s A Beast store, including the Hilary Buff tote bag. Also, you can never go wrong with a She’s A Beast subscription!
The right time to give thanks for rugby star/Olympic medalist/national treasure Ilona Maher’s run on Dancing With the Stars technically would have been last week. But the second-most-right time is right now. I admit I’m down on most reality TV, especially heavily padded competition shows, as well as social media. But Ilona, gem that she is, combined their forces to make it possible to watch just her dances, all of her dances, by posting them to Instagram (links to them all in this footnote[^1]). One after another, they are just pure wordless dopamine shots we can take straight to the brain, without the burden of tortured biographical sequences or “judging” or even engaging with the Instagram algorithm. And she made it all the way to the end, which means she got to perform the maximum number of dances.
And this is even before we say a piece for her dancing, which was a gift to the people. The world of dance can be gatekeepy and preoccupied with aesthetics and gender norms—not all of it, but like most of the world, a lot of it. Ilona has always taken great delight in spitting in the face of these kinds of expectations in general, and she was not about to be cowed by any institution.
I’m always fascinated when dance intersects with strength and muscularity in women, precisely because the vast majority of people presume someone who is strong and muscular can’t and won’t be graceful at all. They think of being “muscle-bound,” with the muscles preventing swift or fluid movement or having a good sense of rhythm or timing. Ilona is an extremely talented athlete in addition to being strong, but her physicality defies even the conventions of most team sports—stereotypically, the bigger you are, the slower you are, the more “likely” you are to play the role of defensive brick wall than nimble striker.
This is why I love to see the Ilonas of the world come through and defy conventional thinking about what bodies can do based on the stereotypes we assign to certain aesthetics. She’s a beautiful dancer, which is especially saying something for someone whose job is not dancing. More to the point, she embraces all of her gifts wholeheartedly, flipping her partner bodily through the air and balancing him on her shoulders. And even the transformation over the course of the season … I mean!!
This is not to say that someone like Ilona only matters because they can dance, or whatever. But to the extent we are not often treated by very-very-mainstream media to the art of a woman like Ilona asserting her physicality, it’s a reminder of how narrow that lane can sometimes be, and what we miss by allowing mainstream media to be the arbiters of visibility. In conclusion: She fucking rocks, what a gift to humanity.
Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston
Eat
~Liftcord Pick of the Week: A seven-HUNDRED pound squat from Muluh Sonita (drug tested and all). No notes whatsoever!!~
Sometimes all that is needed to increase girls’ access to sports is a good bra. (Though of course I’ll make the case for living in 3024 and letting ‘em swing.)
Spacing out is now a competitive sport in some Asian countries. But why does it have to be a contest? Can we not build a spacing-out coalition?
Americans are obsessed with posture. Would it surprise you to learn that “good posture” is not real?:
The demands of an industrialized economy undeniably affected human posture. The creation of Henry Ford’s assembly line—informed by the principles of “Taylorism”—made work increasingly repetitive and stationary, contributing to the rise of medical conditions like flat feet, scoliosis, and back pain … The proponents of posture science were far more concerned about correcting bad backs than addressing unsafe working conditions, a more serious driver of poor health outcomes.
If fish brains have microbiomes, could human brains have them too?
A very patient and thorough explanation of how gender-affirming care is neither new nor experimental.
Gen Z is pulling up to Rainforest Cafe. Please enjoy this photo of the last time I went to a Rainforest Cafe:
Drink
We can fix Gen Z’s uncoolness problem: Let’s all go surfing together!! (And then Rainforest Cafe after.)
Motherhood at the end of the world.
Among the greater injustices: Cancer rates are up among young people, while they’re falling among older people: “If you go back to the American Cancer Society’s meta-analysis, people born in 1975 experience nearly twice the rate of small-intestinal cancers as people born in 1955. For people born in 1990, those cancer rates have grown to nearly four times what they were for people born in the middle of the 20th century.” Great!!
The power of “rituals” has maybe been greatly exaggerated (read: the studies on them are less reliable than previously thought).
Rest
Fans of my column on upper- and lower-bound thinking from a couple weeks ago might enjoy this interview with an author who argues math is really more about intuition than logic (but the way it’s taught in school emphasizes only the logic part).
A simply astonishing case of hostile interface design: You have to individually disable Apple using your device to train its AI, app by single app.
Of course the girls are reading horny fairy books.
It would be better to think of public-service-sounding jobs at tech companies as more like holding pens to neuter people who might otherwise threaten their business. Facebook is not here to do good.
This Blackbird Spyplane piece is a great reminder that there are many extremely cool and good things in the world that you will never find online, because they want nothing to do with the internet.
All the way into underconsumption. I enjoyed this More Perfect Union video on how shitty clothes are now. My trick for not getting tricked into buying yet another cheap t-shirt is remembering that after one wash, it’ll pill, permanently wrinkle, and the stitching will weirdly shrink while the rest of the garment won’t. Also, check the tag, virtually every piece of clothing now tells you to hand wash and hang dry. Don’t fall for it!!
Ok I just said what I said, but I'm really excited to get back into children's toys. This gift guide is riling me up!
That’s all for this week! I love you for reading, thank you, let’s go—
[F1] All of Ilona's DWTS dance posts, plus a couple extra:
https://www.instagram.com/ilonamaher/reel/DAFQXR_vULl/ | Ilona Maher | Hope we made you all proud! #teamcutarugby | Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/ilonamaher/reel/DAWgJhXSxXp/ | Ilona Maher | Bet you never seen that before. Such a fun Week 2! Now onto the next dance. | Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/ilonamaher/reel/DA2dAQWRc7m/ | Ilona Maher | Full performance from our Soul Train Night @dancingwiththestars | Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/ilonamaher/reel/DBMPRMwP3ti/ | Ilona Maher | Proud of this one. | Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/alanbersten/p/DBeS4WuPmRQ/ | Alan Bersten | Some moments exceed everything you thought it would be. Last night was absolutely magical! @ilonamaher embodied and portrayed Luisa’s... | Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/ilonamaher/reel/DBvOVNexnQb/ | Ilona Maher | It definitely takes two to tango @dancingwiththestars | Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/ilonamaher/reel/DCUcH3EyFPU/ | Ilona Maher | We quickstepped our little hearts out last night @dancingwiththestars | Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/dancingwiththestars/reel/DCXnAmMpVrg/ | Dancing With The Stars #DWTS | @ilonamaher and @alanbersten got on the floor and did that Salsa y’all! 🔥 #DWTS500th #DWTS | Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/ilonamaher/reel/DClTsaaR7x7/ | Ilona Maher | We pulled out all the stops tonight!! @dancingwiththestars | Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/alanbersten/reel/DC7ADvex8uN/ | Alan Bersten | Don’t worry dawg. I won’t let you fall 🙏🏼🥹 | Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/dancingwiththestars/reel/DC-Si_NPo1P/ | Dancing With The Stars #DWTS | @ilonamaher and @alanbersten shook their tailfeathers all over the #DWTS ballroom for that Redemption Jive! #DWTSFinale | Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/ilonamaher/reel/DCidke1RhQK/ | Ilona Maher | Never be afraid to be as strong as you possibly can. | Instagram
https://www.sportskeeda.com/us/olympics/news-watch-ilona-maher-emulates-luisa-encanto-disney-night-dancing-with-the-stars | WATCH: Ilona Maher emulates Luisa from Encanto during Disney Night at Dancing With the Stars
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