What is 'being old,' and what is just 'movement debt?'

At my book event for A Physical Education last night in Seattle, someone asked me if I’d been keeping up with my workout routine while book-touring. I said no, and that I was fine with that. And then today, as I worked my way stiffly up some stadium-style seats facing the sound, I found myself reconsidering some things.

Some of this stiffness-feeling is that I’m being asked to do a greater diversity of physical tasks, with and for the baby—I have to endorse lifting just on the point of how very many times you will have to pick up an object from the floor, but keep your torso upright while holding the weight of the baby against you; harder than it sounds—but also in the course of book-touring. I’ve tried to make a point both of taking public transportation and walking, which involves, generally, a lot more stairs and hills. But there is also so much built-in sitting, often very stiffly, to these things: the baby falls asleep on you, you’re on a plane, and so forth.

I believe a lot of people would jump to age as the problem here, but permit me some space to cope. I’ve been wanting to put this idea into words for a while, but I’ve wondered lately how much of “feeling old” in the body is due to just having a debt of practice, versus some actual ceiling of ability. Maybe I’m delusional, but at the ripe old age of 38, I don’t think I should be stepping gingerly down some terraced bench seats just yet. I just sit so much, and have been staying in my strength-training lanes (plus a little cardio) for a long time. Absolutely do not quote me, but I’ve never felt more on the verge of doing a Crossfit some kind of cross-training class, a bootcamp, anything that would move me in unfamiliar ways. I don’t need to walk more; I need to, like, play dodgeball.

The real advantage of “youth” is that young people are maybe only a few years out from the last time they were running around in a playground, or jumping off cliffs, or whatever; there hasn’t been time to accumulate that movement debt. If they could somehow be 20 years old, and yet also 20 years out of physical practice, they’d be nearly as stiff as me, a 38-year old. There is just no art to being young or new, versus maintaining something well over a long period of time. I think. I hope. I will have to find out.

the perennial insecurity of the ‘Pilates princess’

I COULD go around saying Pilates is dangerous, just as certain people go around saying “Pilates is all the strength training anyone ever needs to do.”

She's A BeastCasey Johnston

Eat

~Liftcord Pick of the Week: I’ve said this before, but cold plunges short-circuit the muscle-building process and are just straight-up counterintuitive to do right after a hard workout. It’s like plunging food in an ice bath: it stops the cooking process. Don’t do it! (Do if if you are in an unreal amount of pain, like you way-over-worked out; don’t do it to just cap off a normal workout, for Pete’s sake.) ~

The deadlift difference: is this the exercise you need for an active and pain-free future? (My most emphatic “ya.” Also, adorable photos here!)

Runner Stephanie Case breastfed her daughter, Pepper, through a 100km race, and still won. (She is emphatic that this is not supposed to be some new bar for women to clear.) There is some recent (limited) evidence that women perform better at ultra-distance events than men, which is not to be taken as an indication that “women should exercise like this and men should exercise like that”—I get all into this in A Physical Education—rather, it’s yet another indicator that we have barely studied what the positive contributions of non-stereotypical-men’s biology are to fitness, since scientists have long studied young men and assumed everyone else to be “worse young men.” (Again, if a topic that interests you, boy do I have a book for you!)

On that note, readers of the book who liked my photo album will enjoy this short doc on the actual Richie’s Gym (!) (and honestly, no shade to 'em, looking cleaner here than it evvvvver has. And all the lights are on. Never saw that once in my time :) )

In defense of despair, a beautiful piece from Hanif Abdurraqib.

Navigating by aliveness, from Oliver Burkeman.