What's a "Real" Woman?

As any female knows, the media has insisted on making us believe that there is only one type of body that is acceptable for women. If your body does not match that stereotype, the media will convince you that you're basically either invisible or damaged, even if you happen to be beautiful.

You would think that in fitness and sports this kind of stereotyping would not fly. After all, healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes. A gymnast's body tends to be very different from that of a marathon runner, for example. That doesn't mean one is more of a "real woman" than the other.

But if you take a peek at any mainstream fitness magazine, you find out that even there they sell us a stereotypical female body: a little bit of muscle (if any at all), a tiny waist and gigantic fake boobs. Oh, yeah, and a ridiculous unnatural "tan."

Those pecs weren't made in the gym, that's for sure

Even some gym chains suggest what their clientele should look like. Heck, have you ever seen the ads for gym chain Equinox? How are these models in an ad for a gym!? That doesn't make any sense! Why would you bother working out if you want to look like that?

I hope that boxing glove isn't too heavy for her

 

Annie Thorisdottir, 2-time Crossfit champ

Gabby Douglas,
Olympic gymnast, gold medalist

I have always thought that a beautiful female body is one that looks healthy and strong. Our bodies come in many different shapes and we don't all have to look alike or fit a certain mold to be considered "real" women or even to be beautiful.

Healthy and strong are qualities that any woman can achieve. And with healthy and strong comes confident and happy. These are the qualities that make us gorgeous on the inside and outside at any age.

 

Tecia Torres, undefeated pro MMA fighter

 









"Mama Beast": Unstoppable at any age

Ever since I became a fan of Women's Mixed Martial Arts (WMMA), many fighters have caught my attention, but very few have left me in total awe. At almost 48 years of age, Susie "Mama Beast" Wyatt is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu specialist who regularly competes against women who are more than 20 years younger than her. That's why I included her in another recent blog post.

And as her record can attest, she has no problem beating younger fighters. As of late May, when I interviewed Susie, her record stood at 5 wins and 1 loss and she was ranked #14 as a 135-pound amateur WMMA fighter.

It is very rare for a woman of Susie's age to accomplish what she has. In my research of WMMA I have learned of a few female fighters who are in their late 30s, but I can't recall a single woman who is even close to Susie's age.

In interviewing her, I realized that her success is a result of her dedication, positive attitude, healthy ambition and family support.

Susie has been a lifelong fitness enthusiast and professional. In fact, she has been a group fitness instructor since she was 16. "I have [also] spent time as a club manager and a personal trainer over the years. I teach physical education at Washington University and run the group fitness program and teach at St. Louis Workout here in St. Louis [Missouri]," she said. Among her favorite classes to teach are cardio kickboxing, beginners' kickboxing and spin.

Susie also has her own business as a massage therapist, where she works with many athletes and chronic pain sufferers.

This is all in addition to being a mom and a grandma.

Susie discovered MMA when she was looking to do something for herself. "I had been looking for something to do where I wasn't the teacher or the boss....something just for me. As a single parent and a trainer and therapist everything I was doing in my life was for other people. I wanted to do something for me," she said.

So she started taking kickboxing classes at Finney's MMA, which was conveniently located inside a gym where she was working. "I did the kickboxing classes for a while, but then wanted to do more. I tried sparring but there weren't really any women at that time or anyone my size to spar with so I got a little frustrated. I wasn't getting from it what I wanted," Susie explained.

Then she noticed the guys across the hall in the BJJ room and thought "I can do that!"  She started out with a very small women's class with current 125-pound Invicta champ Barb Honchak as her instructor. "I went there on Friday nights for a few months before I got the courage to join the guys. After my first BJJ class I knew it was the sport for me," Susie said.

And her results have been amazing. "At almost 48 years old I am in the best shape of my life. I believe my training in BJJ has made me stronger and given me better cardio and endurance than any other sport or exercise routine I have followed," Susie said.

BJJ also turned Mama Beast into a total grappling badass. Not long after discovering her love for the art, she began competing in tournaments, such as the WPFA World Tournament in Greece.  "[I'm] always medaling so far and more often than not winning first place. I love competition and love the challenge of preparing for competition," Susie said.

 

Susie  knew she wanted to compete in MMA as soon as she started training. She had spoken to Jessey Finney, the Strikeforce vet who runs Finney's MMA,  several times to see if he would let her do it.

It wasn't after winning numerous BJJ tournaments, that Jessey finally gave her a chance to unleash her inner Beast and become an MMA fighter. "It just took me a while to convince my coach that a woman of my age could actually compete," she said.

She also had the full support of family and friends. "Friends and family were not overly surprised at my decision to fight MMA," Mama Beast said, adding that her kids are her biggest supporters. "I think they sort of assumed that would be the outcome of my training."

Not only are her kids supporting her decision to fight, they are following her steps. "My oldest daughter has started competing at submission wrestling and high school wrestling. My youngest daughter started wrestling in middle school this last year and also is planning on training in BJJ, [which has] sort of become a family sport," Susie said. Even her fiancé, with whom she recently got engaged (lucky guy! -ed.), and his son are "total fans." "[They] so supportive of my crazy fight goals. I am truly blessed."

Susie repays all that support by training like the Mama Beast she is. "Whether I am training for a fight or training for BJJ tournaments or working on furthering my knowledge of BJJ and achieve my next belt ranking, I always train as much as my schedule will allow," she said.

Susie, who is a single mother of four, strives to create a balance.  "My priorities are family, money and then fighting," she said. "Some weeks I don't get to train at all, even while preparing for a fight. My life just gets in the way. Other weeks I train 30 hours or more between the classes that I teach and my combat sports training. I have to be flexible and forgiving of myself. I want to train much more than I do but I have responsibilities to my family. I love them so much and they grow up way too fast!"

Balance is also important when it comes to health. Although Susie said she does not feel she has any less stamina or strength than her much younger competitors, she does find that it takes her longer to recuperate from the small injuries that active people usually get in pursuit of their sport of choice. But, as she likes to say, "I prefer the aches and pains and small nagging injuries from my quest for activity and health than the disease of unhealthy minds and bodies that comes from inactivity."

"I have found that really listening to my body and taking time off to heal occasionally has kept me in the game," Susie said, advising others in her age group to "be a little more forgiving of your body as the cells mature and don't replicate the way they once did in our youth."

Mama Beast also had some advice for women interested in going into MMA. "My advice to women wanting to go into MMA is mostly to ask themselves why they want to do it," she said. "The reality of the sport is not as exciting as it may seem. Mostly its hours and hours of hard, grueling training. I happen to love that sort of thing."

She also emphasized that where you train and what team you train with is "of utmost importance." Besides Jessey Finney, Susie also trains with BJJ black belt Ezra Lenon (L3 BJJ) who is world ranked. "My coaches and my team are supportive of me and I would not have had a chance to do anything I have gotten to do in the sport without them. Find a good fit when looking for a gym," Susie advised.

Lastly, Susie said to "remember that there are not that many female fighters and we need to be good ambassadors of our sport. Show class in everything you do. Give respect and you will get respect."

Not long after I interviewed Mama Beast, on June 15 she fought in the 125-pound division for Shamrock FC in St. Louis Missouri against Brittany "Too Smooth" Dugas, who was undefeated at 6-0 and 26 years old. That's 22 years younger than Susie!

Unfortunately, Susie lost this fight by decision. On the bright side, Susie is the only fighter Dugas has not been able to finish, meaning she was not able to make Susie tap out.

I am eager to see Susie continue getting in the cage and showing everyone that age is just a number. As she has proven, it's the heart that counts.

Conquering the Spartan Sprint

On June 1st I participated in the Spartan Sprint in Tuxedo, NY. It's the first time in my life that I've ever done an obstacle race and to say I loved it is an understatement. Of course, now I am telling everyone I know to join me for next year's Sprint, including you. Hoping that you will rise from your seat and respond with a thundering "challenge accepted!," I am going to tell you all about how I prepared for the race and what my experience was like.

The Spartan Sprint consisted of four or five miles of muddy hills, rocky mountains and, of course, obstacles.

How I trained:
Some friends invited me to sign up for the Spartan Sprint about six or seven months prior to the race, so I thankfully had plenty of time to train, both at home and at the MMA gym I have been going to.

At home, most of my training consisted of running up and down the stairs in my building for 10 minutes every day. To make it more fun, I would take my dog with me, since she could definitely use any exercise she can get and I enjoy her company.

To add some variety, I would stop at the end of top of the stairwell an do five strict push-ups and then run down to the starting point. Back at my apartment, I would do deadhang pull-ups to failure.

On weekends, I would go to the park with my doggie and run one or two miles. I have never considered myself much of a runner, so I tried to focus on this aspect and learn how to pace myself. Sometimes I would run on the asphalt, and other times I would run on the grass just to get that cross-country feel.

Shortly after I joined my MMA gym in March, I casually told my trainer that I had signed up for the Spartan Race. He then designed an obstacle course for me, which I ran for 10 minutes. He would have me run and jump over strike pads he had stacked one on top of another. I would jump over a single pad, then two, then three, then one, and keep at it until the time was up. Ten minutes might sound like a short time, but this was very exhausting. It definitely improved my cardio.

Afterward, I would focus on upper-body work, which is extremely important if you want to be able to overcome the obstacles without any help. My upper-body work consisted of pull-ups on rings, rope climbing (without using legs for support), and a very cool type of pull-up my trainer taught me where you drape an old gi (a jiu-jitsu uniform) over a pull-up bar and pull yourself up grabbing the gi instead of the bar. It is difficult, but it will make your grip stronger.

This was followed by a whole hour of Muay Thai striking and kicking, a great cardio workout. The trainers always added some squats, sit-ups and push-ups (with boxing gloves on!!) to make sure you were completely wiped out by the end of the workout.

If you plan on training by yourself, I would recommend subscribing to the Spartan WODs (workouts of the day) that are found on the Spartan Race website.

What to wear:
Stick to spandex and lycra. Do NOT wear cotton, as the mud will stick to it and make your clothes heavy. You don't want to have to worry about your pants falling off in the middle of the race.

If you can, take knee pads and a pair of plush wrist bands. Remember that the ground is very rocky and crawling over rocks can be a pain in the ass (well, in the elbows and knees, really). I did not use knee pads, but I did take wristbands, which I used to cover my elbows when crawling under barbed wire.

As for shoes, I just used my old beat-up running sneakers and they did just fine. Remember, your shoes are going to get wet and muddy. Do you really want to buy a pair of  Vibrams or Innov-8s just to ruin them? That's your decision, I just think it's unnecessary. Actually, after the race I gave my sneakers away as donation for some pediatric cancer charity they had going on.  

In addition, remember to bring a backpack with an extra change of clothes, an extra pair of shoes, a towel and a few plastic bags to put your muddy clothes in. Also bring a bottle of water. You may not want to take the bottle with you on the race, but you will want to hydrate before and after he race.

The Spartan experience:
The best way I can describe it is as a challenging mountain hike on speed. At Tuxedo, the course was so rocky and muddy that I didn't run as much as I probably could have because I was afraid of twisting an ankle or slipping on a rock and breaking a leg, which, in all honesty, did happen to a few people.

The obstacles were the most fun part of the whole race. All the pull-ups and push-ups I've done served me well and allowed me to jump over walls that were taller than me without much effort. The rope climb was my favorite of all the obstacles and I got to the top without any problems.

Some of the obstacles require a lot of strength. There's one where you have to pull a concrete block up a hill...and the block is attached to a  heavy freakin' chain! There's another where you have to drag a tractor tire down a hill with your hands and then pull it up by a rope up the hill and bring it to its original place. There's also the sandbag carry where you carry a 40-pound (it felt like 40 pounds to me) sandbag up the rocky mountain. If your legs were not burning yet, this will do it for you!

The obstacles I did fail at were the spear throw, the traverse wall and the darned tree stubs. My spear flew directly to the ground and I slipped on both the wall and the stubs, having to do 30 burpees per failed obstacle as a penalty. By the way, you do not want to do burpees. They exhausted me more than climbing miles of rocks. And I'm pretty good at burpees.

As a bonus, after finishing the race, I decided to give the pull-up challenge a try. I am proud to report that I tied for first place with another lady with 11 reps! I couldn't even believe it!

The outcome:
I loved it! Finished in 2 hours and 12 minutes, and out of all 2,098 women, I came in at 613. Not bad for my first time!

As a team, my friends and I placed 277th out of 435 teams. Our average time was 2:25, with one of our guys finishing in an astonishing 1:30!

Spartan Race combined a challenging workout with the beauty of nature and a bunch of fun, silly people proving they are badasses.

Also, I think I will take running more seriously from now on. I already signed up for next year's Spartan Sprint, also in Tuxedo, and plan on completing the race in under two hours. Now that I know more or less what to expect, I plan on going all out.

The older, the wiser, the strongest

　
Recently I wondered about how getting older could make it more difficult to make progress in terms of physical fitness. Would it be fair to assume that it will be all downhill from the time we reach our late 30s?

I don't think so. Just think of all the badasses who are in their late 30s or over who could put many teens and twenty-somethings to shame when it comes to physical fitness.

The first person to come to mind is Tony Horton from the P90X program, mostly because it was his program that inspired me to take fitness seriously. The guy was almost 50 years old when that DVD program came out in 2004 and there is no doubt he was and still is in amazing shape. Now in his mid 50s, Horton gets a kick out of  beating young military guys in pull up and push up challenges.

Jacinto Bonilla, a 73-year-old who participates in the masters division (of athletes over 40 years of age) of the CrossFit Games, also comes to mind. In his CrossFit Games profile, Bonilla says he has no athletic background besides CrossFit. "I have only run in road racing and a few marathons, my best being at 3 hours and 26 minutes. Back in the 1960s I earned a black belt in Karate." He has been doing CrossFit since 2006.

In her biography on CrossFit NYC's website, a coach who is in her 20s, says that the first time she ever tried CrossFit she was in the same class as Bonilla. Given that she has a gymnastics and weightlifting background and is a Golden Gloves boxer, she expected to crush everyone in the class. Instead, she says she got smoked by Bonilla, who was 70 at the time.

Not only guys come to mind. About a month ago, when I started taking Muay Thai classes, I  began watching women's mixed martial arts (MMA) fights and reading about women in MMA to gain some insight into the sport. I got the nice surprise of finding that there are women in their late 30s and over who are grounding and pounding away.

One of them is Kaiyana Rain, who is 39 years old. She recently turned pro and is fighting girls in their early 20s. In her blog, Them's Fightin' Words, Rain describes how her age is not an obstacle.

 

"Isn't it harder now that you're older?" -No. I am more fit and more agile than I have ever been. In my youth I was more body than mind. In my years ahead I will be more mind than body. But right now I am enjoying the time in life when my mind and my body are in balance.

 

"How much longer until you stop?" - I am just getting started.

Baby, I am just getting started.

Another fighter I learned about is Susie "Mama Beast" Wyatt, who is 47 and is #14 in the 135-pound women's amateur MMA world rankings. She has won five fights and lost one. In a 2011 testimonial she recorded to promote the gym where she trains, Wyatt mentions that she had been training for about a year and a half, mostly in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. If my math is right, she began training at 44 ...and she has said in interviews that she expects to be fighting in her 50s. You go, girl!

Science agrees that it's not all downhill from mid-life on, as long as we stay active. Research published in The Physician and Sportsmedicine's September 2011 issue contradicts the notion that muscle mass and strength inevitably decline as we get older. Instead, it notes, these declines are the product of chronic disuse rather than muscle aging.

The study, which evaluated 40 people aged 40 to 81 who trained 4 to 5 times per week, showed that despite an increase in total body fat percentage, peak torque (torque is the force needed to rotate an object) and muscle-specific strength did not significantly decrease with age.

So, no, there is absolutely no way it's all downhill from your 30s. Age is no excuse to shy away from picking up the pace and kicking ass with even more intensity.

When bragging about pull-ups, keep 'em STRICT!

Recently, the New York Times ran an article titled "Why women can't do pull-ups" that sparked a wave of outrage from women who can actually do pull-ups. Like them, I also thought the article was absurd. After all, I was able to get my first pull up after a month or two of diligent daily attempts.

Among those joining the outrage party were CrossFitters who were quick to point out they know many women who can easily churn out pull-ups by the dozens.

 

But anyone familiar with CrossFit knows that its workouts mostly call for kipping pull-ups, which are a lot easier to do than the traditional strict pull-ups. (The video on top, which I shamelessly took from YouTube without permission, shows a bunch of people doing kipping pull-ups.)

In the kipping pull-ups used in CrossFit you swing your body to obtain enough momentum to pull up your body and get your chin over the bar. While churning out kipping pull-ups unbroken requires coordination and stamina, they definitely do not require as much strength as a strict pull-up.

In a strict pull-up you hang from the bar with arms fully extended and then pull yourself up without using momentum until your chin is over the bar. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), strict pull-ups are much more difficult than kipping pull-ups. Don't believe me? Just try them.

After the New York Times article ran, CrossFitters uploaded videos of gals doing pull-ups in hopes that this would dispel the myth the newspaper was perpetuating. But much to my disappointment, most of them showed kipping pull-ups. The author of the New York Times article and the studies she quoted were not considering women's ability to do kipping pull-ups, they were talking about strict pull-ups.

This said, it is no surprise to me that kipping pull-ups have become the object of much ridicule, precisely because there are too many CrossFitters out there bragging about being able to do 50 pull-ups when, in reality, they are kipping. Makes you wonder how many strict pull-ups they can manage, if any at all.

I don't have a problem with kipping pull-ups. In most CrossFit workouts, they are a necessity. After all, there is no way I am ever going to be able to finish the infamous "Fran" workout in under five minutes if I stick to strict pull-ups. (For the uninitiated, "Fran" consists of one round of 21 pull-ups and 21 thrusters, a second round of 15 repetitions and a third round of nine repetitions.) The only way to finish "Fran" as prescribed in a respectable amount of time is to kip them pull-ups. Believe me, I tried doing "Fran" with strict pull-ups. It took me 20 minutes to finish and my shoulders and lats were sore for two days.

I know a few gals at my CrossFit box who can do strict pull-ups and I'm sure there are a few gals at each and every CrossFit box who can churn out several strict pull-ups. So if you're going to brag, why not show your best moves? 

I am not saying kipping pull-ups are for losers. They are actually a lot of fun and will get your heart pumping.

The moral of this story is that if you are going to brag about being able to do pull-ups, please keep them strict and save yourself the embarrassment. Nobody laughs at strict pull-ups done with good form.