Str3ngth 1n Numb3rs

(Strength in Numbers)

This is quite a literal opening here. I had a breakthrough last week with a deadlift personal best (PB if you’re into peanuts and/or butter) and it has made me reflect on my reasons for weight training, and some conversations I’ve been having with my PT (Peanut Tut-ter?) over the last month or so. It’s all been percolating for a few weeks, and after writing almost eight thousand words yesterday for work, I felt the need to try and reclaim some words for myself. If I can knock that out for someone else’s benefit, I feel certain I can produce a couple of hundred for a much-missed outlet of mine. I mean there is a joke that you put your feelings in your muscles and then destroy the fibres. Bad feelings gone, repaired muscles fibres on the way. So I’ve been letting off steam in the gym, and neglecting the blog, but I’m big enough and strong enough to know that’s ok, and I’ll reach for the right tool at the right moment. Unless it’s in the middle of a crucial step in a flatpack construction and I end up with a pair of pliers when I thought I’d grabbed a Philips.

Now where do I start? I started watching Baby Reindeer a couple of weeks ago. I’d seen various comments about how it was quite disturbing and lingered in the minds of those who had watched it, so I wasn’t in any rush to volunteer for that experience. Then my PT asked me, as I was mid-hip-opener over a medicine ball, if I’d watched it. I said no, red faced and distraught from the preceding glute drives. Usually he’s laughing at me complaining while essentially lying on the floor, but when I peeked out from under my own arms, his face was serious. I don’t often see him serious, or worried, or anxious. I’m far too entertaining during that hour we spend together, doing stupid things like getting into the leg extension machine the wrong way, or falling over while I try and pull a tiny resistance band up my (admittedly very powerful) legs.

But he was suddenly serious. I straightened up (slowly and painfully) and asked him if he’d watched it too. He replied he had, but shaking his head told me he watched two episodes and had to stop. I thought to myself, wow this must be a really intense watch coming from the guy who made me watch a shark attack video on his phone once. We moved on from the conversation about it quite quickly. He sees straight through my attempts to try and cut a lunge or a push press from the roster by keeping him talking, and we moved swiftly, ok he moved swiftly, to the leg press and I rolled in like a woodlouse that’s had it’s wood stolen.

Cut to a week later, and as I’m progressing on rehabilitation for a back and hip injury, the PT utters those dreaded words to me.. “let’s do some single leg exercises..” I have an issue with this, because the injuries I’ve sustained are entirely down the right side of my body. My left leg quickly fatigues as it’s been over compensating, and my right leg, hip and lower back appear to be made from biscuits, the kind that would drop in your tea/coffee before you dunked it. I also get migraines from lunges, I bet medical science can’t wait to get a hold of this corpse!

He wanted me to do box step ups and I have the balance of a pissed Bambi on ice, so I start on a small step, clutching an RSJ in the middle of the gym. But it quickly becomes apparent that a) the step isn’t challenging me (apparently this is bad) and b) I can’t support myself properly on a higher step against aforementioned joist given the layout of the gym floor. PT slaps his shoulder and tells me to “use him” for balance. I’m not a particularly touchy-feely person. I’m quite happy responding to touch if someone else initiates it – I’ll hug you if you hug me, I’ll shake your hand if you offer me your hand, and so on. And so despite the fact, I’ve known this guy for a couple of years, I’ve seen him split his trousers in the gym to reveal the joke boxers he picked that morning, and he’s seen me throw up after an assault bike hazing, I’m still reluctant to place a hand on him. I gingerly rest my palm on his shoulder, go to step up and immediately overbalance back onto the floor.

He knows what’s up, and enthusiastically invites me to “use him” once again, loudly across the weights area and while outwardly I am wobbling and sweaty, inwardly I am laughing at the absurd single entendre he keeps flashing at me. I firmly grasp this absolute unit of a man, pull nearly my whole weight up by my arm, and he doesn’t so much as sway. It’s going to be alright I tell myself, and commence a couple of rounds of alternating step ups, well supported and less concerned I am going to suddenly collapse. Why do I mention this? Because of the inner turmoil I felt at touching someone I was paying to train me, even when invited to.

I cannot name the artist because I watched the clip still in bed this morning, face smushed between my pillow and my dog’s neck, and with only one eye open. But it was a female celebrity on the stairs at the Met Gala, wearing a dress made of sand, that she couldn’t move in to ascend said stairs. A couple of men rush over, and so begins about 20 seconds of one man having an absolute crisis around how and where to touch her, and ultimately asking it was ok to lift her by her waist up to the top of the stairs. She agrees, and he rather gracefully lifts her up like a tree trunk and deposits her a few steps higher. It had popped up on my phone due to the manner in which he’d approached solicited requests for physical contact so wonderfully and sensitively. When I watched it, I really felt his concern about placing hands on someone you don’t know too well, that is in a position of vulnerability. Her, because she was stuck in front of an army of cameras waiting for a wardrobe malfunction, and couldn’t move if she wanted to, and my PT because he is effectively an employee of mine, and dependent on client fees for a living.

Anyway, back to the reindeer. Not long after the step up ordeal, I told my PT I’d now watched a couple of episodes of the series (only one or two, so if my opinion on the show is ultimately proved to be wrong, I’m claiming ignorance at this stage.) I started to say I’d also found it quite uncomfortable to watch, as there is escalating obsession on the part of a female stalker, towards the main character, but also the victim’s apparent early courting of her behaviour because he felt unseen and invisible. Before I’d really finished I noticed he was looking uncomfortable. This time when he told me he couldn’t watch more than that either he also added on that he had a client that was just like the stalker. The first thing out of my mouth was “it’s not me is it?” I knew it wasn’t but I am a bit weird.

He laughed a little and said no. Then proceeded to explain she even looked a bit like the character/actor, had the same sort of mannerisms and she often made him feel uncomfortable, both in and outside the gym. My heart went out to him. No wonder he hadn’t been able to watch what was quite a sobering portrayal of obsession and harassment. He went on to show me some of the comments in their chat, and photos she sent him and it was genuinely life imitating art (imitating life, as the series is based on a true story.) It’s like she’d watched it, and instead of finding the antagonist unpleasant, had used the program as inspiration, it was so similar. He then told me how she’d use any excuse in the gym to touch him, have him touch her, and would quite openly discuss quite personal, intimate things with him. He showed me photos she’d sent to him, selfies in the car wearing a low-cut top, and messages she sent complaining that she’d seen him talking to other women in the gym. He told me she tickles and prods him and he really doesn’t like it.

I was absolutely horrified to find out she booked him three times a week and was a regular attendee at the gym, so he couldn’t really avoid her. He initially started saying he was trying to work out how to stop having her as a client, and brushed it off when I gently said there was no amount of money I could be paid, to allow this sort of behaviour to be done to me. And I say that knowing he could easily get those three hours a week filled with other clients, as I appreciate not everyone has the privilege of being able to turn down work, whatever the reason. He shook his head when I said, don’t you think that what she is doing to you is sexual harassment, and looked shocked.

I immediately recalled the opening scene of Baby Reindeer, where the male victim goes to report what is happening and he seems rather confused about if a crime has/is being committed, and the reaction of the officer when they see it’s a man being harassed by a woman. There still seems to be a perception that men can’t be victims, especially in my PT’s case, young and incredibly strong men. I’m very aware that statistically speaking, male on female and then male on male violence is far more prevalent, but I wonder how much goes unreported when you overlay attitudes that men cannot be threatened, abused or overpowered by women.

I can’t speak for my PT, but if the genders were reversed and a male client was doing that to a female PT, they would be quite swiftly banned from the gym and quite possibly reported to the police. I feel great sadness that he is not offered the same protection, because he is either expected to protect himself, or because he is meant to brush off behaviours like this because he’s not in any danger. This brings me back to the title of this post. He has the numbers on her, he’s fourteen years younger, considerably fitter and stronger, but I could see how small her actions had made him feel. He might not be in immediate physical danger from her, but her unwelcome comments and reactions were damaging him.

As a devoted feminist, I don’t want to overlook the fact (that I’ve stated over and over again in other posts) that patriarchal ideology hurts everyone. Men can be victims. Big strong men can be victims. Women can be abusers and sexually harass men who they are not necessarily a pure physical danger to. Men are often not believed, or laughed at if they are the victim of any kind of assault by a woman, and shame can prevent the reporting of these activities and deepen the belief that it just doesn’t happen. I really hope that my PT can find a way to remove himself safely from the situation he has found himself in, and that those he does tell about it, take it seriously and acknowledge what he is going through.

While we’re on the topic of strength and protection, I lifted a PB last week, but my real victory had happened over a year ago. There is limitless, trashy gym wear out there for women who weight train, and I usually dodge it, but one slogan did stick in my mind.

“I don’t want to look skinny, I want to look like I could kick your ass”

Eye-rolling right, but it reminded me of the false eyes on the butterfly, or the white stripe down the back of a skunk, or the vivid markings of a venomous snake. It was a warning to would-be predators to leave this particular creature alone, that you won’t get hold of me easily and I won’t go down without a fight.

My real victory? The day I lifted the equivalent weight of the man who attacked me. That was the day I realised that if I ever saw him again, I was both full of enough mental fortitude and sufficient muscle fibres to physically remove him from myself, my body and my space. So there is a safety in numbers that I take comfort in, with each 0.5Kg that lift increased by, I felt more powerful, more self-assured, more able to protect myself.

What we mustn’t forget, is that having the numbers does not guarantee the safety. That we must continue to dismantle the systems and thought patterns that create the idea that any human has the right to lay hands, words or actions on another human without their permission.