I was just curious because I don’t have anything scheduled and I’m feeling pretty sluggish. I took most of January off because I’ve had some niggling pain in my foot and my groin area - the kind of thing where they’re sore and they’re not obviously injuries, but they’re also not obviously not injuries. So I figured, given the crappy weather, I’d rest up. I had originally planned on running a local half marathon the first weekend of February, but that’s off the table. I ended up running about 30 miles the entire month (with some additional Peloton cycling), and things feel a little better but not perfect.
But now I’ve gained about 5 pounds over the last 2 months, feel like I’ve lost a lot of fitness, and am super grumpy. At this point, I’m just trying to work on mobility, getting back into running with some walk+run workouts, and hoping to build up a decent base over the next few months. Now I’m thinking I’ll do the Capital City Half Marathon at the end of April.
Don’t love the main graphic in that article. Some dude looking at some girl lifting for long enough to take that shot doesn’t really meet the harassment threshold, imo. He certainly could have been harassing her, but that photo isn’t exactly a picture of harassment.
Article is right that it happens a lot and also right that sometimes it doesn’t happen and people think that it is. Latter wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t happen so much.
I’ve never seen a guy hit on a woman at the gym. For the most part people keep to themselves unless they know each other.
Only a handful of times I’ve seen guys try to joke around with women they don’t know. And with one guy last week it actually worked! She joked around with him for the rest of her workout. Blew my mind because she was absolutely stacked and like 4" taller than him. But she liked the attention I guess.
I think the main diagnostic tool is going to be if you try to do a wall slide (even without resistance) and you can’t slide your hands up the wall.
Two things to add in to complement direct training of the scapular mobility:
Perhaps the most boring but effective technique for improving overhead mobility is simply dead hanging from a pull up bar. Often overhead immobility is just tightness in all the things that need to lengthen to reach overhead. I do this all the time because you can just do it between sets, especially things like squats where I’m going to want 2-3 minutes of rest time between sets I’ll dead hang during resting.
I wouldn’t do, like, 9 exercises in scapular mobility. I would pick a couple and combine them with related shoulder health exercises like rotator cuff training and thoracic extensions.
I’m thinking the facepull looks good. Then maybe the YTWL as a warm up. In particular it’s the W move i think I’m weak on. What’s that. Forward rotation?
Wall slides seemed good when I tried them now. Challenging but doable.
So I might just add those 3.
My elbow tendon isnt up to a hang yet. Once it is I will add.
On a given night there are 3-5 women at my gym in this basic outfit, or even more over the top. I’m going to assume they don’t mind the occasional glance, because they get a lot of them.
But that first TikTok girl in the Guardian article was clearly getting creeped on by that guy. Oh let me just stand right behind you and pretend to do something with this plate. Oh you’re done? Now I’m immediately done after 7 reps too.
Internet / TikTok promotes polarization and controversy. There’s definitely a set of the people posting the gym creep videos who are doing so for clicks when it’s pretty innocuous glances. There’s also some definite creeps out there and I feel for women who just want to work out and not be leered at.
I knew I was going to get moralized. God forbid we ever acknowledge that men and women are human beings and not perfectly ethical robots with no biological impulses in all situations.
There’s a very clear and obvious dichotomy at the gym between “I’m wearing because it’s comfortable” and “I’m wearing this because I work hard for this body and I look damn good in it.” I feel pretty safe saying that 99% of the latter case don’t mind being glanced at every now and then.
I know - I’m exactly the same as blaming rape victims for their outfit. We have to pretend that no one ever dresses in a provocative gym outfit because they like the attention, even a little bit. Never mind when a woman admits to exactly that. Just ignore that.
Also this isn’t the same case, but still - watch the other video with the influencer Jessica Fernandez. She’s clearly off her rocker.
No - all those influencers are victims and all men who look in her general direction are creeps. Life is black and white.
At my old gym this insanely hot fitness model used to work out in a skimpy top and running shorts that just about revealed everything. One time she was doing reverse hypers or whatever you call it where you lay on your stomach and lift your legs as high as you can behind you.
I’d seen her do that stuff before so I wasn’t too shocked, I looked over at the middle-aged dude on the bike next to me and caught the moment he looked up and saw her with pretty much everything hanging out. A look of horror washed over his face. He seemed like he was having some feelings he didn’t want to have.
