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feldmanSo I've been lingering at the fringes of the Crossfit/paleo territory, and I think there's a lot to be said for exploring protocols radically different from lowfat diet + interminable cardio (the 'official' protocol for health and fitness that pushes my biology into depression and hibernation within weeks).
I'm a dilitant lifehacker, a garage workshop student of biology, and I like running new flags up the pole to see if I get a salute. My body responds well to paleo-esque fuel and short-sharp-shock style exercise. With school easing up for the summer, I plan to dial up the activity, take better care of myself, and have more fun with my body.
The thing that's beginning to wear on me, even as I narrow my RSS focus to the more physiologically-inclined paleo/HIIT blogosphere, is that the place is overrun by suburban white guy machismo. I understand the motivating idea behind a mental concept of Grok, a theoretical hunter dude making his way in the natural world, as a way to get into a pre-agriculture mindset about activity and food (what would Grok do?). I also think it's a useless construct for many reasons, but the main thing that chaps my ass about the whole Grok thing is that it's just as irrelevant and counterproductive to my own thinking and experimentation as evolutionary psychology is to my understanding of, well, anything besides pedantic misogyny.
In short, Grok is about as enlightening as an episode of Captain Caveman.
Boris links to a delightful video that at first blush parodies this balls-to-the-wall bullshit of hyper-macho training, but as I watched a sense of grim familiarity overtook my amusement. It's funny because it's true, but some things hit too close to truth to be funny (I have this problem with "Office Space" right now). I like Boris's SquatRX blog because he explores the mental discipline of training, and has a Buddhist slant that speaks to me, as someone who often gets in her own way. So I'm watching this Turkish badass strap rocks to his calves and leap like a mountain goat and it's delightful.
Then a doe-eyed woman in flowers bathes his bloody knuckles with herbs and it's not so fucking funny, because right then I'm no longer the badass deadlifting boulders, I'm The Chick.
Yes, this is a youtube clip and not an actual post on a paleo-blog. But it perfectly illustrates the snap-back I get whenever I'm knee-deep in an interesting post and suddenly realize that I'm not the audience, I'm not the person thinking about their squat form, or contemplating a pair of Vibram Five Fingers or adjusting to coffee without sugar--I'm The Chick, Grokette, the girlfriend afraid to weightlift, the woman who has a few token discussion threads to hang out on, the other half of the species that didn't chase down prey like a badass and eat its liver raw.
I call bullshit. I don't come from some mythical Grokette, buddy.
My maternal line has been rocking the digging stick for millions of years. I come from girls who foraged over miles with siblings strapped to their backs, women who processed whole animals into food, tools and clothes, grandmothers who levered over boulders and set bones, and every single one of them survived to hand it off to the next generation. They hauled water and wood, they tamed fire and microorganisms to greatly increase their nutrition, they discovered medicines and drugs and they did so while pregnant, nursing and caring for children in a brutal landscape.
'Gathering' is not grocery shopping, and if we're the legacy of a steroptypical successful hunter, let me tell you fucker, we're also the legacy of a successful gatherer who kept her fire fueled and her toddlers safe while pushing a quarter million calories through her body with each year of nursing.
Momma's buying her kettlebell today.
I'm a dilitant lifehacker, a garage workshop student of biology, and I like running new flags up the pole to see if I get a salute. My body responds well to paleo-esque fuel and short-sharp-shock style exercise. With school easing up for the summer, I plan to dial up the activity, take better care of myself, and have more fun with my body.
The thing that's beginning to wear on me, even as I narrow my RSS focus to the more physiologically-inclined paleo/HIIT blogosphere, is that the place is overrun by suburban white guy machismo. I understand the motivating idea behind a mental concept of Grok, a theoretical hunter dude making his way in the natural world, as a way to get into a pre-agriculture mindset about activity and food (what would Grok do?). I also think it's a useless construct for many reasons, but the main thing that chaps my ass about the whole Grok thing is that it's just as irrelevant and counterproductive to my own thinking and experimentation as evolutionary psychology is to my understanding of, well, anything besides pedantic misogyny.
In short, Grok is about as enlightening as an episode of Captain Caveman.
Boris links to a delightful video that at first blush parodies this balls-to-the-wall bullshit of hyper-macho training, but as I watched a sense of grim familiarity overtook my amusement. It's funny because it's true, but some things hit too close to truth to be funny (I have this problem with "Office Space" right now). I like Boris's SquatRX blog because he explores the mental discipline of training, and has a Buddhist slant that speaks to me, as someone who often gets in her own way. So I'm watching this Turkish badass strap rocks to his calves and leap like a mountain goat and it's delightful.
Then a doe-eyed woman in flowers bathes his bloody knuckles with herbs and it's not so fucking funny, because right then I'm no longer the badass deadlifting boulders, I'm The Chick.
Yes, this is a youtube clip and not an actual post on a paleo-blog. But it perfectly illustrates the snap-back I get whenever I'm knee-deep in an interesting post and suddenly realize that I'm not the audience, I'm not the person thinking about their squat form, or contemplating a pair of Vibram Five Fingers or adjusting to coffee without sugar--I'm The Chick, Grokette, the girlfriend afraid to weightlift, the woman who has a few token discussion threads to hang out on, the other half of the species that didn't chase down prey like a badass and eat its liver raw.
I call bullshit. I don't come from some mythical Grokette, buddy.
My maternal line has been rocking the digging stick for millions of years. I come from girls who foraged over miles with siblings strapped to their backs, women who processed whole animals into food, tools and clothes, grandmothers who levered over boulders and set bones, and every single one of them survived to hand it off to the next generation. They hauled water and wood, they tamed fire and microorganisms to greatly increase their nutrition, they discovered medicines and drugs and they did so while pregnant, nursing and caring for children in a brutal landscape.
'Gathering' is not grocery shopping, and if we're the legacy of a steroptypical successful hunter, let me tell you fucker, we're also the legacy of a successful gatherer who kept her fire fueled and her toddlers safe while pushing a quarter million calories through her body with each year of nursing.
Momma's buying her kettlebell today.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 05:07 pm (UTC)I'm also intrigued by paleo -- I don't go nearly all the way, but my body is consistently happier on a diet that's high in fish, meat, fruit, vegetables and nuts, with everything else on the side. And yay lifting heavy weights, yay kettlebells, and yay Tabata if I can ever find a form that my knees will tolerate.
But yeah. The overweening machismo and I WORKED OUT TILL I VOMITED THIS IS SPARTAAAAA!!!! is not a welcoming environment.
May I commend
I also love BodyTribe for their Strength Rituals DVD, which is eccentric, funny, full of people of assorted genders, shapes and sizes (not to mention a dog and several cats), devoid of macho bullshit, and all about delight in hardcore strength training as movement and play. They offer daily workouts a la Crossfit -- but theirs have names like "Judith Butler".
(Oh, oh, also, have you read Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography? It's an extravagant biological fuck-you to the misogynist tendencies of evolutionary psychology, basically.)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 06:22 pm (UTC)Okay, a CF-style workout called 'Judith Butler' has my ears perked. And I've added Gubernatrix to the RSS, thank you for the rec : ) Natalie Angier and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy book-end a lot of my thinking on this subject right now, as well as having had the time recently to start processing my own experience with reproduction and what a huge thing that is for a human body to move through and accomplish.
I'm sure there are more paleo rants in me. There's this ethos of self-important iconoclasm that bugs the crap out of me. Yes, these these ideas go against the prevailing grain and it takes a certain chutzpah to ditch whole grains and treadmills in favor of bacon and sprints. But ferfuxsake there's a huge additional cultural riptide women have to contend with, and it would be really fucking great to have more venues where that's discussed and dismantled instead of replicated when it isn't simply ignored.
Currently I'm Tabata lilac-sniffing, which seems to be easy on the knees.
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Date: 2010-04-30 06:54 pm (UTC)They're a combined gym and art gallery, and they firmly maintain that the purpose of functional fitness is to prepare yourself for the zombie apocalypse.
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Date: 2010-05-01 04:50 am (UTC)Thanks for posting this. The suburban white guy machismo and self-important iconoclasm drive me nuts, so I really appreciated it.
Further rants would probably fit nicely in
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Date: 2010-04-30 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 06:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-02 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 06:57 pm (UTC)The Grok thing has been itching at the back of my brain since I started getting into the crossfit/paleo corners of the internets, though until you put it so perfectly, I couldn't really figure out why it was bugging me.
(My kettlebell should be here on Wednesday, just in time for the semester to be over. Let me show you my joy.)
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Date: 2010-05-07 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-09 02:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-07 12:18 am (UTC)AND ALSO... somehow the maternal line evolved menopause, unique among mammals, for no reason that made any sense to Grok, but highly correlated with the phenomena that children with living grandmothers were WAY MORE LIKELY TO SURVIVE... and that the few women who lived a *really* long time were the only one in the tribe who could remember which last-ditch nasty-tasting foodstuffs didn't kill the people who ate them, a couple of generations ago, during the last really bad famine.
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Date: 2010-11-07 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-07 03:39 am (UTC)Grokette and her teensy fur bikini? My ass.