Luckily, my running after the past semester of on and off gym attendance has gotten better, but though as I said, I am mix of both types of gym people, when I go to the gym and don't just tell myself that I will do yoga in my room and then don't, I set my stuff into a cubby and I walk into the weight lifting area.
Usually I walk into the weight lifting area as the only woman among a dozen guys.
There is nothing wrong with this. To be honest though, I find myself proud when I am the only lady in the room lifting weights and attempting to do pull ups. Maybe this is because I know that I would never actually have gotten the confidence to lift weights at all if it wasn't for my ex pushing me out of bed at 5:30 in the morning to workout when I couldn't convince him to sleep just for a few more hours.
Back then, I had to ask him for help for everything, including lifting a single bar for fear of making a fool out of myself in front of the other three people who would dare to get up that early. I had no idea what I was doing, let alone if I was squatting correctly since apparently there is a difference between yoga squatting and holding weight on your back and squatting so you don't fall over. Who knew?
In the past the only people I had seen weight lift was scary looking body builders, and my dad in the basement when he and my mom were on another health kick. Not only must I saw was I perpetually worried about looking like that girl who had not a clue what she was doing, but I also am not going to lie, I was also afraid of turning into a veined body builder when I always lusted after ballerinas or those girls in action movies who looked like they could take down a man in two seconds flat.
Yet still, my gym clothes being thrown at me every other day, I literally rolled out of bed and onto the cold tile floor, and went to the gym.
I definitely wasn't confident at all still. But then, after about a month, I began to see a difference. Not only was this difference in my perpetually skinny fat body that I had come to think as cute and petite after losing all the muscle I had previously gained in my gymnastics years. But I also saw a difference in how I carried myself each morning when we arrived. How I carried myself for the rest of the day.
I won't tell you that I love to work out. I don't. I love the feeling after I workout most of the time, but before it takes a few motivating pep-talks from myself to make a plan to go. I tell myself the terrible things like, "you want to look good, don't you?" But I also tell myself other things such as, "pretend that you are preparing for the hunger games or something and feel badass," or "you never know when there may be a zombie apocalypse that you probably won't survive!"
Only sometimes do those three things work. But when they do and I strip myself of my cute clothes I wore all day to class and change into my terrible not matching gym clothes that make me look like the bum of the gym some days, I go.
And sometimes when I lift alone or with a bunch of guys finishing up their off season sports workout, I do feel badass. And always, when I am jamming out to Spotify, if I catch the gaze of another girl I have never seen before in the mirror by the dumbbells, I smile just a little as if to say, "Hell yeah, we got this."
We are strong ladies willing to break the cardio mold...even if tomorrow I won't be able to move my legs.
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