I haven’t lifted weights for over eight months. I still lift heavy things though. I move furniture around in my apartment; now that I am separated from my husband and getting divorced, I have to figure out how to take up space at home differently. I transfer my largest cast iron pan from the stove to the oven, and then to the counter, when I make dinners that I want to eat now that I am in eating disorder recovery. I contend with bright green plastic storage crates loaded with old real estate contracts now that I am taking on a larger role in my family business; I am stepping up because my mother is ready to wind down her role and we depend on the income. But I have no idea how many pounds I could deadlift right now.
I was training for all of this. I was training to stay mindful during the discomfort of physical and emotional stress. I was training to know when I needed a rest and to recognize when rest wasn’t enough. I was training to be able to recognize when I needed to make changes in my life to support my wellness. In the last few years, I dismantled and reconfigured most of my life and one of the most recent things I changed was the core of my movement practice.
Lifting weights met my wellness needs for nearly two decades: it provided pain management, community, a mindfulness practice, and fun! However last summer I begrudgingly accepted that after eighteen years of regular strength training, my workouts with barbells, kettlebells, and dumbbells were no longer making me happy or leaving me feeling good. I had grown tired of being the sort of sore I used to chase — a deep ache in my legs, chest, and back reminding me that I was getting even stronger. I wasn’t recovering well due to stress in my personal life. Because of Covid related moves, closures, and concerns, my lifting community had disbanded. Lifting weights wasn’t fun anymore. Its only selling point for me was that it provided a way to regularly practice mindful movement. But as I have told nearly every podcaster, journalist, and reader, we can anchor the mindfulness part into any movement practice.
Last summer I took a page out of my own book. In the introduction to Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time,I guide readers through conducting an intake much like I would do for a new client, so that they may begin to design and thoughtfully implement an embodied exercise program that aligns with their goals, needs, and lifestyle. Planning helps people navigate two big challenges to incorporating a new movement practice into their lives: First, overcoming the hurdle known as the intention-behavior gap* in which the intention alone to change behavior (like starting a regular embodied movement practice) does not often result in actual behavior change; and second it helps them build a movement practice that is designed to be easy for them to keep for the long haul because it accounts for their whole lifestyle and personal definition of wellness.
I worked through step one to identify my three main reasons for engaging in a regular movement practice today. Ultimately, I identified my intentions as:
managing chronic pain
being in community
having fun moving my body
Then I worked through step two. I identified what conditions I needed in place for me to fully and regularly show up to my movement practice now that my life is quite different from what it was a few years ago. My conditions almost contradicted each other:
gets me out of my house
doesn’t involve a long commute
an in-person class format
progress isn’t reliant on my showing up to the same class each week
emphasizes strength
novel enough to engage my mind-body
doesn’t regularly leave me feeling sore
Within “almost” there was a possibility.
I decided to try reformer pilates. I had done some pilates in a more therapeutic way to help with back pain and I was curious enough to keep exploring. It seemed like a good fit for my requirements: there are studios near me in New York and Massachusetts, it offers a class format but doesn’t require that I show up to the same class or classes each week. Pilates is supposed to be phenomenal for managing the sorts of chronic pain I struggle with, and all the springs and pulleys involved in reformer pilates certainly made it novel and weird enough to keep me engaged. Perhaps most importantly, I liked the way I felt after each session.
The third step in my self-guided intake, is to create a plan to put those conditions in place. I accounted for what I needed to research and also process. Executing that plan that took some time not to mention trial and error. I started researching pilates studios and instructors. I changed my exercise schedule. I talked at length with my eating disorder recovery coach about issues that were coming up around body image. I consulted with a physical therapist about getting my movement needs met.
I have been consistently doing pilates two to three times per week no matter where I am resting my head at night, for nearly eight months and I feel happy and healthy. I ground my embodied movement practice into pilates and in my newish daily morning yoga practice that takes me fifteen to twenty minutes and supports my writing practice. I feel more connected to my body and community than I have in a very long time. Replacing lifting weights with pilates has allowed me to more fully support my wellness right now, and as time goes on I see how it encourages me to be less rigid both inside and outside of the studio.
I would be remiss if I didn’t share that not lifting has come with a fair amount of grief. Even though it was leaving me feeling achy and unsatisfied most recently, lifting weights changed my life for the better in incredbily profound ways. This made it hard for me to admit that it was time to hit pause and rethink my movement practice. There are aspects I miss deeply and I despise that I don’t feel equipped to say yes to opportunities to lift at events that intrigue me. I find it so hard to utter the words, “I’m not lifting right now,” because if we’ve learned anything from stories, it’s that words often make something more real. Because I am still grieving, it guts me to put the words out there.
I know firsthand that when approached mindfully, lifting weights can bring about wonderful change. In my case it changed how I am in the world, my career, and it even prepared me to know when it was time to put down the weights, get curious, and find joy in something brand new.
* Bailey, Ryan R. “Goal Setting and Action Planning for Health Behavior Change.” American journal of lifestyle medicine vol. 13,6 615–618. 13 Sep. 2017, doi:10.1177/1559827617729634