“Shadows avaunt, Richard’s himself again!”
– Ivanhoe, deadlifts
“The question isn’t who’s going to let me. It’s who’s going to stop me.”
– Ayn Rand, bent-over rows
“I slew him, tumty-tum.”
– P.G. Wodehouse (Bertie Wooster misquoting Thomas Hood), seated rows
“I am a leaf on the wind; watch me soar.”
– Wash, “Firefly,” assisted pullups
“MORE WEIGHT”
– Giles Corey, Salem Witch Trials, bench press
“MANLINESS WITHOUT OSTENTATION I LEARNED FROM MY FATHER”
– Marcus Aurelius, Medituations, squats and box jumps
“Death [exhale] is my gift [inhale].”
– Buffy the Vampire Slayer, bicep curls
“Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England.”
– Thomas Malory, Morte D’Arthur, kettlebell swings
“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.”
– Homer, walking lunges
“EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY”
– T.H. White, The Once and Future King, dips
“I am half agony, half hope.”
– Jane Austen, Persuasion, seated fly
“Beauty! Terrible Beauty!
A deathless Goddess!”
– Homer, pushups (assisted, if I’m being honest)
“Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
– Homer, whenever I pass in front of the full-length mirror
Tags: fine okay not all of these are from literature but w/e, fitness, whispers
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This is timely, as I am facing down several deadlines. Bookmarking for future reference…
Brilliant!
For those unmotivated thoughts that come when you want to quit:
” Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life.”
-Hamlet, Bench press
“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
-The Book Thief, Running
MORE WEIGHT
Oh my God, I am dying. This is perfection.
Mine would be more along the lines of “Fail again. Fail better.”
“To strive, to seek, to find, AND NOT TO YIELD,” shooing brochachos off machinery they’ve encamped upon and have not used in the past five minutes.
BROCHACHOS.
“brochachos”
😀
*ded*
In my camp counselor days, I was fond of intoning, “EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY” when campers complained about participating in activities. In retrospect, those children must have been terrified. To be fair though, they all knew of my reputation as the strange/strict counselor, so they should have expected nothing less.
“For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder.” -Virginia Woolf, THE WAVES, bench press
Ooh that one is GOOD
“See the dwarves and see the giants- which one would you choose to be?” Scott Walker, squats/leg press.
“Sous les pavés, la plage!” Situationist slogan, dead lifts
“Remember that a storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability.” Ho Chi Minh, lunges
“And so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses.” Homer, lying on mat after too many burpees
AH. Hector quotes always get me in the feels. Lump in my throat.
[adoration intensifies]
“The question isn’t who’s going to let me. It’s who’s going to stop me.”
If this weren’t an Ayn Rand quote, I would consider getting a tattoo of it. RUINER.
I know, right? I was just coming the same thing. I’m going to go start a rumor that she plagiarized that from someone I like.
I think you’re right. 😉
I want to make it my motto to inspire me to succeed in super feminist and progressive things, and the fact that she would hate it it will simply make my fires burn brighter.
Honestly, as a feminist motto, “The question isn’t who’s going to let me. It’s who’s going to stop me,” is pretty damn perfect. I’m adopting it, regardless of its source.
I tried to favorite every single one of these like it was its own separate tweet.
I dunno whether that particular quote from Wash is the best one to use while surrounded by objects that can kill you.
Sounds like you’re trying to tell us that, contextually, something about that quote is downright unsettlin’.
A housemate of mine has that on his license plate holder on his car. It also says “Wash is my copilot.” I have extremely mixed feelings about this.
I know someone whose workout mantra was “Smite flat the thick rotundity!” (King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2).
Not to be a boner, but I think the Homer quotation is actually a line from Troy? I think Brad Pitt says it?
I invite you to not worry about it!
One of those rare cases where the movie is better than the book, so I think it stands.
*hides*
“Let them say that The Toast lived in the time of Achilles.”
*runs away*
“The Lannisters send their regards” – Homer, The Iliad
“More Weight” is a joke I make literally every time I go to the weight area at the gym. In my mind, it is always in the voice of the actor who voices the wax figure at the Salem museum.
“Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.” – Niccolo Machiavelli, back squats
“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.”
Post-workout stretching
Here’s the problem.
I’m going to remember this at the exact wrong time — like, trussed up in the Pilates Reformer straps doing a figure 4 stretch — and I’m going to laugh and tear something.
I (sort of) hate to be that person, but the final quote is not Homer. It is great and perfect, but it is from the movie Troy. The screenwriter was David Benioff. I figure he should get some credit for such a great line. Homer gets enough credit for all of his.
You don’t hate being that person at all!
I snorted so hard I hurt my face when I read “Giles Corey, bench press”. XD
Lots of good quotes in the comments too!
I wish I had quotes to share for motivation. When I start feeling pain (usually with planks or squats), I start laughing for some reason. My mister is both endeared and unsettled by it. Maybe it’s a subconscious distraction thing or maybe my brain just snaps and goes “how weird that we’re doing this, making our body uncomfortable on purpose” but it helps. I come from a long line of Laughers. Regular giggle fits: the only way I can explain my abs staying solid after months without strenuous exercise.
I laugh when I hurt, too. Or when I fall down. Or when I can’t lift something. Or when I know I look like an awkward mess trying a new move. My trainer thinks I’m deeply weird and also hilarious.
aaaaaaa that’s not a real Rand quote though Mallory, it’s the “Play it again, Sam” of The Fountainhead! http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/11/ayn-rand-girl-pow…
The real quote is this:
“Do you mean to tell me that you’re thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?”
“Yes.”
“My dear fellow, who will let you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”
(Because OF COURSE it’s about architecture)
“Because OF COURSE it’s about architecture”
It’s about ethics in fitness journalism.
The Witches’ dialogue from Macbeth is excellent for muttering on long runs:
I’ll give thee a wind.
Thou’rt kind.
And I another.
I myself have all the other,
And the very ports they blow,
All the quarters that they know
I’ the shipman’s card.
I will drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his penthouse lid;
He shall live a man forbid:
Weary se’nnights nine times nine
Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-toss’d.
Is this a good place to ask for workout tips? I am a total beginner who is too intimidated to try many things (Crossfit, group classes at gyms, yoga) because I think I will make a fool of myself. Though I was very athletic when I was young, I’ve led a sedentary lifestyle for many years. My husband and I share an aversion to physcial activity and it has started to make me sad. We’ve been on vacations with his family, and his brothers and sisters will go on fun excursions (hiking, biking) and not even invite us because I think we’re seen as the lazy, out-of-shape couple. I was taught to view exercise as torture and punishment and I have never had a good relationship with it.
In the past, I’ve joined gyms and worked with trainers, but they generally have NO clue how to train a large, out-of-shape person. I inevitably end up becoming so overworked so quickly that I nearly pass out and then I give up. My focus these days is not to lose weight, but to get stronger and to embrace life more fully by being connected to my body. Help, guys! What works for you? I wish I could just move to Utah and let Nicole have her way with me.
There are plenty of specific regimens, but I’ve found a few underlying principles that keep me steady. Use them if they’re useful for you.
First, expect to be uncomfortable sometimes. You don’t know the step aerobics choreography, you can’t hoik your knee up into lunge in yoga, you pick up a weight and it’s too heavy, you wander around a gym not knowing what to do. This is completely normal, and it sucks, but it passes if you keep doing it. Getting past that initial psychic discomfort will let you find out whether you actually like an activity. The same is true of the exercise itself. It shouldn’t make you pass out, but you shouldn’t feel like it’s easy, either; learning where the right edge is for you comes with practice. (C25K is ideal this way, because part of what it teaches you is not to run as fast as you can, but how to run at the right pace so that you can do a minute, two minutes, five minutes, agh twenty minutes, and so on, but if running isn’t your jam–or not something you think you might like to make your jam!–that’s fine too.)
Second, routine. Routine routine routine. I dreaded not using my gym membership, so I made a rule that I had to go at least three times a week, even if all I did was walk in, change clothes, hop in the sauna, and walk out. Most of the time I changed and then went through a workout; these days I get itchy in my soul if I don’t get regular exercise. But it had to be something I subconsciously expected to do, so I consciously made it a habit.
Third, think about your goals and be okay with them, and rehearse discussing them with a trainer if you go that way. Don’t care about your weight? Tell them that. Got injuries? Tell them that. Don’t want to be yelled at? Tell them that too. A trainer who doesn’t listen to you is not going to do you any good; talking up front can save you both some work. [ETA: Find a trainer who doesn’t give you a bad feeling. All of my trainers have been people whose company I enjoyed; I rejected one substitute suggested by the training manager because I’ve seen him work with other clients and he’s always put my hackles up for some undefinable reason. A PT may be intimidating in how fit they are, but they shouldn’t be someone you dread seeing.]
Finally, The Burn archives are around somewhere and are full of a mix of terrifying fit people who love burpees and people who are working toward their first unassisted pushup, and nobody’s cocked a snook at anyone for “lesser” fitness. Bodies are ridiculous and so are some of the things we do to keep them in operating condition. Good luck!
Everything you say is right on point. I am not a person who is happy being uncomfortable. I pursue comfort and routine like a heat-seeking missile and exercise is the antithesis of that for me. But I know all the best things in my life were achieved only through hard, uncomfortable work. I think I am going to look for a trainer who has background working specifically with plus-size people. I can’t necessarily afford a trainer, but if I’m serious about changing my lifestyle, I’ll have to rearrange things and cut down in another area. Thanks for all the suggestions, they are really helpful!
Start slowly. If you try to do too much, too soon you’ll be sore and much more likely to get injured, and much LESS likely to stick with it. Small, achievable goals–walk for 30 min on the treadmill three times a week, for instance. After a few weeks, evaluate how you feel and see about adding in another small, achievable thing–upping the speed to jogging for thirty seconds at a time, maybe, or downloading some fitness videos that you can do at home that might make you feel more confident about your motion and balance.
I think the most important thing is to get out and do something, no matter what that something is (no one’s expecting you to go out and run ten miles today). The more you progress, the easier it gets to add things into your routine. And please, trust me when I say that 99.9995% of gym-goers and class-attenders really want nothing more than for their fellow gym-goers and class-attenders to be happy and healthy, and are not judging you in any significant way that they aren’t judging themselves too.
Awesome advice, thanks! I live in NY so I walk a fair amount, but I need to get in the habit of just moving my damn body more – taking the stairs when I can, walking instead of taking the subway when possible, etc. Once I’m feeling a bit more comfortable (not getting winded super easily, sweating my face off for no good reason, feeling coordinated, etc) I will try some classes.
Oh! If you’re in NY, I bet there are GADS of body-positive yoga classes, too, which might be an awesome place to start getting used to just being around people while being active, if that’s something you think you might enjoy.
I could go on for days about the wonderfulness of a good, supportive CrossFit box, but that’s not especially helpful, I know. HOWEVER, I would strongly encourage you to pay a visit to a local box (or more than one, if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere that has multiple boxes). Talk to the coaches. Ask how they approach training non-athletes. Ask if you can watch them lead a WOD to see what motivation techniques they use. Treat it like an interview, because it is.
I had to quit CrossFit a couple years ago because of adrenal fatigue issues. I resumed the olympic lifting portion of training with one of the CF coaches, and he was really good about being conscious and respectful of my physical limits. Make sure any potential trainer you hire understands and respects your health goals. GOOD LUCK!
That is helpful! There is a box near to my apartment (way closer than any traditional gym) and I’ve been flirting with the idea of checking it out, but I always tell myself I’ll feel like an idiot. I like your idea of treating it like an interview and getting a lot of information before I even attempt to workout there. Crossfit seems to be more in line with my goal of gaining strength rather than focusing on weight, so that is appealing. Thanks CleverManka!
Swimming is a great way to get yourself fit when you’re heavy, because the water supports you and you don’t have to worry about all the high-impact disasters that can happen you’re starting out from scratch. Not only is it good exercise and works muscles all over your body, but lap swimming can be extremely meditative and relaxing. Start slow, and you’ll find yourself adding laps because you just don’t want to stop.
Consider aquafit too – most places offer a variety of classes, so you should be able to ask about which ones are the lowest-intensity then work your way up as you get more familiar and more comfortable.
Also please keep in mind that a high percentage of the people in classes with you are also thinking of themselves as unathletic doofuses (I may be projecting here a bit) and will often turn out to be an awesome source of support when you think you’re the only one who can’t do something. Good luck!
I LOVE swimming! It doesn’t seem like there are any pools very near me though. 🙁 I will have to research a little further, especially once the weather changes. Thanks for the suggestion!
Community colleges often have pools with open lap-swimming hours; you usually can buy a punch-card pass. YMCA/YWCAs also. If you search for aquafit or aqua aerobics classes near you, those are by definition going to be held in pools, probably indoor/year-round pools, that are likely to have lap-swimming hours.
I am a big fan of the elliptical. I don’t know that many people who are super INTO the elliptical because it’s not exciting, but it’s gentle on the knees, and great for just getting your heart rate up, and when you get comfy with it, if you pump your hands without holding the handle, or put them on your waist, you gain balance and core strength. Even when I’m not feeling it at the gym and it’s my worst day I can still give the elliptical 20 minutes, and it’s hard to look dumb on it, since the machine has clearly delineated exactly where your legs can move.
Yoga is usually very kind, especially a beginner’s class of hatha yoga. I know yoga gets about 500 different reputations, but I gotta say there’s usually a lot of compassion in a yoga class from your instructor and the mental part of yoga works real well for me. Sure you’ll probably be doing stuff wrong, but it’s good to know that everyone has poses they can’t do- in every class there’ll be that guy who clearly goes every day and still he’ll get smoked on one type of stretch by a newbie- our bodies all flex differently in different spots.
I run. I hate it, but at least it’s free. C25K is great if you want to feel like you’re improving week by week and also not talk to anyone or go into a gym. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I hate all exercise except rich people exercise (snowsports, horse riding, I feel like I’d really enjoy car racing) and I will never be rich sooo….
1. I’ve had this open in a tab for the better part of a week now; you may find it useful!
2. YouTube can be a good resource for learning how to modify exercises for physical limitations (bad knees, just plain ‘not strong enough yet’, etc.). Coach Tulin is one of those resources — I stumbled across her while looking for some plus-size yoga modifications. Full disclosure, she’s into Beachbody (Insanity, PiYo, etc.), but she does have good practical advice for free.
3. As someone who is overweight and fairly sedentary (by habit, by nature? WHO KNOWS), I find it incredibly encouraging to see imagery — I’m talking Instagram, blogs, etc — of bigger humans working out just as they are! I don’t find a lot of ~fitspo to be that inspiring, but seeing people who are comfortable in their skin and working to be stronger/healthier? That, I love. (@biggalyoga on Instagram DELIGHTS me, for example.)
“There are many lies in the world, and not a few liars, but there are no liars like our bodies, except it be the sensations of those bodies.” Rudyard Kipling, Bulgarian split squats.
I shared that quote with a friend just last week, when we were commiserating about HIIT, and it’s perfect. “Suffer me now to drink tea, for I am thirsty.”
Mallory.
It’s “watch how I soar”.
shut up shut up shut up
*weeps*
I usually use “once more into the breach” to psych myself up before going into a store. I really fucking hate shopping.
everyone is SO upset about the real or perceived misquotes.
Community of librarians.
“Cowards die many times before their deaths.
The valiant never taste of death but once.”
– what I used to chant to myself while running. I hate running.
I need to print this out to take to the gym.
I have recurring nightmares
I was loved for who I am
And missed the
To become a better (wo)man.
— Matt Bellamy, Hoodoo, Muse
Bitches ain’t shit, and they ain’t sayin’ nuthin’ /
A hundred muthafuckas can’t tell me nuthin’ /
I beez in the trap, bee, beez in the trap
Nicki Minaj, blocking out Men staring while I’m using the power cage
Can’t believe I missed this. I have been invoking the FNL line of “clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose” on really heavy squat sets. However, since I have never watch FNL, I have been saying “clear eyes, open heart” and then occasionally swapping the “eyes” and “heart” part.
But I still made those squats!
Can't believe I missed this. I have been invoking the FNL line of "clear eyes, full heart, can't lose" on really heavy squat sets. However, since I have never watch FNL, I have been saying "clear eyes, open heart" and then occasionally swapping the "eyes" and "heart" part.
But I still made those squats!
True! My life is made up of facts that are only useful for Jeopardy or situations where I can say how ‘I hate to be that person”- I like taking advantage when I can!
Someday I will find occasion to quote the best lines from The Battle of Maldon while doing something suitably strenuous:
Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,
mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað.
And then, appropriately, I shall collapse.