Becky Mantin And The Great Juggle Struggle The Truth About The Media Six months ago, I decided to get back into exercise. I’ve done a lot in the past but, having been pregnant or a new mum for much of the last seven years, my commitment has certainly fallen away. I’m not a gym go-er (waaaaay too boring) and sadly I don’t have the time to commit to a team sport and I wanted to do something WITH my husband rather than it being something that took away even the little time we get together. Which is how I came to find myself two or three times a week in a class of 13 other sweaty people groaning our way through a box jump/skipping/ kettle bell/ back squat/row (or similarly ridiculous) session after school drop off.
Let’s start this column with a bit of razzamatazz… last week, as happens now and again, I was wheeled out to a work ‘do’; an awards ceremony with the usual bunch of folk you see day in, day out on your tellybox. I’ve been presenting for nearly (gasp!) seventeen years now – I started aged 19, eight months after leaving school – so my nerves at going to these types of event are kept reasonably well in check. Everyone wants to look their best though – there is something distinctly uncomfortable and unnatural about standing in front of photographers wondering if your skirt is tucked into your knickers or your arms look like corned beef. The answer nearly always lies in a good bit of slap and some serious technical underwear. Do you realise that pretty much everyone in the media – the women at least, I really couldn’t speak for the men – wears ‘fat pants’ on every public occasion. At LEAST one pair in fact! It might be the reason that some mediafolk find it so hard to smile normally – they’re not grumpy or uppity, they’re just finding it hard to breathe.
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You may have heard of Crossfit? It’s a sort of mishmash of gymnastics (handstands/muscle ups/ ring work), cardio (skipping/ bike/run/box jumps) and weight lifting (various movements involving weights on a bar).
mums just like me who are there for an hour of having a laugh, working up a sweat and then feeling good about it for the rest of the day. Yes you build a bit of muscle - but let’s face it, I was starting from a point where anything would feel like something! I’m not saying I’m addicted or anything – unlike my husband who actually goes five or six times a week – bonkers! But the fact that it’s a new skill of sorts, that it feels a little like a sport rather than the more aimless feeling I get at a regular gym, and the fact that I’ve stuck to it so regularly this far, is pretty astounding. But most importantly, it’s made me look at my body in a different way. Don’t get me wrong, everyone would like a magic bum-shrinking/tummy flattening wand, but rather than resent the fact that I don’t look like I did in those broadcasts ten years ago, I feel proud of the fact that I can now row 500m in just over 100 seconds. Maybe we should all stop asking our bodies to be thinner and younger and ask them instead to be stronger, fitter, more vital. We should all stop punishing these amazing bodies of ours that can grow and birth beautiful, incredible children and still look damn hot in a little black dress – albeit with serious control underwear underneath.
It sounds grotesque doesn’t it?
And most of all please, please remember, when you look in magazines or at the television, everyone you see there really is just like you. Except they are probably wearing TWO lots of fat pants and trying to smile normally!
I know that you’re imagining a warehouse type of gym with grey concrete walls, loud, really quite bad music and absolutely no chance of a juice bar… And you’d be absolutely right! But you might also be imagining aggressive, steroid-ed meat-heads watching themselves pump iron and then popping round the back for a quick fight? And here, thankfully, you’d be absolutely wrong. My post-school run class is 80% women. Normal, knackered, non-meathead
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