Sports I Have Known: Weightlifting

A word about me and sports: I am bad at them. I can’t run. I can’t catch things. I’m not very coordinated. Despite my complete lack of aptitude, I’ve been persuaded to take part in a few of them. So here’s a series of anecdotes about one of them.

I first got turned on to weightlifting by virtue of my dad’s being really, really smart. I’m the oldest child, which made me the biggest one and consequently the best choice for heavy lifting tasks. Combine this with the fact that I was (until about age 11) the biggest and the strongest of the girls in my age group, and my freakish child-strength became a big part of my self-image.

 When I was about eight, dad took me along with him to the YMCA and showed me how to use the Nautilus machines. I was hooked and kept stacking on weights every few weeks, thinking I was a total champ. (This may be why I’m only 5’5” now.) Occasionally, I’d come up on a machine that only had about 10 pounds on it and was perplexed. My dad told me that most of the women who used the machines would only put the lowest amount of weight on them. I thought they were being wusses.

 I’ve kept up with weightlifting intermittently over the years. This got interesting when I was in college the first time. My freshman year, people tried to get me to sign up for the women’s rugby team (regional champs - go Griffins!). Knowing that all my joints would be destroyed, I had to decline.

These days, the building I live in has a weight set in the basement. While the free weights add to the badass factor of the workout, the basement isn’t climate-controlled, making winter bench presses distinctly unappealing.