Let’s face the truth: we constantly experience a lot of peer pressure at the gym. There will always be someone who lifts more than you, or who appears leaner than you, or who seems more conditioned. Even worse than this, in every gym there’s always someone willing to chat with you, to tell you how amazing your arms are, or maybe to correct your form, because they “used to lift heavy, back then”. If you’re a regular gym goer, you might consider this as a healthy way of perfecting yourself, confronting with others and setting higher and higher goals for yourself. However, if you’re new in the gym and not really experienced in weight training, such peer pressure might turn into a feeling of inadequacy which can seriously discourage you and push you to quit.
Luckily enough, you don’t need real confidence to appear confident and keep some of the pressure at bay. Most of your inadequacy feeling, indeed, comes from your transmitting your lack of confidence to whoever runs into you. If you do look confident, however, nobody will realise that you’re new or insecure. The best trick to boost your confidence level is to use a few simple items, that will: sustain you through your workout (thus improving your form); keep potential pests away; making you appear as a pro athlete.
Here they are.
1.Squat/Hip Thrust Pad. Using your own pad will give you extra confidence at the gym for 3 reasons: first of all, it’ll help you perform hip thrusts properly, allowing you to go heavy, yet keeping your form throughout, in case your gym doesn’t provide any pads; second, you won’t have to wait for the person before you to finish using the gym pad (btw, how many germs and bacteria would you find on it?!?), so you’ll avoid an awkward conversation with a stranger (or a potential, unreachable, Mr/Ms Olympia); finally, bringing your own pad will make you come across as someone that knows what they’re doing at the gym, like a pro athlete, rather than an insecure rookie. Below is my own super cheap pad, which has saved my life — and my hip bones — many times. The only downside of it is that the black straps broke after a couple of usages. However the pad is still in excellent conditions after nearly 3 years. You can still go strapless, if you don’t want to take the risk…
2. Straps. Using straps will help you lift heavy, even if your grip is not solid. However, unless you have an injury, straps on lower weights aren’t recommended, as they’ll prevent your grip from becoming stronger. I’m currently recovering from a nodular fascitis on my right forearm, which was surgically excised last December, but I’m trying not to use straps on my warm-up sets anyway, in order to build more strength in my forearms, as a sort of prevention for further injuries.
3. Bluetooth Headphones. Yes, wearing headphones all the time will make you look focused on your workout and out of the reach of potential interlocutors, giving you all the confidence you need to finish your workout in peace.
Headphones always on, straps around my wrists, overall confident appearance…
However, most of your confidence will come with time, and, unfortunately, pests will always be around, ready to engage in a conversation with you, as soon as you return a set of dumbbells. But, by then, you’ll have learnt how to cope with them and will be answering their questions quickly and with a genuine smile on your face, because, by then, you’ll have achieved all the confidence you need. You’ll have learnt that the gym is your second family, a community of athletes constantly supporting each other to do better and better. And you’ll be happy to share your passion with them.
As I mentioned in my previous post, me and my best friend took on a 3-month challenge as part on our NY resolutions. Both our personal challenges were physique-orientated, however, whereas I had committed to gaining at least 1 cm in my upper back and — possibly — in my arms, my bestie’s challenge was to lose 8 Kg. I can proudly anticipate that we both did really well.
I have to say, however, that I didn’t do extremely well in the first month and was quite worried I’d never make it through. Although I did gain some mm, it didn’t seem to happen consistently. However, with a strict diet and high-volume workouts I not only met my expectations but even exceeded it, in that I managed to gain 2.5 cm in my upper back. Unfortunately, I didn’t gain any cm in my arms, but their composition changed (I can confidently say so, because my strength has improved a lot over these past 3 months), so I’m happy with my result. Weight-wise, I gained 2 Kg and my body fat percentage increased by 2%. Doing the maths, I estimated those 2 Kg coming down to roughly 1 kg body fat and 1 kg lean muscle (both are less than 1 kg, though, considering some water weight).
My starting point
My new back… I did lose some definition, but I visibly increased my size too (compare the ratio upper back-waist in the two pics — for the 2.5 cm I gained on my upper back, I only gained 1 cm on my waist)
I’m still far away from my objective, but I’m definitely proud of my achievement. I’ve just started a mini cut now, to see how much of those 2.5 cm I can keep on my upper back, while bringing my bf percentage back to its maintenance level (16-17%) or even a bit below (summer is coming!). Being naturally extremely lean in my upper back and shoulders, it seems like a doable process to me. To do this, I created a new meal plan to slightly reduce my calorie intake (which is still fairly high, though) and introduced a second workout to incorporate some brisk walks, yoga and acrobatics in my daily routine. I’m planning to then re-introduce sprints on the treadmill and steady bike x3 a week, while I’m not going to make to major adjustments to my diet.
As to my bestie, well, she started way better than me: in the first 6 weeks, she managed to lose 4 Kg and I was sure she would win and I would lose. However, she caught a flue, stopped her diet and plateaued on that weight. I’m still super proud of her because she hasn’t gained any kg back so far, and will start dieting again, once she’s fully recovered. 4 kg in 6 weeks is such a remarkable achievement, that I consider her to have won her challenge too. 😉
Strength Improvements and New PR
My NY resolutions didn’t solely concern my physical appearance though, as should never be the case (we want to become better human beings, not prettier Barbies, after all). I wanted to increase my upper back’s strength too, and the exercise that works best for me it’s rack pulls . Although this exercise can be thought of as a deadlift variation — and, similar to deadlifts, it does work your lower back and hamstrings –, it’s in fact one of the best ways to improve your upper back. If you’ve never tried them, you’ll be surprised with how beneficial rack pulls can be for your trapezius, your rhomboids and even your lats (if you squeeze them enough). In the last month of my challenge, I focused on strength training, and achieved new PRs in almost every exercise — the one I’m mostly proud of being rack pulls (of course). If you’re a natural athlete, incorporating strength programmes in your routine will definitely help you with hypertrophy too, as strength training will break plateaus and prepare your muscles for heavier loads, hence for more tension, hence for hypertrophy.
My new PR @ Rack Pulls: 3×5 @ 105 Kg (231.5 lbs). I’m aiming at 120 Kg by the summer (let’s see).
Conclusion
Life is a journey whose final destination is for you to become the best version of yourself (namely, to become who you are). I like to break down my ultimate self-realisation into smaller, achievable goals, each of them being accountable year by year, and I like to keep track of them on a monthly basis, to make sure I follow the right path. I’m happy with how my journey towards this year’s goal is going so far, and I’m proud of myself, for not feeling discouraged by the monstrosity of the ultimate goal, being able to focus upon the small steps that will lead me there instead. You should also find a good reason to be proud of yourself. Stick with it, and let it become your personal mantra for your darkest days!
Stunning Christmas decorations at Covent Garden Market…
Stunning Christmas decorations at Covent Garden Market…
Stunning Christmas decorations at Covent Garden Market…
Stunning Christmas decorations at Covent Garden Market…
 Christmas is just around the corner and New Year’s Eve is just behind it
My living room is all set up for Christmas and I look forward to celebrating! 🙂 🙂 🙂 My husband’s iPad on the table is playing Christmas songs from YouTube…
Although I am a Summer person and can’t stand the cold, I love this time of the year. I love decorating my Christmas tree in advance, playing Christmas songs all day long from mid November onwards, and planning my Christmas lunch in detail. I just like the feeling of have something to wait for, something to magically turn the cold weather into warm emotions. However, this aren’t the only things I like about this time of the year. As winter is about to begin and the dark is reaching its apex to give way to the light and the new year to start, so, every year, I too rethink my past achievements and prepare for new ones to come. This is when I seriously express my gratitude for what the current year has allowed me to accomplish and set new goals for the next one. Interestingly, I’ve never missed a single goal that I’ve set for myself as part of my New Year’s resolution.
My tiny, lovely, Christmas Tree
This year, this process has been a little bit more fun than usual, as I’m sharing part of my 2019 challenges with my best friend. It all started as a game, while I was advising her on weight loss. As we all know, sharing a challenge with someone else helps you track your progresses better, and prevents you from getting lost along the way or giving up your resolutions.
What Am I Grateful For?
2018 has been one of the years I’m most grateful for: it has brought me a lot of physical achievements and professional successes. The fitness goal I had set for myself around 1 year ago concerned my upper back and shoulders: I wanted to get bigger and stronger in those areas, and improve my performance on pull-ups/chin-ups and rack-pulls. And I did it! Although I didn’t increase my shoulder size that much, I definitely increased their muscular density and strength. On my upper back, instead, I managed to gain a few inches as well. Strength-wise I was able to improve my rack-pulls performance significantly: 1 year ago, I could do 6 sets of  5 reps with no more than 80 Kg, around the end of August this year, I reached 100 Kg for the same volume. As to my pull-ups and chin-ups, after 10 years of resistance training, in 2017, I still couldn’t perform one single complete rep. Now I can easily perform multiple sets of 7 reps.
Professionally, I had promised myself that I would have finalised two editorial projects I had been working on for a long time. Not only did I succeed in both, I even exceeded my expectations, in that I set up a small publishing house with my colleagues, which might even expand in the long run.
I’m grateful for all of the people I have been surrounded with this year, for their positive energy and influence on me. As naïve as it might sound, I’m grateful to my husband and my family, for just being there. I’m grateful to my body, for allowing me to accomplish my goals, and to my mind, for staying focused and motivated 365 days a year. I’m grateful for all the opportunities I have come across this past year, and for those that are yet to come.
My 2019 Resolutions
As I mentioned before, some of the expectations I decided to set for 2019 arose as a challenge with my best friend. Whilst she has some weight to lose, I’m not fully happy with my back and shoulder size yet, and wouldn’t mind to increase my arms too. To make our challenge more attainable and accountable, we decided to break down the year into 3-month periods, and to set a certain amount of Kg or cm to lose or gain for each period. Our first of such periods started on the 26th of November and will terminate on February, the 26th (2019). My goal is to increase my upper-back, shoulder and arm size by 1 cm for these first 3 months. Depending on how it goes, I might decide to challenge myself even more, by raising the attainable size up to 1.5-2 cm for the next trimesters.
To achieve our goals, I created a meal plan for my friend and one for myself. She committed to long walks, whereas I didn’t make any changes to my current workout routine, as it’s already shoulder and upper-back focused. I might incorporate more arm exercises later on, if I don’t see any significant change in the next month.
Other than this challenge, I committed myself to improving my skin appearance and getting rid of some awful stretch marks that I’ve had on my thighs for over 16 years. I’ve never had any patience with dry brushing and moisturising, but I just can’t stand the view of those stretch marks, and I’ve postponed for long enough…
As to my career, I have a clear plan in mind, but can’t really talk about it now, as I hope I’ll be able to share more details within the next 6 months or so. However, creating this website is already a dream come true to me, and I’ll do my best to find more time to write posts, recipes, and shoot videos in 2019.
Tracking Our Progresses
My (still too small) back at the beginning of the challenge, let’s see how far I can go… 🙂
So far, I’ve gained about 4 mm on my upper back and around 2 mm on my shoulders. My arms haven’t really grown yet, but I’ve had a bunch of people making nice comments at the gym. My bestie is doing much better than me though, as she’s already lost much of the weight she was supposed to. 🙂
Will my arms manage to increase by 1 cm in the next 2 months and a half???
My skin challenge hasn’t started yet, as buying reliable, vegan, and highly effective oils costs a lot of money, and I’d rather spend that money on nice presents for my friends and family around this time of the year. However, I’ve already planned to buy a lotion I saw online with my January payslip — I’ll keep you updated.
Epilogue
Regardless of the outcome of my challenge, setting goals for oneself and pushing one’s own possibilities to the extreme is always a learning experience: it can show you what your limits are, and surprise you with some amount of strength and willpower that you didn’t know you possessed. Keeping your expectations attainable and accountable, however, is key to achieving your goals. Proceeding step by step, and measuring each and every daily improvement in your life will lead you to accomplish anything you want. If, on the other hand, you set too high goals for yourself and don’t allow yourself to keep measurable trace of your success, you’ll be more likely to give up. With that being said, however, even working on small, accountable bits of improvement can be hard at times. There’ll be inevitable moments, when you’ll lose your objective perspective and start comparing with others; in such moments, you’ll become your own enemy number 1. Don’t worry: those moments won’t last forever. In fact, if you practice daily mediation, and visualise in your mind your goal and your path leading to it, your focus will come back as soon as you detach from the negative emotions caused by comparing yourself with others and seeing your objective as unattainable. A good way to do so, is to dedicate at least 10 minutes a day to express your gratitude. This can be done first thing in the morning, during your day, or at night, when you’re in bed and about to fall asleep (it’s actually an excellent way to improve your sleep). Remember, gratitude is the farthest feeling from fear and oppression. Try to think of 3 different things in your life you’re grateful for everyday, and you’ll achieve whatever goal you set for yourself.
Bonus tip (this is actually something I’ve never shared before): in the last year of my PhD, when my stress levels were crazy high and couldn’t stay focused without panicking for more than a couple of hours a day, I used to visualise an entire stadium, crowded with supporters wearing T-shirts with my face printed on them, holding a jar of green smoothie or juice, chanting my name supportively while shaking their drinks proudly. As odd (and embarrassing) as it might sound, it really helped me find balance and accomplish all of the tasks I had set for myself at the time. Fun fact: this is also where my “keep calm and drink smoothies” motto originated. Find your own mantra to support you throughout your journey and you’ll reach your destination safe and sound! Good luck! 😉
PS As I wrote above, expressing gratitude before sleeping is an excellent form of meditation that can even improve your sleep quality. Mine has improved significantly, since I started using a nostril expander. The amount of oxygen that gets through your nose is impressively calming and relaxing. If you have trouble breathing with your nose, you might want to apply some surgical tapeon your mouth, to keep it shut throughout the night (it’ll also prevent you from snoring!).
Sils Maria (Engadin), 2012. First time sitting on the rock that inspired Nietzsche’s intuition of the eternal return — his “most abysmal thought”. I was at the beginning of my PhD, and didn’t know what to do with my life.
Destiny and Self-Becoming
As is well known, the motto of Nietzsche’s popular book “Ecce Homo” (1888) is “how one becomes what one is”. The whole text is indeed to be understood as Nietzsche’s re-analysing his own philosophical path in the light of his self-becoming. As a Nietzsche scholar, such a thought has had a tremendous impact on my entire life. Do I choose to become what I am?
Borrowed from the classical thinking — which Nietzsche, as a philologist, was very familiar with — is another key concept to go hand in hand with that of self-becoming, namely, the idea of “amor fati” (occurring not only in “Ecce Homo”, but in other writings as well, such as “The Gay Science”). In latin, it means love for fate, or destiny, and represents, to Nietzsche, the highest form of love a man can reach: what could be more noble than giving up one’s own ego entirely, to the point of not only accepting but even loving one’s own fate? If you connect the dots, you’ll see that becoming what I am can occur only if I love my fate, if I let my life be and love it’s being. But this is not enough yet…
As a mental experiment representing the worst case scenario where the concept of “amor fati” should be applied, the idea of the “eternal return” ought to be postulated. Nietzsche had that intuition in August 1881, while hiking along the lake of Silvaplana, in Engadin (Switzerland):
“The greatest weight.— What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?… Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?” (“The Gay Science”, §341, trans. by Walter Kaufmann).
Nietzsche’s “greatest weight [das Schwergewicht]” represents the possibility of the same life occurring over and over again, for ever and aver, and having already occurred over and over again, since forever. From an ethical point of view, two consequences are to be noted: 1) I’m not really responsible for my decisions or deeds, as whatever I choose, I’ve already chosen innumerable times; 2) however, when I choose, I have to ask myself: do I want this choice to be repeated innumerable times in the future? As a matter of fact, the seeming lightness of the former consequence is devoured and shattered by the terrifying heaviness of latter. Again, amor fati seems to be the key to solve the riddle: if I love and embrace my fate, the heaviness of the hypothesis of the eternal return won’t curse me any longer.
Another classical image borrowed by Nietzsche represents this idea very well: “dancing in chains”. As Nietzsche explains, the Greek artists and poets “impose upon themselves a manifold constraint by means of the earlier poets”, and then “invent in addition a new constraint, to impose it upon themselves and cheerfully to overcome it, so that constraint and victory are perceived and admired” (“Human, All too Human, II”, “The Wanderer and His Shadow”, § 140). A Nietzschean life can be thought of as a never-ending “dancing in chains”, a continuous, yet joyful, overcoming of pre-existing and self-imposed constraints towards the realisation of something that comes across as light and serene.
My Philosophical Path
When I started reading Nietzsche, I was 18. I hadn’t begun my Philosophy BA yet, and I only had two passions in my life: music and fitness. The main reason why I chose to study Philosophy was because it seemed the only way to merge both my creative and my disciplined sides together, and — hopefully — disclose a new approach to my existence. I retrospectively acknowledge I was being far too optimistic back then, as I was expecting to achieve something without first changing my mindset.
While my passion for music stayed pretty much the same (I was playing the drums in a band, and attending all the gigs I could), my passion for fitness evolved: helped by my boyfriend at that time (to whom I’m proudly married now, and who had already been lifting for a few years), I started lifting weights twice a week, I increased my cardio routine, started practicing yoga on a regular basis, and joined a belly dance class. This latter was probably the greatest discovery back then: I could finally unite music, fitness and the search for spirituality that the study of Philosophy wasn’t satisfying yet. Plus, it really helped me overcome my shyness… :/
I did my BA thesis on the symbology of light in Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, and decided to continue working on the same text in my MA. This time around, however, I would look at it from a different angle, namely, through a psychological lens. That’s when I discovered C. G. Jung and my life changed. I did both my MA and PhD dissertations on Jung’s (mis)understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy, and, I have to say, the exploration of analytical psychology fulfilled my search for spirituality and provided me with unexpected tools. I was finally starting to give sense and meaning to my life.
To finish my Phd, I had to move to London (UK). Possibly because I had just discovered Jung’s concept of “synchronicity”, but it didn’t seem like a coincidence at all that the world-leading historical research on Jung was being conducted in the city where my boyfriend had just moved! I was still unsure about my future, in fact I had just spent some time in Germany and was planning to move there for good. As that opportunity was offered to me, it seemed like a sign from my fate: whether I wanted or not, I knew I had to take the chance and move to London, that was just meant to be.
Here is where I’ve really become what I am.
What to do with “the greatest weight”? Just lift it!
In London I felt like I could finally let my full essence express itself undisturbed. I found the courage to do many things: after 10 years of pescatarianism, I finally gave up animal products and went vegan; I married my soulmate; started practicing meditation on a regular basis and taking online courses on Hinduism; found a solid group of scholars who are more than just colleagues to me. Most importantly, however, I joined a gym and started working out everyday, lifting heavier and heavier. Slowly and without even realising, I started inspiring more and more people. We live far from our families, we don’t own our flat (and maybe never will), I have to work part time in a coffee shop to pay my bills, but I embrace it all, as my “chains”, necessary for the “dance” of my life to be light and joyful.
If there’s something I’m really grateful to Nietzsche for, it’s for teaching me the profound, yet often forgotten, interconnection between philosophy and practical life: through philosophical introspection, I shape up my life, and through my everyday life, I pose and then answer my deepest questions. Philosophy is not meant to be constrained in scholarly books; nor is life meant to be lived superficially.
The only downside of my self-becoming is that I had to quit my band. I’m still attending as many gigs as I can, and, sometimes (rarely), I compose with Garage Band. I listen to my favourite bands everyday though (at the gym, on the tube, at home) and sing like a crazy in the shower and when cooking. I was meant to become a philosopher, I was meant to inspire fitness enthusiasts, but I now realise that I was never meant to become a musician.
Fair enough, I still love my fate more than ever!
Same place, 3 years later. On my path to becoming who I am, embracing my “amor fati” and dancing “in chains”.
