Thoughts on Women, CrossFit, and Defining your Goals
(Photo credit: @elivoti)Written by Emma WilliamsLadies, this one’s for you.Not seeing your strength numbers going up? Feeling sluggish or lacking energy in the gym and at work? Do you want to get stronger, but you’re afraid you’re going to get “bulky”?A lot of the challenges that men and women face in the sport of fitness are the same, but a lot of them are different. We all struggle through the discomfort of workouts, failed lifts and plateaus in our strength, but women face an entirely different set of challenges when it comes to exercise. For many of us women, working out is so tied up with body image, societal norms concerning femininity, and food and diet, that it can be difficult to distinguish what your true goals are and what you’re actually willing to do to achieve them.At Full Range, we choose our workouts depending on experience, skill level, and our goals. For all of us, it’s important to establish our goals as it relates to fitness, because these goals will dictate how we manage our time, how we approach our workouts, and how we fuel our bodies.If you’re not seeing your muscles growing and you’re not seeing your strength numbers increase, you are probably not eating enough, and you’re probably not pushing yourself enough to lift more. This is the same issue that men experience, but for some reason, it’s a lot harder for women to wrap their heads around and to do what they need to do to achieve their goals. You need to provide a stimulus for your muscles to grow (lifting weights) and then you need to provide your body with the nutrition that it needs to rebuild these muscles.You need to eat whole foods sources of protein and carbohydrates to build muscles, and you need to eat more of it than you did before you started working out. If you notice that your appetite increases the more you work out, do not ignore what your body is telling you, and do not deprive yourself of the nutrition that your body needs. Of course, this is not a free pass to eat junk food or to eat as much food as you possibly can, but it is important to recognize that the more muscle you build, and the more volume you add to your training, the more you’ll need to eat in order to maintain growth. This is not a bad thing, ladies, but this is where getting in touch with your goals becomes crucial. If you truly want to maximize your strength and performance, you will probably not end up looking like a Victoria’s Secret model. If your goal is to look like a Victoria’s Secret model, then you will probably not be able to achieve higher levels of performance (and you should also probably find a new goal – kidding, kind of).The women that you see on the CrossFit Games dedicate their lives to achieving the highest levels of strength, stamina, and endurance. Maybe your goal is to look like these women, or maybe you’re turned off by some of their looks. Either way, since working out, eating to support working out, and recovering from working out is a full-time job for these women, comparing yourselves to them just does not make sense.Take some time to get in touch with what you want to get out of CrossFit, your own goals, and then truly commit to taking the steps necessary to achieve them. Your goals may change throughout your journey, and that is okay, too. What’s not okay is allowing friends, relatives, significant others, or society decide what your goals should be, how you should look, or how you should feel in your body. Embrace the journey, and embrace the positive changes that getting stronger will have on your body and your overall health.
Emma Williams is a contributing writer to the Full Range Training Blog. Her posts cover a range of nutritional- and training-based topics. To request a topic, you can contact Emma at emmaawilliams@gmail.com