Hey Fit Biz... Make Some Room For Me
Over the past year, the very last one in my 40’s, I’ve had mixed thoughts of joining the 50’s club.
One part of me feeling proud and grateful for each passing year, the other part feeling weird and uncertain, not knowing quite what this means and how this new decade will now define me.
You see, dear youth-driven fitness industry, you offer images of the millennial, the young, the fresh and vibrant. Images that don’t represent me in the least. I am not a 30-something sporting a bra top doing burpees in a Les Mills promo teaser. I am not a thin model with mini-bands doing “booty” exercises in the gym. I am not a PYT posting gym seflies with my GF.
I am not “young”.
I am not “fresh”.
Instead…
I am experienced.
I am mature.
I am a woman who embodies 50 years of life.
A woman who trains with focus at the gym.
A woman who deadlifts for fun.
A woman who listens to relevant podcasts while doing steady state cardio.
A woman who deletes IG accounts that she feels mess with her mindset.
A woman who has fine lines and full muscles and vascularity… all in the same body.
You see, dear fitness industry, you are skewed.
You show images that represent people who rarely exist.
You show thin, young and flawless girls who look happy.
A filtered falsehood of a woman who is not real.
So as I leap into this new decade, I’ll keep it real because at this stage in the game, it’s the only way to play.
And so I will continue to…
Train my body for strength and conditioning so
it runs smoothly and efficiently in all I choose to do.
Grow in my knowledge base because I still crave learning, reading, writing and using my brain!
Tell others that fitness will help you sustain a high quality of life, from carrying grocery bags, suitcases to grandkids and barbells.
Reflect an image of a 50-year-old “mature” woman who can still embody strength and vitality through deadlifts, chin-ups and so much more!
And finally, remind YOU, my fellow female friend, that your body is a miracle and you can still do incredible things with it and for it, regardless what season of life you’re travelling in.
Because yes even at 50, we still have so much to learn, give, grow into and become!
So fit biz…it’s time to make some room
For “older” women like me.
Women with muscle maturity.
Women with wisdom.
Women on a mission to help others grow and become their best self even through the crashing waves of menopause, wrinkles, reading glasses, aging parents, older kids and all the things that make “adulting” the beautiful chaotic mess that it is!
Cheers to the big 5.0.
“Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”