Mary Spencer's Blog

You may have gone through the experience of having a stranger or acquaintance comment on your non-existent pregnancy. Depending on the context and your own views, the situation may have been uncomfortable, confusing, hilarious, humiliating, or awkward. There are some specific social views of what pregnancy should look like, including the body’s physical expression, a woman’s demeanor or behavior, her marital status, and right down to her fashion choices. A combination of factors may have pushed someone into the conclusion that you’re pregnant, except… you’re not. Why Are They Commenting Anyway? Something very interesting happens when a woman becomes pregnant: it’s almost as if, communally, we reckon her body has become public property. Suddenly strangers feel compelled to touch her belly, or comment on her food choices, or offer unsolicited advice. Why? Theories abound but they are not as important as the central point: pregnant bodies are not public bodies . They are not there fo...

In the list of exercises that can make someone feel powerful while seeming a little intimidating to those not familiar with them, the barbell bench press is certainly in one of the top positions! Do you have questions about the barbell bench press? Not sure of the benefits or of how to perform the exercise? We’ve got you covered! What Are the Benefits of the Barbell Bench Press? Exactly how you choose to use the barbell bench press is highly dependent of your overall technical ability and experience, how much weight you’re using, the set and rep scheme you select, where you place the exercise in your workout, what other exercises you do and what your rest periods are. In general barbell bench presses can be used to do any or all of the following: Increasing upper body strength, primarily in the chest, shoulders and triceps. Increasing upper body strength in the biceps and the musculature in the upper back. Increasing core strength. Building muscle. Fat loss (if your diet an...

I am an amateur super heavyweight strongwoman. I am fat. I am 5’8 and I weigh 320 pounds. Why did I tell you my weight? Because I exist. Because others aren’t comfortable sharing. Because what women do weigh is a mystery to a lot of people still. The fitness industry is a difficult place for fat folks. We deal with everything from outright shaming to constant microaggressions — large and small reminders that we live in a world that assumes we’re lazy, incompetent, and unhealthy before we speak. We’re supposed to try be smaller, at all costs. But we can be strong and powerful just as we are. Lifting logs, pulling trucks, and flipping tires — strongman is the first place I felt at home in my body. I stopped trying shrink or apologize for being too much. Lifting weights was the first step. It was my gateway to not just strongman, but running, hiking, kayaking, swimming, yoga, and even trying pole dancing. Competing was the reason I took a real, honest look at my eating — and created ...

There’s something absolutely thrilling about being a beginner. It can also be downright terrifying. The gym is one of those places where we can feel deeply out of our comfort zone, and it can take us a while to find our rhythm, and figure out all the little details that can help switch our experience from daunting to empowering. With this in mind, we’ve asked members of the GGS Community to share some of the elements and items that help make their life easier at the gym. Choosing the right gym can certainly be an important step in your journey, and you should take the time to look at the options you have instead of letting persuasive marketing tactics pressure you to sign up at the very first place that you come across. Take the time to draft a list of what you’re looking for in terms of feel and equipment, in order to be better equipped to ask the questions that matter. Does the gym have barbells and squat racks? Kettlebells? Suspension trainers? Is the weights-to-cardio equipment...

Name: Gina DeRoos Age: 40 Location: Manteca, CA What does it mean to you to be part of the GGS Community? To me, it means unapologetically loving and valuing yourself as a masterpiece and a work in progress. It embodies living in the present moment and loving the version of who you are right now. How long have you been strength training, and how did you get started? I started strength training around 2013 as preparation for my first NPC (National Physique Committee) competition. It was a whole new world for me, but I quickly came to love how strong I was becoming, not just physically, but mentally as well. I also quickly came to realize that training strictly for competition was not my thing. It was incredibly demanding and deep down I wasn’t really happy. Sure I was happy with my stage-ready body, but at what cost. After injuring my sacroiliac joint prepping for my last competition, I decided it was time to give up competing for good. Unfortunately for me, what seemed like ...

I’ve never liked to cook. Many years ago, when I started trying to make better food choices, I tried forcing myself to cook in hopes that I’d eventually learn to enjoy it. It wasn’t until recently I finally came to terms with the cold, hard truth: I loathe cooking . However, I love eating, and it’s important to me to eat healthy, so I chose to look at my disdain for cooking as an opportunity to figure out how to do so using minimal amounts of really simple cooking. Before we go on, let’s consider what it means to “eat healthy.” What Is Healthy Eating? If we asked a dozen people their definition of healthy eating, we would get a dozen very different answers. Healthy eating depends on several factors, which means it won’t look the same from one person to the next. Here are four things that are often overlooked when one creates their own unique definition of healthy eating. Cultural Considerations Healthy eating can look quite a bit different depending on a person’s culture. For exa...

Low back pain is the leading cause of pain and disability worldwide. Globally, the prevalence of low back pain has increased 54 percent between 1990 and 2015 [1]. In light of this, it is naive to believe we are doing a better job at managing low back pain through protective messaging and training. To me, this means that we need to change own beliefs about the spine and low back, so that we can properly coach, educate and empower our clients — low back pain or not. Global burden of low back pain in disability adjusted life-years by age group [1] Get Rid of Old Beliefs In fitness, the first step is a basic conceptual change about biomechanics: understanding that, for most people, they are less important than we once thought [2,3]. We need to stop promoting the belief that people will break when they’re put under load in a way that doesn’t look good. This fear and pathologization of movement is making a big problem worse, and perpetuating myths about our bodies through something cal...