Thunder Thighs and Barbells: My Weightlifting Story

 As a young child, I always admired the muscular dudes in football uniform, hitting and crashing into one another. I thought they were superhuman and I thought that I wanted to be just like that: big and strong, and quite plainly- buff. I never saw anything wrong with it. I just wanted to be strong. 

Then the pressure of society weighed in on the very impressionable and vulnerable mind of a thirteen year old girl and that's when my eating disorder controlled my life. I've mentioned before how I really got over my disorder, but what truly made me confident was a whole other thing entirely. Once I got to college, I would run a mile everyday on the track inside our campus gym, never really setting foot inside the weight room. I would always look in there and see all of these muscular gym guys bench pressing, or walking around in muscle shirts, giving out fist bumps to their guy friends and hitting on the girls brave enough to actually go in there and workout on the machines or free weights. Then there was me. I never joined them because I felt inadequate, weak and honestly clueless as to how even lift a bar. I felt as if I was stuck to be on the track for the rest of my college career. 

Then I met a girl, a few years older than me, super sweet and kind and saw me looking into the weight room extremely confused. "Ever been in there?" She asked, I just shook my head because I hadn't. So she gestured me into the room. " I'm going to teach you how to use the machines." And as we walked around all of the gym bros and people who obviously knew what they were doing, she told me her story. She had been overweight for a major part of her life and one day decided that it was time to get healthy, so she researched, planned her days around workouts and ate healthily and she saw the weight drop. She became more confident, and realized that she was gorgeous. She did it by using weights. She impacted me that day as I followed her around like a lost puppy- because face it, I really was. I don't remember her name, but I remember the kindness in her face when I tried the leg press for the first time. I remember putting like forty or so pounds on and pushing against the platform. "Don't straighten your knees out so far," she said," you'll hyperextend them and eventually hurt yourself. Keep your knees bent." If there was anything that I've ever remembered, it was that. She impacted me more than she knows, and I still think about it to this day. That was honestly the last time I really ever saw her, but if she somehow comes across this page, I want to say thank you for changing my life more than anyone else really has. 

Months passed and I got more comfortable, I started using light barbells and following bodybuilders and weightlifters on my social media. My boyfriend brought me to the gym that the Football team was using for that winter break and he showed me football workouts. As my knowledge grew, so did my confidence. But the lifting part of it, still eluded me. "How in the world will I be able to get correct form, what if I embarrass myself, what if I hurt my knees?" I thought to myself as I continued to just use the leg extension and leg curl machines. I just didn't know what to do. Then one, my boyfriend brought me over to the bar and told me to put it on my shoulders because I was going to learn how to squat the bar. After a few tries, I finally did. That day, my friends, Lily was hooked. During this time, I had been awarded the position of 2018 Orientation Leader for my university and I was able to stay in the dorms for that summer. I lived right across from the gym, so that May really started my weightlifting journey. I would get up in the morning at 5:30 am, get ready and head to the gym. As the months passed, I noticed that my form improved, the weight on my back increased, and my legs become thicker. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was strong. As the changes became more noticeable, I got mixed reactions. My friends were all proud, my boyfriend jokingly took credit, and then my parents weren't the exact reactions I had hoped for. My mother said I was getting thunder thighs and that I was getting too big, and that no man wanted a masculine woman. My father told me to lotion my hands because the callouses on my hands were becoming more prominent. But for once, I never felt bad about it because I actually saw what I was working towards: the confidence and the strength that I knew I wanted but didn't know how to achieve. 

Every few months, I would max out with personal records, I would gain muscle weight, my clothes fit better than before. They weren't just hanging off of me anymore and I felt confident in the quiet strength that I was obtaining. This past May was my third lifting birthday. I wouldn't change a thing. Because of lifting, I am empowered to show women and girls that lifting doesn't mean you'll look like a man, it just means that you can squat the weight of one and look good doing it *wink*. It shows that you are powerful, confident in your own skin, it shows that power is beautiful. It's because YOU make it beautiful. Here are some videos of my weightlifting journey. I'm small, but I am powerful, and guess what: YOU are too. :)