16 Comments

I think we have the same aims Nadine 🤣

Squats are not my fav either.

Happy weekend.

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They're always the heaviest! Do you have a fave Neela??

Happy Friday!

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I am enjoying running these days. We have so many running paths in Irvine and if you go really early in the morning, you can avoid people lol

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I know for sure that I would never be able to lift more that the bar!! This is great!! And inspiring. I will get out the door and power lift my legs right up the hill RIGHT NOW!

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The bar is already really hard and all I use for some lifts! 20kg is plenty to be raising above my head and risking a concussion haha!

Hope you're enjoying the blood pumping after that promise ;)

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I know you are right about the longevity benefits from heavy duty tasks but so far I can’t really het muself to prioritize it - I’m not against it at all. I just need to find a way to make it more fun 😁

I’m scared away from TikTok now 🫣😂

My soul can’t take that kind of shit occasionally! 😅

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Life is all about prioritisation, and I totally respect that we all need to do this balancing act called life!

Apologies for the Tiktok scare 🫣😂

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As far as I can tell, it's near impossible to tease apart fitness and aesthetics. They are the externalized trailing metric of your dedicated practice.

To me, they've always been a fringe benefit. My motivations to keep an exercise practice, and my decade in the LA fitness industry, all ride on what exercise does for my brain. Short version? No SSRIs for this dedicated gym rat.

What I'm finding as I approach my troll-face years is that I care less all the time about the fringe bennies. It's always the brain that rises up. I'm also not limited by my body in ways that many of peers can't appreciate.

There is a story in Buddhist circles–the raft parable–that I often think about on this matter (and others). The gist of it is that a monk spends a massive amount of time building a raft to cross a river on a much larger journey. Once on the other side, he quickly realizes that his cherished boat no longer serves him. In fact, it slow down his journey on land, and makes in near-impossible to move forward.

This is how I see the allure of aesthetic gains in the gym.

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No SSRIs?! I need them even with the dopamine hits, there's not enough hours in the day for me to out-exercise my brain's needs/failings! But point well made. I think we also indirectly feel better about how we look when we're riding the gym high.

Is troll-face the official term we're running with? I think we can do better than that. Something slightly more Buddhist...

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That's just the name the mean part of me uses whenever there's a picture taken of this stranger co-opting my face.

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I feel like we should have a word with that mean part 😆 but I get the dismorphia. We don't see what we think we should...

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Go Nadine! This is super inspiring!

And reminds me how terrible I am for paying for a gym membership but not actually going over the last 6 months, haha. Time to get real and start going!

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You're the dream client! That's the kind of membership the gyms want to sell 😉

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Haha yep

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I had to see the video but now I’m scared for life 😳

Not because of your video but because you got me on to TikTok and it autoplayed a horrible video afterwards with a soldier just finding out his brother had been sleeping with his wife - let’s just say he was not happy 🫣 All communicated through one instantaneously scream!

That was a misdirection. I love to get to know you a bit better through your stack here Nadine ❤️ I can imagine the ego boost walking that bar to the weights section 😎

I don’t lift mainly because I love more dynamic exercise like ball games (any really - but I regularly play football, not the american style though).

I do have a medicine ball to make some exercises with though - but that doesn’t come out that often. I mostly do yard work when I feel like working hard 😊

I also love to take a hike, bike or run occasionally. I feel sooo much better after getting the little ticker up and running on a regular basis.

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You are super active! That's plenty! However, a weight every now and then will help your longevity if your yard work isn't too heavy 😉

And TikTok will suck you in... Unless you never engage or interact with videos, then it won't learn what you like and it's just a weird place to be 😬

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