The Captain howled "Heave ho, heave ho"/ And tied me up with sheets/ "A storm is brewing in the South"/ "It's time to go to sleep"

So, this happened:

 

 

Turn your face to the sun/ Let the shadow fall behind you

I've written about this before, but I get this question all the time, so here I'm tackling it again. How do I do it?

I tend to get asked this question with regard to either reading as many books as I do or just in general balancing my life. I think the answer just might be that I'm naturally efficient and quick, but here's another attempt at the details:

1.  I only have two hobbies, reading and aerial. 
2. Well, I guess there is fitness, but it's tied to aerial.
3. I take a lot of aerial classes a week, but because Drew and I fly together and are doubles partners, it's time together plus creative outlet plus community. So efficient!
• But also the best! Seriously. 
4. We do fitness stuff at home with the occasional spin and barre class at studios super close to home (well, I do those classes), so there's not a lot of time wasted.
5. I used to be really lazy about cooking. That's gotten better, but again we do easy-ish meals and cook together.
6. I'm not as obsessive as I'd like to be about keeping the apartment in order. You have to let some things go.
7. No children.
8. Sufficient sleep is a priority.
9. I can walk to work in 12min, so I don't waste time commuting. This is huge. While you can take a death by a thousand cuts approach to getting back time or saving money, if you can save either with huge expenses (which I do with this strangely cheap and centrally located place) and time sucks, it will make a larger impact.
10. I work when I can be effective. I get in the office early and rarely stay late because that what makes me efficient and productive. 
11. Scheduling stuff after work helps. Then I know that I have to get enough done and be efficient enough in the time I have or I can't do X fun thing.
12. Life is a marathon, not a sprint, so I pace myself and prioritize self-care.
13. I don't wear make-up or have any sort of beauty routine. I shower and brush my hair. That's really it.
14. I read all the time. If you can only read when you have time to devote 30+ min to the activity, it will be hard to get through books. If you can read for 5min and maintain mental continuity, that helps a lot.
15. I read quickly. I'm naturally a more empathetic, engaged reader, which makes me slower, but I've become increasingly analytic and detached. It's a different experience, but it's faster.
16. I track my reader and push myself when I get behind.
17. I don't waste time evaluating books, since I know that I have to read them regardless.
18. I read summaries if a book will be hard so that it's easier to follow. This feels like a cheat, but I do it anyway.
19. I'm not naturally social, so I really sort of hate going out and I prefer a small group of close people in my life. Saves time.
20. I accept that I will be mediocre at some things and focus on what is important to me, regardless of what the world thinks that I should do.
21. I don't get sucked into all the other things that I want to do, like get back into music, do Irish social dance, paint the apartment, write fiction, join bookclubs, etc. Even writing that out makes me sad. There is so much that I want to do!
22. I'm happiest when busy.

This was unexpected/What do I do now?/ Could we start again please?

I've been meaning to write something about my journey to pull-ups. The end, though, was kind of anti-climatic. One day I thought, hmm, I wonder if I can do pull-ups yet? And then I did some. But let's back up.

I think that my quads and calves were the first part of my body to get strong. My first foray into fitness was running on a treadmill and losing a significant amount of weight as a young teenager (15, I guess). Then I got into dance and kept running. I had really strong legs. Then I injured my back in college and got it back to healthy with Pilates. I got obsessed with the reformer, specifically. When I moved to DC I started doing barre to fill that need. My core got crazy strong; I think my core strength is the most remarkable thing about my fitness profile.

But my upper-body? Terrible. I couldn't even really do push-ups. Barre had a push-ups and weights section, but I never seemed to get stronger. I also didn't necessarily care all that much. At the time fitness was primarily a fun way to not blow up like a balloon (since the other option, eating less frozen yogurt, clearly isn't fun).

Then I got into aerial, and while you don't need much upper-body strength when you start, if you get serious you do. Especially if you get serious about something aside from flying. While basing involves a lot of core strength, my arms (well, back, chest, biceps, triceps, and shoulders) were/are my limiting factor. And they still weren't getting stronger. I resolved a few times to really work on pull-ups, but I never saw any progress.

It's not entirely fair to make it sound like one day I just could do pull-ups. I made some serious changes (that I am just now finally getting to writing about; sorry), but I wasn't focused on pull-ups and I didn't expect to get them so quickly. First, Drew and I did the Gamma round of Focus T25; Shaun T (best known for Insanity) does amazing cardio, but Gamma was his first really strength focused workouts. Then we did Insanity Max 30 (which is probably my favorite workout series ever), and it has strength workouts built into the schedule. They were still cardio-ish, so they were fun, but I actually got stronger. There is an odd tricep focus in them, and all of a sudden I can do tricep pushups. I never could do good ones even on my knees, even though in barre you do them every class.

I wanted to get stronger for specific aerial goals, so I asked Drew to create a regime that would focus on strength but would keep cardio (so I don't go crazy; must have cardio). He reviews and describes it here. The main ingredient is Sagi's Beachbody series called Body Beast. It's all about lifting heavy; there are drop sets and super sets and giant sets, and I sort of feel like a bro when I do it. I don't love the misogynist comments that come up (there are no women in the series, and Sagi will say things like "this is not the girly workout" or derogatorily call one of the guys "barbie"), but I was inspired by the Dumbbells and Diapers blogger.  I figured, what's the worst that could happen?

And the answer is, I'd suddenly be able to do pull-ups. On the one hand, this is exciting, but on the other hand it kind of makes me angry. Pull-ups, for whatever reasons, have this reputation as being nearly impossible for women to do, but that's not fair. Fitness is super gendered in ways that mean women don't tend to train in ways that would get them to pull-ups.

Now, I'm not at all saying we should abandon barre and spin for weight lifting. As a joke, Drew and I call it "lady fitness," since it's so silly that there are these types of physical activity seen as just for women (flip side is "guy fitness". But lady fitness is no joke; barre is hard, spin is hard; it's not that lifting is harder, it's just different and gets you to different goals. You don't need those goals, I didn't have them, I didn't train for them, and I couldn't do them. Now I train for them and I can do them, but my first love will always be super intense cardio.

It just drives me crazy, though, that we act like women just can't do something, when the issue is women not training properly because fitness is so gendered (why is everything so gendered?).