Today on the blog, the following comment was made-
To which I replied-
I am sorry about the tagline if it offended you. It never really occurred as offensive to me, and believe me I have every respect for a woman who is strong. The intention behind the photo and the tag was to demonstrate that woman are not disadvantaged in upper body strength feats, unlike many people believe. In any case I have removed the caption and I apologize. Before you make judgments about my respect for women though you should realize that you don't really know me to make that call, or at least try to understand why I may have written something before coming to conclusions, or you could simply ask me to explain politely.
In a separate note, I hope the last two posts have helped you, I have not yet finished editing them and I still need to complete this one.
Good luck with your training. :-)
And
Also I just realized that your primary objection was the use of the term chic. This is more of a cultural/semiotic issue as in India, the term chick is not considered an objectification, in fact it is considered empowering as is suggests an affinity with western slang, which is considered a symbol of a progressive outlook here. I actually had to read up on the meaning and implication of the term chic before I was able to write out this reply. The term is pretty freely used here in a very positive way. There are some very crude Hindi terms which have the same implications as what you are thinking, and as I read up on, I can understand why you would be offended.
I am really sorry about it and I hope it won't effect your reading/following of the blog. I hope you will enjoy future posts.
Now after I wrote those replies, I tried to step back and look at it a little objectively.
First of all, she was actually very polite, I was just being rash.
Secondly I tried to defend way too much.
In any case, this little conversation got me thinking about the devaluing power of repetition. I spoke to my girlfriend about this and she pointed out to me that no one even in New Delhi said Chic was not objectification. I, however, spent a lot of my maturing years in a variety of places, among which the place that had the strongest influence on my development as a teenager was the North East of India.
If you have never been there or don't know about it, its an amazing place with amazing subcultures. In less than 250KMs there are over 150 tribal and regional languages and only god knows how many ethnicities. However, it has always been kind of distant from the rest of India. In any case, the North East is one of the few places in the country where I found a lot of egalitarianism as far as gender is concerned. There have been a few unfortunate incidents in the recent past, but atleast when I was there, and in the places I lived in, it was pretty good.
In any case, I learnt a lot of my "casual" English in the North East, and along with other terms, learnt the term chic, which I have a distinct memory of being a female equivalent of "Dude". I then came to Delhi and the lingo stuck.
I now realize that we were never really told it was NOT an objectification, and if you really look into the term, its objectivity is obvious. What I find real strange is that the word, when used by me or my friends, does not seem to have any weight. In fact, we barely think anything about it. And its not just "Chick", its terms like "Shit", "Fuck" and for some weird reason among Indian basketball players "Mother Fucker". The last one is incredibly offensive to people everywhere and WE KNOW THAT. Yet when they say it, it seems weightless.
If you really think about it, its because of the devaluing effect repetition has. Remember the first time you learnt to swear? It seemed so "expressive", so aggressive. Yet within 2 months you wore the words out and now don't even feel offended when someone says anything to you, or worse don't think anyone else would get offended either.
The point is, the more you use something, anything, the more it loses its value. Cars, money, words- all of them. And at some point, you have just gotten so used to using words like "The Fuck" in sentences that you just don't remember what the big deal was, and when you say it, you don't really realize what it means, even though you do know. Its like how a messed up couple going through an inevitable breakup will repeatedly tell each other they love each other, because the word no longer has any weight. And the more they say it, the less they love each other.
At some point I guess repetition makes us forget what "Chic" means, or what goes into a lot of things.
So what lessons can we, as physical culturists , derive from the above?
Repetition makes us forget the meaning of each movement as well. You do enough chin ups, you will do them without thinking about the movement, or the muscles. That is when gains stop. Remember the first time you did squats and your thighs burnt for days? Remember how you realized that the hamstrings and the glutes are separate muscles, and how you need to clench the glutes to fire the lower back. How you need to feel the movement of the joints and the contraction of the muscles to get it right.
Do you also remember last week? You were squatting while watching milk advertisements on T.V (I don't know what you watch). And you were wondering why your gains stopped. You no longer focus on the movement because its old, you are tired of it. You don't see the weight (Excuse the pun) of the movement. With your lopsided focus and lack of attention, it has lost its value.
Many great coaches say that you must focus as hard as you do for a PR, when you warm up. That is not to say you push yourself to the wall by emotionally charging yourself up, but you must focus on the movement, as if it was heavy and you doing it wrong matters.
Unfortunately for us, the repetition is necessary to gain. But the intensity and the weight are necessary as well. The only way to avoid the bugbear of training, that eventual staleness, is to apply concentration, to give your exercises weight and meaning. And if you just can't do it, drop the exercise for a few weeks. When you come back, it will be like doing it from the start, except you will be a lot stronger, and this time around, you are going to make concentration a Habit.
So I want to thank you incorrectmap, for teaching me two valuable lessons. Concentrate or layoff and be careful with your words.
incorrectmap24 March 2013 00:19
Interesting read even for a woman, however I hate, hate to read in your article that "this chick can chin".
You even had that article about that poor raped woman in India, and you mentioned that there's no respect for women in India, and then you write this.
You could start to show some more respect for women (especially the ones who can chin, they deserve some kind of respect, yes?) by not calling them chicks. Other than that, thanks, I'll oass it on to some friends, and also thank you for the entry on briges.
You even had that article about that poor raped woman in India, and you mentioned that there's no respect for women in India, and then you write this.
You could start to show some more respect for women (especially the ones who can chin, they deserve some kind of respect, yes?) by not calling them chicks. Other than that, thanks, I'll oass it on to some friends, and also thank you for the entry on briges.
To which I replied-
I am sorry about the tagline if it offended you. It never really occurred as offensive to me, and believe me I have every respect for a woman who is strong. The intention behind the photo and the tag was to demonstrate that woman are not disadvantaged in upper body strength feats, unlike many people believe. In any case I have removed the caption and I apologize. Before you make judgments about my respect for women though you should realize that you don't really know me to make that call, or at least try to understand why I may have written something before coming to conclusions, or you could simply ask me to explain politely.
In a separate note, I hope the last two posts have helped you, I have not yet finished editing them and I still need to complete this one.
Good luck with your training. :-)
And
Also I just realized that your primary objection was the use of the term chic. This is more of a cultural/semiotic issue as in India, the term chick is not considered an objectification, in fact it is considered empowering as is suggests an affinity with western slang, which is considered a symbol of a progressive outlook here. I actually had to read up on the meaning and implication of the term chic before I was able to write out this reply. The term is pretty freely used here in a very positive way. There are some very crude Hindi terms which have the same implications as what you are thinking, and as I read up on, I can understand why you would be offended.
I am really sorry about it and I hope it won't effect your reading/following of the blog. I hope you will enjoy future posts.
Now after I wrote those replies, I tried to step back and look at it a little objectively.
First of all, she was actually very polite, I was just being rash.
Secondly I tried to defend way too much.
In any case, this little conversation got me thinking about the devaluing power of repetition. I spoke to my girlfriend about this and she pointed out to me that no one even in New Delhi said Chic was not objectification. I, however, spent a lot of my maturing years in a variety of places, among which the place that had the strongest influence on my development as a teenager was the North East of India.
If you have never been there or don't know about it, its an amazing place with amazing subcultures. In less than 250KMs there are over 150 tribal and regional languages and only god knows how many ethnicities. However, it has always been kind of distant from the rest of India. In any case, the North East is one of the few places in the country where I found a lot of egalitarianism as far as gender is concerned. There have been a few unfortunate incidents in the recent past, but atleast when I was there, and in the places I lived in, it was pretty good.
In any case, I learnt a lot of my "casual" English in the North East, and along with other terms, learnt the term chic, which I have a distinct memory of being a female equivalent of "Dude". I then came to Delhi and the lingo stuck.
I now realize that we were never really told it was NOT an objectification, and if you really look into the term, its objectivity is obvious. What I find real strange is that the word, when used by me or my friends, does not seem to have any weight. In fact, we barely think anything about it. And its not just "Chick", its terms like "Shit", "Fuck" and for some weird reason among Indian basketball players "Mother Fucker". The last one is incredibly offensive to people everywhere and WE KNOW THAT. Yet when they say it, it seems weightless.
If you really think about it, its because of the devaluing effect repetition has. Remember the first time you learnt to swear? It seemed so "expressive", so aggressive. Yet within 2 months you wore the words out and now don't even feel offended when someone says anything to you, or worse don't think anyone else would get offended either.
The point is, the more you use something, anything, the more it loses its value. Cars, money, words- all of them. And at some point, you have just gotten so used to using words like "The Fuck" in sentences that you just don't remember what the big deal was, and when you say it, you don't really realize what it means, even though you do know. Its like how a messed up couple going through an inevitable breakup will repeatedly tell each other they love each other, because the word no longer has any weight. And the more they say it, the less they love each other.
At some point I guess repetition makes us forget what "Chic" means, or what goes into a lot of things.
So what lessons can we, as physical culturists , derive from the above?
Repetition makes us forget the meaning of each movement as well. You do enough chin ups, you will do them without thinking about the movement, or the muscles. That is when gains stop. Remember the first time you did squats and your thighs burnt for days? Remember how you realized that the hamstrings and the glutes are separate muscles, and how you need to clench the glutes to fire the lower back. How you need to feel the movement of the joints and the contraction of the muscles to get it right.
Do you also remember last week? You were squatting while watching milk advertisements on T.V (I don't know what you watch). And you were wondering why your gains stopped. You no longer focus on the movement because its old, you are tired of it. You don't see the weight (Excuse the pun) of the movement. With your lopsided focus and lack of attention, it has lost its value.
Many great coaches say that you must focus as hard as you do for a PR, when you warm up. That is not to say you push yourself to the wall by emotionally charging yourself up, but you must focus on the movement, as if it was heavy and you doing it wrong matters.
Unfortunately for us, the repetition is necessary to gain. But the intensity and the weight are necessary as well. The only way to avoid the bugbear of training, that eventual staleness, is to apply concentration, to give your exercises weight and meaning. And if you just can't do it, drop the exercise for a few weeks. When you come back, it will be like doing it from the start, except you will be a lot stronger, and this time around, you are going to make concentration a Habit.
So I want to thank you incorrectmap, for teaching me two valuable lessons. Concentrate or layoff and be careful with your words.
