It\u2019s fair to say I don\u2019t come from a long line of athletes. When I was growing up in the 1990s, sport was something other people did; we were not a family who cycled, much less jogged. In PE I was the wheezing child hiding behind the bins, pretending I\u2019d twisted an ankle. When I contemplated working out \u2013 not often \u2013 I had the vague idea it was supposed to turn my body into something other people might find attractive.<\/p>\n
I evolved from an unsporty child into an unsporty adult. Occasionally, mostly in an attempt to lose weight without having to stop eating croissants, I would attempt something like Couch to 5K, which I\u2019d either abandon after a couple of sessions or see through to the bitter end out of the perverse determination to prove I\u2019d been right all along: exercise was a mug\u2019s game and endorphins an invention of Big Wellness.<\/p>\n
Then came children. A large-headed baby delivered two weeks late via C-section was not all that kind on the body. My back, in particular, began to protest; doubly so when, three years on, I did it again, this time while wrestling a toddler. Was this just what age felt like? Things that used to work becoming, overnight, a bit of a letdown?<\/p>\n
I tried physio, osteopathy, chiropractic treatment. Eventually, someone suggested strength training. Apparently I had something called a core and it could do with being, well, stronger. I was desperate enough to try. That, and I was becoming increasingly incensed at the decades of internalised misogyny that had shaped the way I thought women ought to look. I didn\u2019t want to be slim; I wanted to be strong.<\/p>\n
\u2018Sport is no longer an area where I don\u2019t belong\u2019 \u2026 Laura Evans at the gym. Photograph: Ali Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Infuriatingly, it turned out that putting in actual effort did, in fact, work. Within weeks, I wasn\u2019t waking from backache. I could pick up my children without wincing. For the first time in my life, I was beginning to understand my body\u2019s potential in terms not of what it could look like, but of what it could do.<\/p>\n
Still, I wasn\u2019t hugely enjoying the exercising, and I didn\u2019t need much of a reason to message my ever-patient personal trainer with a half-arsed excuse. But one day I saw the author Fiona Cummins<\/a> had tweeted about managing, finally, to reach her goal of deadlifting 100kg. There was something about that number \u2013 its sheer, round, solid chutzpah \u2013 that made me tell my PT: \u201cI want to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n So we did. A programme of deadlifts, squats and bench presses, supplemented with complementary exercises, and I began to work towards some properly heavy weights. Weights that initially sounded impossible \u2013 but with only one hour-long session a week, I found myself getting closer. Within months I was deadlifting 80kg, then 85kg, then 90kg. At first a single rep, but a month later, five, 10. My body was changing, too \u2013 not as the byproduct of growing a child or mainlining cake, but as the direct result of what I was pushing it to do. It was a strange and exhilarating feeling.<\/p>\n Even more significantly, something about the measurable, incremental progress made the competitive side of my brain tick in a way no other exercise had. When I eventually hit my 100kg goal, it felt like being handed a trophy \u2013 but there were countless other rewarding moments, many of them outside my training sessions. I could swing my toddler over my shoulder and into a back sling. (I tried the move a few weeks ago, now that she\u2019s nearly seven, and yes, I can still do it. Strong-arm emoji.) I could carry my own Ikea order in from the car. Hell, I could carry it up the stairs, and build it singlehandedly as well. I didn\u2019t need a man to move something for me. Quite often I could move something for them.<\/p>\n Now, when I think about fitness, it\u2019s as an end in itself. In the gym or out on my paddleboard \u2013 yes, a second form of exercise I genuinely enjoy \u2013 sport is no longer somewhere I don\u2019t belong. And I\u2019ve gone from feeling like a passenger in my body to feeling in control of it, C-section scars and all.<\/p>\n Laura Evans\u2019s debut novel, Little Wild, is published on 25 June. <\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s fair to say I don\u2019t come from a long line of athletes. When I was growing up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[337,97],"class_list":["post-719100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-fitness","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}