What can Manly Men Expect of Women?
I read a blog called the Art of Manliness. Let us, for the moment, not worry about why I’m reading a blog about manliness and instead discuss a recent blog post seen here.
What can Manly Men Expect of Women targets one of the most perplexing questions I’ve delt with personally in my life.
In high school I stopped identifying myself as a feminist because I hated the ‘double standard’ which seemed so often implied with it. Although it is claimed that true feminism is only the quest for total gender equality, most of the time it comes across as: women are better than men and should be treated as such by all.
I’m proud of the fact that I can cook fancy dinners, host nice parties, reupholster couches, keep track of household bills, make sure the cookie jar stays full, clean a house from top to bottom, and patch up my roommates pants. I do all these things because they make me feel good. I don’t know if that’s because I’m a girl or not but when I don’t do these things or if they’re done for me I feel guilty. I don’t expect my male roommates to do many chores. I expect them to clean up their dirt bike parts and keep their shit contained mostly to their rooms. But it’s hard when the males in my life start taking the things I do for granted. And therein lies the crux of the problem. How do you balance doing things for people with being taken advantage of because you’re the girl? I’d like to think that if I ever get married that person will know how to appreciate the things I do and I’ll feel better about doing them but it worries me.
There’s only one real thing that gets me good. Hanging out with athletic men as often as I do, the bashing of women’s athletics is almost inevitable. I agree that women’s sports are slower, and that women’s college ultimate is almost laughable. I agree that women are weaker and slower and can never hope to compete with men. All I care about is how hard I work and how seriously I take my sports performance. These guys don’t know what it’s like to work as hard as they possibly can and still never hope to be as good as their male counterpart. So when I don’t get credit for the work I’ve done as an athlete, that makes me mad.
All I ever want by males is respect. I’ve learned that the way to gaining respect is hard work and putting other people first when it counts. At least that seems to hold true for both genders.
Training Over Winter Break
The following is a email to my team addressing the question of how we should be training over the winter break.
Hello Ladies!
I just saw that email from (lil)Katie who is already worried about staying in shape over winter break. As well she should be! lol- no but reallly, It’s time to start thinking about how to attack this next month that you won’t have ultimate and me screaming at you three+ times a week.
Some things to consider: Spring is the COLLEGE season. That means that we’re now training for one tournament, college sectionals. Any other tournaments or scrimmages we attend will be practice for sectionals. If we do well enough in sectionals we’ll get to attend college regionals, something no [V] ultimate team has ever done. You already know some of our competition- [W], [R], [M], [U] A and B teams… and possibly others I can’t remember. What I’m saying is that when January rolls around we’ve got to be ready to freaking rock.
Winter break is your free time to work on you. In order to make the most of it we should have some plans. So let’s crowd source this- what do you plan on working on over winter break? Strength? Endurance? Sprinting? Jumps? Ripped Abs? Bear Crawling? Getting the sweat stink out of your clean clothes? How do you plan on achieving it? Do you need help figuring it out or making a plan? Let’s help each other out with this.
Let me tell you right now that I’d like to see everyone get more comfortable with their running.
I was never an avid runner until my senior year of high school. I decided that I needed to start running more because I desperately wanted to join the wrestling team and I’d seen them in previous years out doing long runs and track workouts. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to hold my own against the guys. So every day after school that fall I ran three miles. At first it was super painful. I took little breaks to walk and to restart the record player on which I listened to ‘Bat out of Hell’ on loop. By the time wrestling started up I was easily running five miles without walk breaks and I creamed all the guys in the track workouts (which weren’t actually all that intense as I’d thought). I decided not to stop there and that spring I ran my first marathon.
I’m definitely not asking you all to run a marathon, but I’d like to propose that we all start working on our three mile distance. If you can’t yet run three miles straight then start out alternating running and walking. If three miles seems like a comfortable distance to you already start increasing your pace or add speed intervals to it. A workout I really enjoy is 4x800meters at a speed about ten seconds faster than my 5k pace with 400 meter jog in between each. All you need now is something to scare you into training: the new gym is going to be open next semester and so we will be starting track workouts! I’m just kidding, about the scariness not the workouts.
So recap:
What do you plan on doing over winter break to prepare for the spring season?
How exactly do you plan on going about it?
What are your thoughts/anxieties about running over winter break?
A Letter to my Team
Aeroshell Aerobatic Team In OPT – Quad City Airshow
Originally uploaded by clearskyphotography.com – Kris Klop
Hello Ladies!
Good work this weekend at SF. We went 4-3 for the weekend and had the opportunity to play some teams we’ve never been up against before.
I saw many great individual performances from people and I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish as a team. We decided to award the spirit disc to Waffle this weekend. Not only did she work her ass off on the field, but she also took the initiative to support the team and pump us up on the sideline. Super job!
My Dad posted some pictures from Sunday on his facebook account. I tagged everyone in a team photo except Rachel (am I not fb friends with you yet?!) so I hope his privacy settings are global enough that you can go through and check the rest out. Unfortunately a lot of the pictures are hard to see though as he doesn’t seem to have a real grasp of the zoom yet. Anyway, let me know if you can’t see them.
I believe that this was our last tournament of the semester. This does not mean that we won’t continue to practice three times a week. We finished 6th out of 12 teams ladies. That means we all, as individuals and as a team, have a choice to make. Where do we go from here? Are we going to collectively make the decision to push harder and reach the next level where we can beat those teams like D and E? Or are we going to sit back and be content to only win against teams with no hucks and shoddy defense?
I see a ton of untapped potential in this team. We’re good but I want us to get better. You have all been playing long enough now to know in general where your weaknesses are. Keep them in mind! I want to be able to ask you what you’re working on this week and what you’re doing to work on it.
Some things to consider:
If you know you need to work on throwing/catching- make sure to get to practice early and work on your backhand and forehand with a partner. And/Or ask someone to throw with you outside of practice.
If you know you need to work on running/sprinting- the only way to become a better runner is to RUN. You have to want it, and one day or practice worth of work does not a runner make. Go to the gym, get on a treadmill, take practice conditioning very seriously, make the commitment to yourself to become a better runner and I promise it will happen.
I hope to see you all at practice Monday. Unless of course you’re ill or injured, in which case, take care of yourself and we’ll see you back in action soon!
Tightening up, getting strong
If ever there was an incentive to tighten up it’s having a skinny athletic dude poke you unceasingly in the stomach.
Recently I’ve discovered that supplementing my workouts with “strength training” exercise videos does more for me than any amount of straight long distance running ever did. I’m all over some Exercise TV which comes complimentary with our comcast package. It’s part of my ultimate goal to finally develop some legitimate upper-body strength (or at least toning) for the second time in my life. Most of the workouts are awful and I can’t stand. Some are decent though.
My only problem is that I’m ashamed to admit that I’m doing these workouts to anyone. I have to wait until Ron leaves to do any of them and I worry that he’ll see them on the recently viewed programs list. I’m a closet-exercise-videoist.
Really I don’t know why I’m afraid of people knowing I do Jillian Michaels Cardio BOOST or whatever it’s called; is there some underlying stigma attached to people who rely on these workouts? I’m not sure.
I guess I just don’t want people to think I’m concerned with sculpting my abs for bathing suit season. I love to sculpt abs, however I do not own a bathing suit. Swimming is for people who like to swim you know?
Thoughts: I have the same body image insecurities as any other chick on the block. I have a skinny athletic dude poking me unceasingly in the stomach when I’m just trying to watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It would be awesome if he broke his stupid finger on my rock hard abs. I’m working on it.
In the mean time, I tried my first yoga workout tonight and enjoyed it quite a bit (hey-o Healthy Tipping Point!). I just hope I didn’t further injure my groin by it.
When Things Don’t Go My Way
There are always bad days.
Days where for whatever reason I’m not functioning and nothing goes right and it’s raining and just shitty. Sometimes when I’m having one of those days it’s best for me to just cut my losses and try again tomorrow. But I tried to force it today, and even though I had a plan for practice all worked out ahead of time, setting up for each new drill seemed like the most painful thing in the world. The drills had no energy at all and I was in no mood to promote it. The girls were having conversations about how often they shave their legs and why. Every screwy throw or dropped pass pissed me off a little bit more. But I knew I had to go when I realized that watching this one girl in particular try to play ultimate was making me hate my life. This tiny girl seems so uninterested, so out of place, so completely nonathletic that I just don’t know what to do about it. Part of my soul dies every time I watch her run. Wow, that was mean. You see? I’m am in no state to be captaining a team right now.
And then sometimes you have to suck it up and captain.
I think up through this point I’ve shied away from expressing real disappointment with my team. I’ve never seen a lot of good come from being a surly captain and don’t want to be hated or disrespected. Playing with the men’s team my first few years I remember how our captain Chip used to get upset with our performance and yell during half time. I love Chip, but his anger at tournaments didn’t really motivate us, it only alienated him. I’m the opposite, when things start going really badly I isolate myself. Funny how both approaches essentially accomplish the same thing.
Is there a way to always be the best captain possible?
Practice- Monday, 11/2
I spent some time before practice today looking up sprinting and agility drills. Some of the more advanced girls have expressed concern about their running- mostly in terms of speed and form. I’m glad, more than glad, to spend time working on sprinting because it’s something that everyone can always improve on and is an integral part of improving our game as a team.
Our most effective defense is man on man. As a team we have enough girls with speed to be competitive against most other teams we come up against running man. Where holes develop in our game is the man offense. I’d say 70% of our team is quick enough to get open on offensive cuts most of the time. But that 30% who really struggle to break their defenders consistently can be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful offensive drive. It comes down to the fact that most of these girls have never been taught how to run -let alone how to sprint.
Last week we filmed each girl sprinting from the front and side. We then watched the footage in slow motion together with fairly comical results.
Observations:
-use of the arms was fairly good but I had lectured everyone about bad arm habits directly prior so it might have been a fluke
-foot strike was all over the place, lots of heel striking!
-stride length was pretty varied but I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to it
-speed of turnover was also very varied for each person
-some people need better sports bras
For today I decided to focus on drills that would train people to stay on the balls of their feet for sprinting. The first drill was set up like box but required quick feet movements followed by initial acceleration and then change of direction and deceleration. The second drill was designed to work on sprint and reaction stimulus.
The guys actually ended up joining us for the drills since I was the only captain present for the first half of practice. I got positive feedback from everyone involved. The men’s team doesn’t have a whole lot of variety in their conditioning program so I think they enjoyed it.
Post-Monument Games Tournament Notes
Saturday play:
[R] W 13-5
[M] W 13-1
[W] L 3-13
[D] W 13-6
Sunday games rained out 
Mental State- [D] game should have been a win by more, we came in lazy/cocky and only barely took half on them. [D] through a lot of swilly crap – Cate called it “street frisbee” we were getting beat on the 50-50s in the air
[W] game- They threw a wall on us which pretty much shut us down for the entire first half. I was starting to worry that we wouldn’t be able to score at all. We eventually ended up breaking it in the second half by getting puts through to the spreaders with Cate popping. After that they threw man and we held our own there but the damage was done. Throwing zone on them failed miserably. Our zone just isn’t strong enough at this point. I need to read more.
To do: Talk about field awareness- team defense, helping out to get the D especially in the endzone when there is nothing to lose by attacking the disc whenever possible.
Live Blogging the World Series -Game 1
Originally uploaded by The Arc of Montgomery, Berks, and Bucks Counties
Note: I never watched a baseball game until the Phillies went to the world series last year. My roommate Ron is a huge Phillies fan so through him I’m learning about baseball and how to watch it on television. His girlfriend Cate refuses to watch games with him (and frankly I don’t blame her because he can get a tad bit worked up) so that responsibility falls to me. Plus I like to be on hand in case things go poorly and he tries to break things. I tell you this just as a disclaimer: I know nothing about baseball!
7:54- Get a call from Ron, he’s yelling instructions. I’m to have the TV tuned to channel 11 with volume at level 43 when he arrives in exactly THREE MINUTES. Ron always gives precise arrival times.
8:00- The game has started. Yankees are pitching first.
8:35- I’ve come back into the living room, 2nd inning, Phillies are pitching. Ron is super on edge, looking up stuff on the Phillies website, yelling about needing cookies to calm his nerves. Also it appears to have started raining on the field. One dude on base.
8:51- Utley with a home run hit in the 3rd for the Phillies! Ron: “gone, gone, Gone, GONEEE!”
9:37- 5th inning, Phillies with a nice albeit confusing double play.
9:46- Utley with another home run! I saw the Yankee pitcher mouth “fuck” and they cut away from him real quick.
10:10- Yankees with their own double play in the 7th.
10:33- Another pitching change in the 8th for NY -Ron called it.
10:49- Phi score two more runs! nicceee. Cliff Lee has been wrecking HOUSE by the way.
11:08- Ruiz (the Phi pitcher) with a double! Then he scores. 5-0! Yanks are changing pitchers like it’s their job. It mystifies me that there’s no cap on the number of changes they can make. (Ron’s facebook status is, “Smells like DOMINATION”)
11:17- One more score off of Howard’s hit. Now they just need three outs to win game 1.
11:25- Throwing error on Rollins, there goes the shutout…
11:29- Cliff Lee ends it -he went the full nine! “sensational and exhilarating performance” Most importantly Ron is well pleased.
Injuries
I thought I’d talk a little about injuries today since I seem to have contracted one. It’s the dreaded groin pull! And yes, I went into flickr and searched “groin pull” for this stock photo.
I became aware of the pain in my groin area after working out on Saturday. I was just running on the treadmill, a little harder than usual but nothing noteworthy, and as soon as I stepped off I felt that little twinge. So I rested up on Sunday and I thought I was good to go for practice tonight but apparently not. The groin pull reared its ugly head once more and now I’m stuck in a bad position that I’m sure everyone has faced before: push through or sit out?
I know that the correct answer to that question is obviously to sit out for a few days and let it heal as to avoid making it worse. But I’m stupid. And the captain of a team. And we have an important tournament to get ready for this week. And I’m stupid.
So what will actually end up happening is that I will try to ignore this injury and practice normally for the rest of the week. I will do so knowing that it is a stupid stupid thing to do and that I don’t care. At some point I should really start caring though. Because I will not always be a crazy college student and I have to come to terms with the fact that someday I might break for real.
It’s not a happy thought.
Favorite Movies (Part 1) -G.I. Jane
The first movie I love which also bears some relevance to the themes of this blog is G.I. Jane (1997). It’s a pretty obvious choice- Demi Moore kicks ass (literally), she takes some ass-kickings, and finally she succeeds in being the first woman to complete NAVY SEALS training without gender biased treatment. No one is ever surprised when I list this as one of my favorite movies.
The movie is enjoyable and inspirational because it’s easy to identify with the Jordan O’Neil character. As female athletes we sometimes encounter the loneliness and challenge of being the only girl on the field. Embrace it! Prove yourself, even if that means the best you can do is hang in there and finish what you came out to accomplish.
But what I love most about this movie isn’t necessarily the awesome heroine, it’s the relationship she has with (one of) the antagonist, Master Chief John James Urgayle. First off, master chief is just an awesome character, on the first day of SEALS training he sets the tone by quoting some seriously haunting poetry:
Self Pity -D.H. Lawrence
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
The number of times I’ve thought about this poem and tried to pretend I was that tough is too high to count. But I digress, my true love for this movie lies in the development of respect that Master Chief gains for O’Neil over the course of her training. To see someone, especially someone in a position of authority or leadership, gain respect for you is the most awesome feeling in the world. Respect isn’t something that’s easily faked like tolerance or kindness. Respect gained in a man’s arena is even more awesome.
End Game: Watch this movie if you need to get inspired to DO WORK.
