I always feel awkward in a singlet. It’s bad enough in competition when everyone has to do this, but wearing it in the gym feels worse. It’s a grim combination of self-consciousness and showing off, yet moaning about it feels like an odd mixture of fishing for reassurance and humble-bragging. But it’s something I usually do in the run up to a competition to get over myself a bit. It’s a peculiar juggling act: learning to be being present in my body, but also ignoring it.
When I say that I “feel awkward”, I may be understating the case a little. Maybe a lot.
It’s not as bad as it used to be, but I still want to hide. These days, I can deal with the tightness of the clothing, I can deal with the lumps and bumps of the enclosed body. I still have trouble, however, dealing with the exposed legs.
Video: from last night’s training, six days out.Mostly tech singles. This is a cheeky little 68kg warm up. While wearing the dreaded singlet.
When I lift, it helps if I am completely present in my body–but in a useful way. The self-critical, highly distracting, waste-of-brain-space presence that runs and runs a brutal critique of aesthetics? Not so useful. (Though it’s useful for some, as that ‘s the way that sells a million magazines and diet plans.) The awareness and presence that gives me proper control of position (which is trickier than it sounds given that I often can’t feel most of my right leg or buttock), the cueing of actions, the squeezing of muscles, and the knowledge that I can push like hell? Aye, that’s the stuff. That’s the presence that lets you take up the space you need, do what you do, and feel good doing it.
I know the former option is a waste of time and energy, and most of the time I am happy enough in my own skin to live in the second state. But put me in a singlet, and all that tangled body image nonsense comes dancing to the front again, blocking the view of the important stuff. And where my response should be to read “singlet” as “YAY competition time! Go, Cooke, go!” rather than squirming.
Worrying about the stupid stuff
Because I have little fat legs, and one of them is super-wonky. And I hate that. I never show my bare legs; I don’t wear shorts and always wear leggings under dresses or skirts. It’s only in the last couple of years I’ve felt comfortable enough or confident enough or just plain no longer give a fuck enough to walk around town before and after training in loud leggings without a dress or long coat on top. (Though I don’t think I’ve ever worn them without a visit to the gym at some point.) It has nothing to do with “modesty” or with what anyone else thinks about my body, and everything to do with how I think about it.
No one cares how I look in a singlet. I know that.
I get grumpy that I care.
Part of it is standard issue body issues. (see above re: a million magazines.) And I’m seriously grumpy that I haven’t got over this by now. It has always been a little more complicated by medical history, in that it can be hard to love a part of your body that you associate with pain, and limits, and surgery.
But it’s been years since I was last sliced and diced, so that raw resentment has slipped into the shadows of deep history, and become just another layer of the sediment. These days I rarely get any bone pain (just weird misfiring of nerves), and I’ve learned a way to walk that’s far beyond anyone’s expectations (including my surgeon’s, and my own.)
The luxury of ignoring it
I’ve reached a point where I have the luxury of being able to ignore it most of the time. Most of my work-arounds and adaptations are so ingrained I am oblivious to them. It’s not “pretending to be normal” because screw normal, but what my body can do is much more alive in my brain that what it can’t. It can be hard to hate that.
I have ugly legs, and that doesn’t matter.
Wearing the singlet in training is much the same–I train in it so it becomes normal, so that it doesn’t get in the way by interrupting me with self-consciousness. I wear it until I hit the point of not thinking about it, until I can even tune out the stray background signals of “aargh, bare knees” or “ugh, weird pressure on my thigh.” Until I forget to care.
Better things to worry about
It took a long time until I could look at videos of myself lifting and see the lifts not all the things I hated about my body. In a singlet, that’s still a challenge. (Because hello little fat peely-wally wonky legs!) But when I’m wearing a singlet, I have more pressing things to worry about: a start command, a rack command, and what happens in between.
Roll on Sunday, and the next time I have to wear it.