Your Body is the Perfect Athlete
By Akhila Vijayaraghavan
The topic of body image is fraught as it is both private and in the public domain. Everybody, irrespective of gender, faces some variation of this issue but it is rarely spoken about in a manner that is empowering. This lockdown, however, has given me time to take pause and re-assess the relationship I have with my own body.
I’ve always played a sport to some capacity, swam varsity, and have been fairly athletic. The past three years, I have worked hard to mould myself into a powerlifter and this year, I was supposed to be competing nationally. My training program had just started when the coronavirus hit and put a stall on everything. I learned this week that my gym was the first casualty of the pandemic in my immediate circle. The grief I felt was swift, unexpected, and wrenching. I know that it is temporary, that this too will pass and a gym is the people as much as it is the space and, yet, it felt like another brick of my old life was crumbling.
The space that I occupy within the microcosm of my gym is integral to my self-esteem. It is the space where I feel the safest, the strongest, the most positive, and the most open to feedback. I take the lessons I learn here and apply them to the rest of my life. Working out is easily the most visceral cog that holds my life and my mental health, together.
The gym is also my place of healing because it is where I learned to stop looking at my body in terms of what it didn’t look like, and started accepting it for what it could do. As I hit more and more personal records, I not only accepted it, I started loving what it was capable of. I loved how it started looking and I loved that it was built for powerlifting, when previously my short-curvy-ness was always a source of frustration. So, over lockdown, without this space, I clung to the people and worked out over video with them. Seeing their faces every day, kept my sanity and sticking to a regular workout kept my muscle mass. The thing about community is that it can be found anywhere. I happen to have found mine over iron, callouses and sweat.
I’m not entirely sure what will happen now because the shifting sands are hard to read. When everything is floating in an ether of uncertainty, I long for a heavy bar to weigh me down. I long for the clang of plates to snap my mind back into focus. I miss having a space that is my zone, where I walk in feeling pumped up and ready to conquer. The act of lifting seems one-dimensional, but it requires intense focus. When you have eighty kilos on your back, you need to have every ounce of concentration on the move you’re about to perform. I believe that this intense focus has pushed me to aim higher by paying more attention to detail and it has completely removed complacency from my vocabulary.
Now, without this, lifting five kilo dumbbells doesn’t offer me the same challenge but by trying out variations, by trying out subtleties, I’m re-teaching my body that even strength has nuance. Sometimes it requires a light touch, sometimes you have to be heavy-handed, at others you have to explode out of the gate and at other times you need to hold back. With the change in exercise routine, I’m seeing changes in my body all over again. More muscle definition, although I’m lifting a fraction of what I was. As I push through the cardio, I’m noticing more endurance. I’m also noticing a leanness I didn’t have before. I have even begun to regularly do the one thing I used to despise before — walking for an hour every day and I’m quite enjoying it. I’m learning new ways to move as I have taught myself some animal flow and it is a humbling experience — I can deadlift a hundred kilos, yet I’m finding levitating ape incredibly challenging.
These days, I’m just grateful for the movement. I want my body to reflect how I feel, which on most days is balanced , strong, and powerful and not reduce it to a piteous binary of ‘fat’ or ‘thin’. The language I use to talk about my body has become aspirational, rather than berating. Realising what your body is capable of, is miracle-inducing and deeply gratifying. This past month has also given me time to marvel at what the human body is: the most amazing synergy of biology, biochemistry, biomechanics, kinesiology, physiology, and psychology. It is complex systems working in perfect tandem, and systems always striving to optimise — even by simply existing or through the most basic act of breathing; your body is the perfect athlete.
Akhila is an environmental consultant, photographer, diver, and writer. Trained as a Molecular Biologist at the University of Glasgow, she worked in environmental strategy, to advise companies on ESG, and waste management. Her photography project Fierce, on women, sport, and body image was showcased in the Chennai Photo Biennale and can be followed on Instagram. Twitter: @aksvi Instagram: @thebokehchaser
