Fear and Lifting (Not Necessarily in Las Vegas)

(Update: A version of this post appears in the October 2013 issue of Stride magazine, where I'm a new columnist. Check it out!)

Part of being a weightlifter is the willingness to regularly confront fear. My emotional state (as it relates to weights) fluctuates quite a bit within and between workouts, but when the heavy squat routine rolls around every sixth week, fear is lurking in my mind somewhere. It’s not a question of whether I’ll be afraid—it’s a question of how I will handle it.

Is “fear” too strong a word? No, I don’t think so. The last time I did heavy squats, I did one set at 165 pounds and a second set at 145 pounds. I always make sure the safety bars are at the appropriate height, so the chances of my being injured at that amount of weight are very low. Yet I think that’s why I feel afraid as I prepare to start the set, then as I get to the difficult last few reps. Part of me believes I am going to be injured. Not only injured, actually, but crushed to death.

 

Probably not dying, though one wonders

Source: www.leeboycetraining.com

Crushed to death. That is just scary. Even though I can reassure my conscious brain it’s not going to happen, emotions aren’t that simple. In a February 2013 article, Justin Feinstein of the California Institute of Technology states, “We're still learning a lot about how the brain processes fear...”¹ This complex emotion can trigger physiological changes such as muscle tension and a faster heartbeat.² Likewise, it seems that physical actions such as doing squats can arouse feelings of fear. The amygdala, thalamus, hormones, and other parts of our nervous system just don’t respond to rational persuasion in an ideal way.

It’s not just weightlifting that can be frightening. The other day when I was swimming laps, little stabs of fear shot through me as I did the front crawl. It was the fear of drowning. Though I was only slightly more likely to drown in that pool than a shark is likely to drown in the ocean—it was five feet deep, relatively small, and had two lifeguards—the exertion combined with breathing only every four strokes made it feel otherwise. I’ve also experienced fear during sprinting workouts, when the act of running as fast as I can seems to make some part of me think I’m fleeing for my life from a leopard or feral pig or some other unfriendly beast.

If only laps were this serene

Source: www.muscleandfitnesshers.com

Beyond fear of bodily harm and death, exercise can make someone afraid of less tangible things. These fears include not measuring up to your standards, wasting time and resources, and looking foolish. Dying is scary, but so is the suspicion that everyone around you thinks you’re (literally) a big fat idiot.

So the only thing to do is be brave. As the WWI fighter ace Eddie Rickenbacker said, “Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.” Squats, laps, and sprints don’t require nearly as much courage as flying war planes, but they do require some. That makes learning how to face your fears yet another benefit of regular exercise.

1. Sarah Zielinski, “What Makes You Feel Fear?” NPR, last modified Feb. 4 2003, accessed Aug. 18, 2013, http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/02/01/170877971/fear.

2. “What happens inside your body when you get scared?” Discovery, n.d., accessed Aug. 18, 2013, http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/what-happens-when-scared.  

Affluence and Austerity

Last night a friend and I discussed contentment and how it can accompany affluence or austerity. Right now I am working towards certain financial and material goals: a house, a larger emergency savings cushion, international travel, a decent retirement fund. Make no mistake—I very much want all of these things, with the house at the top of the list. And yet as I told my friend, the great thing is that I know I can be happy without any of them. As much as I want a house of my own, I could have a good life living in an apartment or someone else’s house. As much as I want a larger emergency cushion and the peace of mind that comes with it, I don’t have much of a cushion now, and life feels pretty good. (I do have people I can turn to in an emergency, though, or I might be singing a different tune.) I don’t believe material possessions, including financial savings, are inherently corrupting, but they aren’t essential to my happiness.

Today at the gym I realized these feelings apply to working out as well. I like working out at fitness centers, including fancy ones with lots of specialized equipment and attractive décor. As long as I can afford a gym membership, I will probably have one. I also like exercise DVDs, luxury pools, having an iPod to run with, and other fitness experiences that could be viewed as frills. But I don’t need any of those things to get a good workout or to enjoy exercising. Push-ups and many other body-weight exercises and stretches require no equipment and can be done virtually anywhere. I can swim in public lakes and run on public sidewalks and trails. I can be happy with the high life or a more humble existence, and what a valuable awareness that is.

Mythbusting Sweatbusting

Today at the gym I encountered a woman wiping down equipment after each use in a way that seemed excessive. She sprayed her rag with disinfectant after each wipe, using as many as six sprays per machine. I shouldn’t have gotten so annoyed by her attempt at hygiene and courtesy, but I did. I had to wait extra time for a machine she used before me, and I also felt her cleaning was unnecessary. She was wearing pants and didn’t seem to be sweating much, if at all, so was it really important to wipe down the leg pads? Even if sweat had gotten through, did the pad really need to be disinfected? Wasn’t she just adding, if only minuscully, to the problem of super-resistant bacteria?

Source: wikihow.com

To hopefully prove myself in the right, as well as increase my scientific knowledge, I decided to research these questions. After reading several articles, I have concluded that I may not have been 100 percent right, but I wasn’t entirely wrong either.

Fear not:

Philip Tierno, professor of microbiology and pathology at NYU, points out, “Of the 60,000 or so germs that people may come in contact with, only about 1 percent are potentially dangerous.”¹

Except that...

Unfortunately, that still leaves many dangerous possibilities. Sweat can carry Hepatitis B,² and the frightening bacteria MRSA “can survive on gym machines between users.”³ Furthermore, a New York Times article reports, “At any given time [...] one person in three in the United States suffers from a skin disease that can be spread to others, even while in the incubation stage.”⁴

Fear Not:

One scientific finding I read about in two articles is that sweat contains a “natural antibiotic,” Dermcidin, that “can kill a range of bacteria.”⁵ So if Jane Sixpack at the gym has spread Hepatitis B through a cut in her finger, maybe the sweat she’s also producing could destroy the virus before Joe Jogger steps on the treadmill. 

Except that...

I didn’t read anything about everyone’s sweat being able to kill every kind of pathogen. When I wasn’t sure if sweat even carries bacteria and viruses (I thought it probably did, but didn’t want to assume), these articles seemed to suggest it doesn’t, adding strength to my position. But that would be stretching this finding too far. The fact that one compound in sweat can kill a range of bacteria doesn’t mean all sweat is bacteria-free, to say nothing of viruses.

Fear Not:

A Men’s Health article stated, “You only need to worry about bacteria if you touch your mouth, eyes, nose, or any cuts before washing your hands.”⁶ Perhaps instead of using disinfectant on every touched surface after any use of a machine, gym users should just wash their hands after their workout, and maybe mid-way through as well if they’re moving between different exercises.

Except that...

If you’re like me and don’t bother with gym towels, it’s hard to avoid touching your face when you’re sweating. The simple solution there, I suppose, is to start bothering with gym towels, but that doesn’t solve the problem of an exposed cut or abrasion touching equipment contaminated by pathogens. Not a problem for every type of exercise, but a problem for some.

Source: abduzeedo.com

Fear Not:

From a certain perspective, it’s not the tiny chance of picking up something serious like MRSA at the gym that should be frightening, but the problems caused by the overuse of antibiotic and antiviral products and medications. According to Dr. Brad Spellberg of the L.A. Biomedical Research Institute, “The more antibiotics people are exposed to, the greater the risk that they are going to acquire and keep in their body bacteria resistant to antibiotics.”⁷ Again, the idea is to wash your hands often while cutting back on antibiotics and antibacterial products.

Except that...

The gym might be one place where these products are justified. I still think the woman I described in the first paragraph was overdoing it, performing the equivalent of cleaning up an overturned glass of juice with a Clorox wipe or spritz of Lysol. But considering the risks, it does make sense to disinfect certain parts of certain machines, and to be especially thorough if you know you are carrying some sort of pathogen.

1. www.menshealth.com/sweat/practice-proper-sweatiquette.php

2. Ibid.

3. http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/24/what-the-yuck-gym-machine-germs/

4. www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/health/03brod.html?_r=0

5. www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/highlights/011115_sweat.shtml

6. www.menshealth.com/sweat/practice-proper-sweatiquette.php

7. abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/health/your_health&id=8999101