In the flesh

April 10, 2017 3:27 PM

MAKE AMERICA SWOLE AGAIN

At this festival of strength, brought to us by an American-dreaming immigrant turned pageant king turned movie star turned politician, there are so many sensational things on display, so much to be distracted and dazzled by, and yet I find I’m looking for something that isn’t there. I’m at The Arnold, and I’m thinking about The Donald. Here in the flyover, in the middle of a swing state committed to the delusion that it’s shaped like a heart, I’m looking at men. I’m trying to understand something about the difference between looking powerful and feeling it, between having strength and using it.

Suzannah Showler goes to the 2017 Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, OH, for BuzzFeed
posted by the man of twists and turns (13 comments total)

Greg Nog, your comment is way more illuminating that the posted article, which I felt was a bit facile and weirdly trump-obsessed.

I've been into powerlifting for a few years, and one of the greatest things has been realizing how often the biggest, most intimidating- looking guys at the gym are actually nice, low-key dudes happy to give you a spot or discuss proper squat depth. It's amazing how easy it is to make friends when you have a slightly niche hobby in common.

I guess, as someone who considers lifting my sport of choice, I most disliked the part in the article where she describes a strongman competition as " a display of strength so functional that it crosses over into being totally pointless." It seemed weirdly snarky. Like, would she go to a track competition and call it "a display of speed so fast it crosses over to being totally pointless"?
posted by loquacious crouton at 5:14 PM on April 10, 2017 [20 favorites]

"As I scrolled through McMillan’s Instagram before The Arnold, this post surprised me. It seemed like a painful thing to admit so casually in public."

"The day you started lifting, is the day you became forever small, because you will never be as big as you wanna be."
posted by madajb at 5:31 PM on April 10, 2017

I liked the article

More relevantly, I thought the Trump associations and commentary highly relevant.

That even in the midst of an ostensibly apolitical convention about the body, the spectre of Trump is everywhere- is just below the surface, just subcutaneous, and can come bursting out in sudden visceral gouts.

If the piece is "Trump obsessed", and it may well be, it is because we are all Trump obsessed.
That every thing we now see on a global stage is seen through a prism of 'why did Trump do that?', or 'how will Trump respond to that?' or 'what will happen to this because of Trump?'.

Trump's venom has penetrated so widely, and so deeply that it has infected everything- even the apolitical, even things that don't superficially seem like they have any relationship. We now measure and weigh everything in terms of Trump.

And of course we cannot divorce Arnold from Trump, the twitter battle, the TV show, the public persona- I thought the parallels were insightful, notwithstanding that Schwarzenegger would likely make a superior leader to Trump.
But there I go, weighing Arnold up in terms of Trump . . .
posted by Plutocratte at 6:54 PM on April 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

I guess, as someone who considers lifting my sport of choice, I most disliked the part in the article where she describes a strongman competition as " a display of strength so functional that it crosses over into being totally pointless." It seemed weirdly snarky. Like, would she go to a track competition and call it "a display of speed so fast it crosses over to being totally pointless"?

She was making the observation that strongman competitions focus on so-called 'functional strength', which suggests that there's some kind of utility to the movements, but there is no real-life situation where one would need to lift a 400 lb tree trunk over their head. She was just pointing out the irony of that.

A lifter myself, I found her writeup pretty empathetic and would LOVE to go to Arnold. I agree- most lifters are quiet nerds :)
posted by mikemacman at 7:19 PM on April 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

Also, Columbus is not bland and there are lots of giant and impressive women being strong at the Arnold. Also people being small and impressive and strong - there are also gymnastics, cheerleading, and Irish dance competitions at the same time.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:44 PM on April 10, 2017 [3 favorites]

I enjoyed the description of Columbus even if it felt a bit unfair. It's a fine mid-sized college town. Much like Gainesville, FL or Madison. There is good food to be found, fun bars and more culture than you'd expect.

Also, Columbus is the strength training center of the US in some respects. You've got: Columbus Weightlifting, Rogue Barbell, Westside Barbell, The Arnold, several influential CrossFits and the guys from Barbell Shrugged.

But yes, bodybuilders and powerlifters are often some of the most thoughtful, gentle and meticulous people you'll ever meet. Granted, there are exceptions.
posted by Telf at 4:16 AM on April 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

She was making the observation that strongman competitions focus on so-called 'functional strength', which suggests that there's some kind of utility to the movements, but there is no real-life situation where one would need to lift a 400 lb tree trunk over their head. She was just pointing out the irony of that.

The last thing I want is a protracted argument about the most precise definition and boundaries of irony, but I'm fairly certain that powerlifting is neither more or less ironic than any other high level development of human ability, whether that be like track and field or baseball or spelling bees. All of those are tremendous outputs of human effort with fairly arbitrary limits and​ rules for no direct practical purpose.
posted by bracems at 7:28 AM on April 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

It's a fine mid-sized college town. Much like Gainesville, FL or Madison. There is good food to be found, fun bars and more culture than you'd expect.

Population of Madison, WI: 243,000
Population of Gainesville, FL: 127,488
Population of Columbus, OH: 822,553 (Metro area is close to 2 million)

Very much agree with Greg Nog that the framing of the piece , with Columbus as emblematic as "flyover"/Trump country was a little strange, to say the least. I finally went to Arnold last year, and it was fun! There's a lot more going on than just bodybuilding, too: we saw competitive jump roping, fencing, chess, some martial arts, and cheerleading.
posted by damayanti at 7:52 AM on April 11, 2017 [5 favorites]

Imagine this writer covering a rock climbing convention in NY just after Obama's election: the forced analogies between chalk and Obama's technocratic liberalist doctrine, the non-sequiturs from ice climbing to health care. The only thing hard to imagine would be Showler being as disdainful or derisive towards rock climbers as she is towards strength athletes. Both groups are equally weirdly physically specialized to their sport; their feats are equally arbitrary. But she chose to write an article from the perspective of Othering these athletes personally and politically because she had a gut sense that they were Not Of Her Tribe.
posted by daveliepmann at 10:16 AM on April 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

I grew up in a Columbus suburb and have always been loosely aware of the Arnold as "a thing Columbus is lucky to have for the tourism dollars" versus "a thing we all strongly identify with as being Our Thing" so yeah, I agree, the framing of this piece is super weird, and also, as much as I love the liberal coastal elite life I've led since I turned 18 and escaped the Cbus, I must defend it as a pretty good sized city/metro area that is not a "mid-sized college town" by any means. (Plus OSU is one of the biggest universities in the US - second highest enrollment of public universities)
posted by olinerd at 10:24 AM on April 11, 2017

Not to mention that Franklin County (which includes Columbus and most of its suburbs) went 60% for Clinton in the election, so Columbus is not exactly emblematic of Trump's Real America.
posted by olinerd at 10:26 AM on April 11, 2017 [5 favorites]

Lift 400Lbs over my head? No. And certainly not without a lot of warming up and making sure I can lift it with proper form.

But it means that I can lift a 200Lbs...something over my head without having to warm up and without having to worry about much a breaking form leading to a permanent injury. That seems like a much more likely scenario.

One of the things I enjoy about lifting is when something heavy has to be moved and it's this huge PITA until I come along and casually toss whatever thing over to where they were trying to move it. Like, I can pretty easily make some random person's day easier just by being kinda strong (as in, 400Lbs is like 50Lbs more than I can deadlift).

I say it all the time, "I don't lift all those weights 'cause I like it."

I lift all those weights because of it's effects on my body and the things that allows me to do.
posted by VTX at 10:41 AM on April 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

Oh HELL no! I should have been more careful in my framing as I'm not literally talking about myself. But if I could do a 400Lbs OHP, I think I could pretty easily move around 200Lbs worth of something more awkward without warming up.

I'm just getting back on-track after about a 9-month hiatus while I was finishing my basement (and making sub-optimal decisions while that project could serve as an excuse) so I'm not really sure where my 1RM max is today. It's not all that important to me.

My deadlift has been coming back fastest and I'm confident I can lift 350Lbs right now, just not with a double overhand grip. I think I'd be happy to OHP 125 right now.

I'm 36, 5'10" and down to 200Lbs bodyweight (from 250 two years ago!). My goal is to be able to deadlift 400Lbs by the time I'm 40 and get the other major lifts in the same relative range which would be something like 145Lbs or so for the OHP. I think it's likely that my deadlift will always be relatively stronger than my other lifts and that's fine with me. Once I hit that goal I just want to add reps and then try to maintain that for as long as my body lets me before fighting a slow retreat as an old man.

But hoo boy is maintaining the routine crucial to that goal. I lost a LOT of progress and while it's coming back faster than it initially took, it's still a huge pain and I wish I would have done something to try to stay in shape even if it was some kind of body-weight based program just to stay in the habit of working out.
posted by VTX at 8:00 AM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]