PACK MENTALITY. 6 Nov 2008

I remember my first grapevine.  Many early years of sweating it out in the aerobics room boosted my athletic confidence, and when I cheered from the 5th grade all the way to the SEC for the University of South Carolina in college, my four-four-foot-eleven-inch body was perfect for the sport, which requires a small, compact frame (to defy gravity) and pure strength. I had both. And they won me a spot on the team. I was a real athlete and anybody who thinks that Cheerleading is not a sport just has NO clue.  Lithe Method has deep cheerleading roots (check her out in Liberty--and she's tucked). My teammates and I rose before the sun, (again at 3 pm and 8pm) and spent an hour or more using every muscle from our calves to our shoulders to our hearts. Turns out, cheerleading and step aerobics had more in common than just toning my quads.

Both made me feel as if I was part of something. The fact that my teammates and I were doing something super athletic—and were good at it—was secondary to how much I looked forward to being with them every day in the field house, where we'd rehash hookups and schemes.  Although I didn't mind if we lost to Georgia or Florida, what mattered most was that there was no "I" in team. Even if we came in dead last, I couldn't wait to get back on the field with my girls (and guys).

When it comes to fitness, the power of the group is well documented: One review of 87 studies on nearly 50,000 subjects found a clear link between social support and exercise. And when Baylor University researchers recently tried to study exercise behavior in women, something surprising happened. After teaching 53 female college students a specific weight-training workout, the researchers instructed them to do it on their own three days a week for six weeks.

The idea was to measure how hard they'd push themselves if left to their own devices. But they never found out: Every single person quit the study. "We wanted to watch individual efforts," explains Rafer Lutz, Ph.D., associate professor of sports and exercise psychology at Baylor University. "But without social support, the students said they didn't feel confident in the weight room, let alone lifting weights." "Being around people with a similar goal amplifies your enthusiasm," says Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., a health psychologist and fitness instructor at Stanford University. "You want to keep up with the group. And the dedication, strength, and stamina you need to get through a workout are reinforced because your co-exercisers assume you have them. Subconsciously you feed off that."  I second that. Mush!

Comments

[smithtraining]

There are just so many reasons for losing weight. Some of us want to lose weight for health reasons while others want to lose weight simply to feel better about ourselves