Training for more than performance
By Lyra Pierotti
The word ‘Training’ has turned out to be more off-putting for many people than I could have imagined. Despite that, I’m calling this resource: Training for more than performance… or, what a thoughtful, personalized, and science-backed training program can do for the rest of your life.
Growing up in the 90s, people called me a “Tomboy.” I liked sports, I was athletic–so I had to have some ‘other’ identity than ‘girl.’ The positive side of this alternative identity for me was that I grew up thinking of myself as an athlete. I found my place on the kickball court with all the boys; I walked confidently into the weight room as a teenager. This grew and expanded over the years, and now, at 40, I have two certifications that reflect lifelong ease as an ‘athlete’: I’m an IFMGA Licensed Mountain Guide and a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist.
However, all along that path, something subtle happened: Most of the girls–or rather, Tomboys–around me drifted away. Vanished. Every so often I would find another female athlete to pal around with. In college, I managed to find a fairly competitive co-ed soccer team to play on. When I found rock climbing, my earliest mentor was a woman 5 years my senior. She was a dancer and the best climber in that whole friend group. She was also the only other woman I climbed with for some years.
Slowly, I began to see that there was a disconnect between the feminine and athleticism. As a Tomboy, this didn’t change much for me, but it certainly steered my athletic development in some interesting ways…
When I hit thirty–almost to the month–all hell broke loose. I was overtrained, injured, exhausted, and standing at the precipice of a premature end to my beloved mountain guiding career. I came back from a Denali expedition with shooting pains down my left arm. I couldn’t self-arrest with an ice axe, so I couldn’t climb any mountains, which meant I couldn’t work. Imaging showed compression in my upper spine.
A blitz of bodywork resolved the shooting pains, but did not get me feeling “normal” again… Whatever “normal” means. My physical therapy appointments ended when I self-reported that I was “85% better.” I remember my dismay: As a mountain guide, I needed 110%, not 85.
The task of healing now fell on my shoulders along with everything else that had gotten me in this predicament already: That heavy pack, the miles of rope coiling, the long and tiring work days and the days off spent trying to do all of it at an even higher level.
I still needed help. People in my community kept raving about this one physical therapist in our town. I had heard that she specialized in breathing mechanics. A suspicious parallel had emerged in my athletic experience–while the shooting pains had taken center stage, I also noticed that my work made me tired, and that many of my colleagues just seemed to get stronger with the immense amount of volume we accumulated working as guides. All of my colleagues, I noted, were male.
Five minutes into my appointment with this new PT, she sat back from the table I was laying on and looked me in the eyes:
“You haven’t met your athletic potential yet.”
As my body healed through guided work on my posture, I grew curious about the methods this PT was using. I asked her what else I could do, and how I could bring this into my athletic training as I moved beyond my injured state. She worked alongside a coach who trained in the same methods. I started shadowing her, and taking courses from the same providers.
Initially, I was taking courses for coaches because I couldn’t find someone to take me from physical therapy back into the strength and fitness I needed to sustain a career as a vocational mountain athlete. I learned the hard way that I needed to do things differently from the dominant paradigm around me in guiding, which was almost entirely male. I couldn’t find movement professionals skilled in the realm of mountain performance, let alone the needs of a female athlete like myself.
And so began my coaching career.
As I cobbed together new understandings of movement mechanics, postural strength, rest and recovery, and aerobic pacing, a variety of peculiar things unfolded for me. But most importantly: I got myself back to work. Other things happened, too. My work got easier. I slept better. My stress levels diminished. I felt more supple. I felt stronger through a different pathway–one of ease and efficiency. I tweaked my neck and back less frequently. I bounced back quicker when it happened.
By my mid-thirties, I was more durable than I had ever been. And by the end of my thirties, I was an internationally certified mountain guide. Now, at 40, I am cresting into another era of my athletic life. Research is growing rapidly in the fields of female performance, including through peri- and post-menopause, a life phase increasingly relevant for myself and my immediate community.
Echoes of stories I’ve collected over the years swirl in my head. I remember seeing Deena Kastor running in Mammoth with the famous track club there, still breaking records into her early forties after having a child; I remember watching Dara Torres medal in the 2008 Summer Olympics at age 41, with a two-year-old; I think of Delphine Chenevier climbing her hardest while managing a regular job and family life, sending 5.14b at age 48.
The amount of research on female performance has increased by a whopping 50% in the last few years: From 4% to 6%. We don’t know the rules.
Maybe the women we think are breaking the rules are in fact setting the norm.
The more I dive into this rapidly growing realm of research, the more I am inspired and piqued with curiosity. While we wait for our fair share of the research, there are tools and communities to help us connect to our potential, and share the stories of our successes and struggles so that we may all learn, despite the dearth of scientific information.
Women-led spaces, affinity programs, all of these provide access to each other. And if you need a little more guidance on preparation, we are here to support your training process as well. You can reach out to Lyra directly, Lyra@movementumtraining.com, or browse her website www.movementumtraining.com.
