Obama workout: strength and power

First Lady Michelle Obama demonstrates exercises as part of a #Gimmefive video taping in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building Gymnasium of the White House. Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon

First Lady Michelle Obama demonstrates exercises as part of a #Gimmefive video taping in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building Gymnasium of the White House. Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon

Published May 28, 2015

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Washington - When a friend suggested I take a look at the workout video tweeted by first lady Michelle Obama, I was sceptical.

I know that physical fitness is the first lady's thing, that she looks great in her clothes and that she's fit overall. But because I rarely have time to work out and I don't struggle with weight, I've never found her vaunted physicality particularly compelling. Mostly, I've been like meh, and please pass the Doritos because I don't feel like getting up.

This was a departure from years past, when I used to run miles and dance, when I turned cartwheels, did splits and generally felt my younger self to be superbad.

Lately, I've done more reading and typing than sweating and moving. I lift laptops and cellphones, and I turn only phrases. I generally feel like a slug.

But watching the first lady's two-minute video, I remembered something else about myself.

I remembered what it felt like to connect with my physicality, my desire to be strong. Not merely to look good in a sleeveless dress - although that's a great byproduct - but to be strong enough to lift things and move them out of my way. A strength I could use to walk the world. I realised that Obama, 51, has become a role model, especially for women over 40. And not just for sophisticated tastes, fashion sense or creative motherhood, but as a standard-bearer who neither slinks nor sashays her way through middle age.

Joe “Do It” Neil, a nutritionist and fitness instructor from the DC area, says he's “very, very” impressed with the video. “You can tell she's very athletic and has great co-ordination.”

He cites her crisscross jump-rope action, then the V-up abdominal exercises, which she transitioned into ab twists with a medicine ball. “She showed great core strength with that exercise.”

Perhaps the most impressive move is the incline 35-pound (15kg) dumbbell press. “If she was able to do 35 pounds on the incline, she could do 50 on the flat bench because you're able to use larger muscle groups,” Neil says. “It shows how strong her upper body is and how strong her shoulders are as well.”

He says it's a strength that will serve her well as she ages. That can help prevent injury, illness and general decline, because muscles are use it or lose it.

“I saw the accumulation of steady work,” says Michaela Angela Davis, a Brooklyn-based image activist who is also 51. “This is not CrossFit madness, beast mode. This is the result of a balanced lifestyle.

“When I was approaching 50, I wanted to feel strong,” says Davis, who works out with a trainer once a week. A lot of women's fitness is targeted toward lose this gut, fit into this dress, but “I was feeling my vitality slip away. When you get older, you need to keep it moving.”

Davis likes that we saw the first lady in workout gear. “You saw her body make shapes through space, and it was strong and long,” she says. “It doesn't take away from her femininity, it makes her that much more accomplished.”

Maybe that's what spoke to me about the video, or maybe it was just the connection I always feel when I see somebody putting their backs and their shoulders into their lives, or just doing the high kicks to work out their kinks. It says: You control your life, the way you age, the way you look, and whether 75 finds you upright and engaged or stooped and struggling for the rest of your days. And that's not a decision that will wait until you're 74.

It's something I used to know. It just took a few power moves by the first lady to remind me.

 

There are several firsts in the video:

Obama is now the only first lady to have laid bare her workout routine, and the first to wear a gym tank and stretch pants while pounding her fists together in boxing gloves. She is shown doing five exercises.

* She skips rope. She does not sweat.

* She lies on a mat, holding a medicine ball overhead. She does not sweat.

* She stands astride a workout bench, then hops on top of it. She does not sweat.

* The camera zooms in on the first lady holding weights. She does several chest presses. She breathes in and out deeply but, still, does not sweat.

* She ends the video with a kickboxing routine. She has still not broken a sweat.

The video is part of Obama’s campaign to promote healthy eating and exercise.

 

Washington Post-Bloomberg

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