Flip the Script by Debra East
© Debra East 2024
Debra East hiking in Sinks Canyon outside Lander, Wyoming in May 2023. This was 11 months after the right Hip Joint replacement, and two months before the left Hip Joint replacement. T-shirt reads, “Be Your Own Hero.” Photo credit: Diane Corsick
My wellness graph of subtle and wide swings started in earnest in 2003 with community and persistence. A beloved, athletically skilled friend, teaching me the elementary backstroke in her ranch pond, exclaimed, “You have athletic talent!” Self-perception of my 275-pound, 49-year-old cis-woman’s body flipped, possibilities expanded. Within months, I started water aerobics and yoga practice. People in the pool or on the mat had varied shapes, ages, and abilities; stretched and shifted stereotypes together. Soon, I learned freestyle swimming basics by committee, convened in the hot tub.
The next six years, I gained mobility, confidence, and encouragement from longtime and new friends. This move into athleticism was not for a single event, rather a long one, my life. It revealed social conditioning I could change; it would not go easy. Humans develop in a framework, wrapped around us and in society. Individually, we double down on what is expected of who we are. A trio of stereotypes, woman, age, and body size, were intricately woven in me. At 49, I was as chronologically young as I would ever be. Change was made in my biological age and mindset, movement had vigor as a novice swimmer and yoga practitioner. About 10 pounds had been lost in my goal to get to 200; body and I were in this together, yet frustration in this “self-paced” series mounted. What or who could be added to the pool and yoga mat to understand weight loss for this body?
“A trio of stereotypes, woman, age, and body size, were intricately woven in me.”
In May 2009, my 55-year-old body entered Elemental Gym clutching an invisible starter kit of self-care and “last straw desire” for weight loss and expanded fitness. A referral from an empathic friend affirmed the people here would partner with me. To my relief they did. Since then, strength, form, mobility and training skills I learned from session savvy for cycling and swimming goals, successful or recalibrated, contributed to free weight lessons and the lifts of life.
Debra East swings a 35-pound kettlebell at Elemental Gym in Lander, Wyoming. Photo credit: Charlie Mangeniello.
In the past eight years, medical and structural challenges created what I call an “intergenerational” body. Surgery has removed or replaced body parts, a knee and two hips, with months of recovery; every time, Elemental was part of a practical approach.
Years at Elemental, before osteoarthritis required new joints, is where I built physical strength and capacity. I knew how to commit to four years of clinic and home physical therapy to craft new biomechanical movements. Athletic practices and principles in coaches’ monthly columns or individual and group sessions reinforced new habits within natural peaks and valleys. In the gym, strength challenges expanded my awareness: when to step back or up, and when to give my body a literal or figurative calibration shift.
Planned muscle overload cultivated confidence about surgeries. Recovery required assistive devices of walker, walking poles, and cane even at the gym. The newest joints, the “hiplings,” are surrounded by muscles that remember and build new memories to maintain form under my watchful coach’s gaze. Competency builds with each step.
These years have augmented my awareness of specific stereotypes, ageism, for one, is with us all, whether age is single digit or high range double digit. It is mixed in with other stereotypes. Ageism, along with sexism landed in 1968, when my 14 years old self expressed certainty to a high school counselor's query, “What do you want to study in college and where do you want to go?” A passion since six years old, I said, “I want to study geology at Michigan Technological University!” He brushed it off, saying “...it’s a rigorous school and there are only boys there.” With the support of my parents, I followed my path as it unfolded despite the judgment that this counselor expressed.
Ageist experiences have found all our eyes and ears in greeting cards, advertising, social media, movies, newspapers, and magazines. There is a sweet spot for me: proactive action. On the medical forms or in conversation as I readied for R knee replacement at age 61, I augmented body and age information with 7 years in the gym, two sprint triathlons, thousands of miles of cycling, many pool laps, and six months of physical therapy prehab, “stereotype ‘interruptus’”. When they witnessed walker wrangling, skilled stair navigation, lift strength, mobility, or body awareness they customized to reality. Whittling down stereotypes is a partnership.
“In the gym or through athletic activities I learned to correct my form, change strength, and improve a range of athletic skills and aspirations. These competencies revealed mindsets that I could shift, whether it is how I can walk or how to perceive age.”
To further reflect on ageism, I was captured by the work of Becca Levy, PhD, researcher and professor, in “Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs about Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live.” In the gym or through athletic activities I learned to correct my form, change strength, and improve a range of athletic skills and aspirations. These competencies revealed mindsets that I could shift, whether it is how I can walk or how to perceive age.
Learned ageism is part of the dominant culture of the United States and in each of us. Through an early longitudinal study over 20 years, Levy was “able to determine that age beliefs were determining [participants’] life spans above and beyond the influence of gender, race, socioeconomic status, age, loneliness, and health. Age beliefs stole or added almost eight years to their lives, conferring an even better survival advantage than low cholesterol or low blood pressure (both of which added an extra four years of life) or low body mass index (one extra year) or avoiding smoking (three extra years).”
Further comparative and longitudinal studies evaluated countries, cultural, racial, physical ability, cognitive ability, and other factors; her analysis offers additional steps to prevent, interrupt, and change ageism. She expands change for individuals, interpersonal engagement, and systems with an ABC framework by “increasing Awareness [sic], placing Blame where blame is due, and Challenging negative age beliefs.”
For me, severe osteoarthritis and a medically recommended treatment plan revealed and deepened body awareness and physical capacity to change my biomechanics and habits. The gift of awareness of athletic ability, successes, insights from failures, major injury, or surgical experiences, have expanded how to partner with my body in the next opportunity, it has brought me this far and I love it.
Start where you are; the genetics of your body, paired with access and effort put forth to wrangle results. Reassess incremental steps when you push against weights or other forces you can’t move, what is the reframe? The years at Elemental and with many of you have allowed me to learn and transfer insights to other life challenges.
When we walk in the gym door, we are the oldest age we have ever been. We have aspiration, varied physical capabilities, access, and experience to leverage or expand. This essay, “Flip the Script.” focused on my individual, although not singular, experience. Gym skills created lessons that transfer to other opportunities and challenges.
“What scripts can you flip due to your body awareness, strength, access, or athletic lessons in identities of age, physical ability, fitness, gender, or other identities?
How do we support people older or younger than us when an aspiration at first seems too soon or too much?
How do we deconstruct ageism in our personal lives?
What are the incremental steps that contribute to changes? ”