Sound and space

Lifting weights can help people claim their space, and their sound.

“One of the coaches said to me, when I was worried about lifting the weight: ‘Worry about the up, not the down.’ She told me to just drop it on the ground, I didn’t have to put it down quietly. Many people who have been in a DV situation learn to be quiet, to not take up space. Dropping the bar and making that noise goes against that. We know it’s ok here to make noise.”

One of the participants in The WEST Project said this to me a couple of weeks ago. The Women’s Empowerment Strength Training project is run out of Canberra Uni by lecturer Erin Kelly and coordinator and coach Johanna Tooby. It is a ten-week fitness program for survivors of domestic violence, focused on strength training. I sat in on a couple of training sessions and wrote a story for the ABC.

The gym during these sessions was calm and relatively quiet. Admittedly I am used to Olympic Weightlifting, which can sound pretty hectic but the gym environment for the WEST Project is intentionally quiet. Music is played, but it doesn’t intrude. The women talked but there was no shouting and not one of them tried to dominate the conversation. The loudest voice was that of the coach, Tammy, when she congratulated a lifter who successfully completed a couple of deadlifts after showing doubt that she could manage it. She ducked her head at the congratulations, seemingly uncomfortable with the praise.

I suspect many women will know what this feels like.

Since the visit to Canberra I’ve been thinking about noise. Who gets to make it, who doesn’t. How the noise we emit forms part of the space we occupy. How some people, including the woman quoted above, learn to stay quiet for fear of disrupting the ‘peace’. Or worse.

This tendency to accommodate others can lead to an encroachment on one’s own space, one’s own being. Similarly, the noise of others sometimes encroaches on our space. Raised voices. Slammed doors. Insistent opinions, expressed without care. Critique tossed out lightly but felt heavily. I’m not talking about the noise of music, or cars, or phones, but the ‘noise’ made simply being. Some ‘be’ louder than others.

I’ve noticed that many of the older women who do weightlifting don’t drop the bar from any great height*. I suspect it’s because they don’t want to make noise. I am trying to train myself out of this particular act of care - it’s very satisfying to drop the bar after a successful lift - but it takes time. I made the mistake of dropping the bar too carefully a couple of years ago, I dropped it close to the floor. It bounced up and hit my left ring finger, breaking it.

Whoops. (Anti nail-biting tips welcome)

In Masters competitions, the older women will often cradle the bar down, so it doesn’t hit the ground with force. They accommodate the judges, the audience, the loaders. They contain themselves; they don’t elaborate. I’ve seen them apologise for making a noise when the bar hits the ground, as it must.

The ones who don’t do this, who don’t accommodate, are often the ones who win.

I love watching the younger female lifters roar. I love watching them drop the barbell. I love seeing them take up space.

Lifting weights - as The WEST Project is showing - can help people claim their space, which includes making their sound. ‘Noise’ can imply something negative - ‘‘what’s that noise’, ‘stop making so much noise’ - whereas ‘sound’ can be more objective. If we think about occupying space and expressing sound, it becomes less onerous; less about its effect on others and more about the expression of self.

Keeping owning - and expressing - your sound kids.

* Of course, I mean drop the bar WHEN IT HAS PLATES ON IT. Don’t drop an empty bar people.

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Thank you, as always, for reading.

Georg x

I write this stuff because I have to, it’s a compulsion. However, if you like it and you want to show your appreciation, I admit that I get pretty chuffed when someone ‘buys me a coffee’ (makes a small, one-off contribution). I need to see the physio. Again.