Athletic Women Blog

I think most can agree that Serena Williams was out of line at this year's US Open. But what will be said of her punishment now that it has been decided?

Grand Slam administrator Bill Babcock tells the AP that Williams has been fined a record $82,500 and could be suspended from that tournament if she has another "major offense" in the next two years.

Interesting to compare Serena's story with that of Jeff Tarango, who until today held the record for a Grand Slam fine.

This week brings us to the holiday season. For many, The Nutcracker is a tradition this time of year. Everywhere young ballerinas prepare earnestly for school and community productions of the popular ballet. But their practice sessions aren't always innocent; now and then things go wrong, as here with "Waltz of the Flowers":




Have a wonderful holiday!

A display of wanton violence seems in order this Friday. I feel mischievous and want to see someone, better yet make that plural, get an ass kicking. My search for this entertainment leads, perhaps inevitably, to Bridgett "Baby Doll" Riley. One of few athletes to have captured world titles in both boxing and kickboxing, Riley is a combat sports legend. She is also an actress and stuntwoman, which steers us to today's fun.

Captured in this video is a rehearsal for the famous bar fight in Serenity. Much as I like Summer Glau and think her execution of the movie's version brilliant, it doesn't match the speed, precision, and intensity seen in this "rehearsal" starring Riley. Enjoy!—

Editor's note: We know that upper-body strength affords tangible athletic advantage in many, perhaps most, sports—even auto racing, strangely enough. This is of special importance to female athletes, who too often haven't been sufficiently encouraged and instructed in this mode of conditioning. Today's guest post by experienced bodybuilder and weightlifter Elle Nash aims to change that. I hope you find it useful.—Rob

Upper-body strength, an overview

Upper-body strength comes from mainly three areas: chest, back and core. There are other secondary muscles like the triceps, biceps and shoulders, but they really don’t provide the power that comes along with strength. The core is really the power spot because it will balance out your upper body and allow your other muscles to fully exert their strength. The core makes up your abdominal muscles, as well as the muscles in your lower back.

Exercises for upper-body strength

There are many different exercises that achieve this. There are things that you can do around the home, but the long term results are very limited. Pushups and pull ups work great, but there is a point where you’ll plateau. If you’re serious about getting more strength than you should be looking toward a gym membership or gym equipment.

Bench Press: You can do both barbell and dumbbell exercises of this. I like to mix it up week to week when I do this particular exercise. I find that the barbell bench press provides the most strength for the chest area. The dumbbells help work your stabilizer muscles and eventually help you get over plateaus.

Deadlifts: This is by far the best core exercise that you can do. I don’t even do sit ups or crunches anymore because they’re useless in my opinion. Lifting a barbell of weight off the floor requires an enormous amount of strength and really develops the core muscles, especially the lower back.

Bent Over Rows: You will also have the choice of using barbells and dumbbells for this one. I find value in both of them, so I switch it up week to week. This is going to develop strength in your upper back.

The exercises above are the main focus of your training for upper-body strength. They hit the biggest muscles in the upper body and they also work the secondary muscles in an indirect way. If you ever feel that your strength training is hitting a plateau than you should work your secondary muscles. This would include exercises like military press, triceps curls, biceps curls, seated rows, etc.

Diet for upper-body strength

As important as weight lifting is to developing strength, you also need to eat properly for the development of your muscles. The proper diet isn’t as complicated as most people assume. The hard part is just following it.

Since muscle tissue doesn’t build instantly, you have to constantly feed your system with protein. This is so your muscles always have nutrients available to them throughout the day. That doesn’t mean you have to eat all the time. The magic number is 4 hours. You should be getting a meal into you every 4 hours that contains protein. You’re not going to have big meals though. The idea here is to eat about 5-6 times a day instead of the usual 3.

With your body getting the necessary nutrition all the time, you’ll have the potential to repair muscle tissue properly and gain the upper-body strength you desire.

Resting

Most of the repairs done to your body will occur while you’re asleep, and if you’re not getting enough sleep they just won’t happen. This is why it is extremely important to get a full night of sleep, every night. If you’re someone that normally gets 5-6 hours a night than you’re going to have to bump it up to 8-9 hours a night.

I wish that strength training was all done in the gym, but you have to get the rest you need for your body to repair itself. After you start lifting heavy weights you’ll want to sleep more at a night.

This is everything you need to know on how to build upper-body strength as a female. Remember that results aren’t instant or fast. It takes time, so be patient and just keep working at it.

About the author: Elle Nash has been an amateur female bodybuilder for nearly 10 years. She has participated in many bodybuilding competitions around Canada. You can visit her website and blog on women's bodybuilding.

Reebok has a new line of shoes, and of course new commercials to promote them. Called Easytone, the shoes condition a woman's butt and legs, so we are told anyway. No gym. No workouts. Just wear shoes. Snake oil? Perhaps. But that's not what I'm concerned with today.

What bothers me is the image peddled to women as the ideal. A "toned" look suggests, to me and many others, I'm sure, an athletic physique. Maybe not a bodybuilder's, but manifestly athletic. What is presented instead, though, is the same soft, smooth, size 2 look we are informed constantly is the feminine ideal. Is this model's physique really much different from that seen in a thousand other advertisements?—



Contrasted with that of fitness athlete Jelena Abbou seen in this Fahrenheit commercial, it becomes obvious how paltry Easytone's "toned" look is:



In the Fahrenheit commercial we see a woman lucidly strong and athletic, yet strikingly attractive by any reasonable standard. Why can't there be more like this?

Badly behaved or just bad, or both? You decide. First it was the lately infamous Elizabeth Lambert:



Then a brawl in Rhode Island:



To cheer or to boo? A question that invites a farrago of answers . But something Mike Lopresti says hits what I think is about the right note:

The key — and this might get lost on those who don't pay attention to women's sports — is that they play as hard as the men, compete as hard as the men, like to mix it up as much as the men. So it shouldn't be surprising that there come times when they may be knuckleheads just like the men. If need be, they can throw cheap shots like them and brawl like them — and be banished to the sidelines like them.

Marloes Coenen has good reason to be happy following her win Saturday night:

Female athletes and women's sports have been this blog's focus lately, but I don't want to neglect too much our cinematic heroines. So whilst I have a moment and the subject is on my mind, I will call attention to three films you might find interesting.

Amelia — A biopic of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart. Starring Hilary Swank (you remember her). In theaters now:



Avatar — The latest creation from James Cameron (Terminator, Aliens). Gale Anne Hurd (his second wife) is quoted about him thus in a recent New Yorker article: "He felt that they [women] were underutilized in sci-fi, action, and fantasy, and that just about everything you could explore in a male action hero could be explored better with a woman." You'll recognize some welcome faces in the trailer as well. Set for a December 18 release:



Salt — Angelina Jolie continues her vocation as action star. To be released July 23, 2010:

Thanks to Lisa (The Glowing Edge) we learned last week that Erin Toughill is out for medical reasons from this Saturday's Strikeforce event. Instead, Marloes Coenen will face Roxanne Modafferi in a fight that will likely decide who gets first shot at champion Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos. Situated atop the preliminary card, the fight will be CBS's "reserve fight," meaning it could make the telecast if the main card runs short.

Modafferi seems rather nice, almost nerdy even:



But Coenen isn't getting off easy—in fact, she already has a split-decision loss to Modafferi—for something changes when Modafferi gets in the cage:

Tasked with garnering more fans, advocates for women's sports might understandably think an online community of feminists a good place to reach out. And in fact a WTS blogger tried this recently—with, at best, mixed results. I will here give the essence of what happened, and suggest where discourse about women in sport must go to effect genuine progress. First, though, I should insist that you read, if you haven't already, the relevant post and its attendant comments at feministing.com.

From the first we see signs of trouble:

I'm not interested in sports, I don't like playing them, I don't like watching them, I don't like talking about them or listening to people go on and on about them. I don't have to have anything to do with them if I don't want to. Just because I share a common genital feature with people who like sports doesn't mean I have to like them too or go to their games or promote their leagues.—Eresbel

Nope. I will continue to ignore the WNBA and NBA equally. I have no obligation as a woman to watch someone throw a ball into a hoop.—UnHingedHips

And it does seem to me a rather difficult sell to promote women's sports merely as a cause. The opportunity for women to play sports, yes; but to expect that someone by nature uninterested in sport is going to altruistically follow women's sports is probably unreasonable.

Then, the crux of the matter:

I'm a football fan, I don't like basketball. I do love gymnastics, track and tennis. Though I think they have a right to play I don't think they have a right to play indefinitely for an empty court and make no profit.—Phenicks

And, while WNBA players are extremely talented, it is a little like watching minor league baseball -- which is why it doesn't make my list of sports to follow, and why I doubt most men will ever care.—KBZ

Who cares how much effort people put into sports? I may train all day at a sport for my whole life but if I don't match up nobody's going to pay to watch me play. If effort counted for anything Rudy Ruettiger would be in the Hall of Fame. He's not, because he wasn't a good enough athlete.—dawn_of_the_bread

It simply won't do to think that women's sports can prosper as a cause or by fiat. Fighting for opportunities and fair media representation is something we can and should all do, but ultimately it is up to the female athletes to attract fans and dollars to women's sports.

It would be an error, though, to assume that women are reluctant sports fans. They in fact shop for their sports entertainment much as men do. The NFL's growth in recent years, for example, has been largely the result of attracting more female fans; nowadays, women make up more than 40 percent of the NFL's fan base. (Ironically, this may partly be a consequence of more women having played sports in their youth.)

As an aside, a worthwhile suggestion for the WNBA:

The WNBA needs to focus on smaller cities with no (or very few) major professional sports teams or high-powered college sports teams. I live in Houston -- with the Rockets, Texans, Cowboys, Astros, Longhorns, Aggies (etc., etc.), the Comets hardly ever even made the evening news. They were basically drowned out by other, far more popular, sporting franchises in the area.—KBZ

One I have put forth as well (viz. here).

It makes sense to end this post by addressing female athletes. What can you, the female athlete, do to elevate your status and that of women's sports? Primarily three things: 1) Continue to push yourself and train hard. 2) Ignore those who doubt your athletic potential simply because you are a woman, for they have it all wrong anyway. 3) Do not allow erroneous notions about femininity to hold you back in your training or otherwise.