I don't need any silly thinspiration.
Korea is all about being thin and in a land that sells water bottles advertising V-lines and cereal commercial ads that promote losing X number of unrealistic pounds to fit into your bikini, I'm so not interested. Thin doesn't mean healthy and thin won't help me in the ring when my opponent is beating on me.
I need physical inspiration.
Training with my buddies back at EMBA Boxing and Systems Fitness, well, it was a constant overdose of what I feel I lack here in Korea. Girls that bench pressed more than the boys, others who competed in fitness shows, women whose bodies intimidated the heck out of you. With their strong shoulders and sculpted legs, all you could do was admire, respect and use them as motivation to kick your own butt at training.
I lack such a woman here in my everyday life in Korea and I don't think it's rude for me to say so.
Where my body is, where I want it to be and where it should be are still three different locations, but everyday I'm working on it. Everyday I'm consciously trying to better myself -- become stronger and leaner, more skilled with my boxing, and more knowledgeable with my clean eating. But in doing so I find that one of the things lacking in my development is a female role model.
I have friends here who I admire for their commitment to their clean eating, others I respect for their dedication and efforts at training, and those I am proud of for their success, but I can't say there is one poster female among them that I'd put on a pedestal as being my one female role model. I suppose I could put them all up on the pedestal -- the stronger among them can help hold them up there -- but it'd be nice to have one role model here that en captures it all for me.
Two friends' names come to mind when I think of women I'd love to strive to be like -- Brandy and Jujeath. Both are pro boxers who are as much in love with boxing as they are with living healthy, fit lives, and their bodies are surely the envy of many. Jujeath is a short little one who has branched out recently into MMA and always comes to her bouts with a lean, mean 6 pack. Whereas Brandy, she's a modern boxing beauty with her tattooed arm sleeves and rocking strong body. It'd be awesome if I were to be able to train with either of these women but they're both not in Cheonan or Korea for that matter.
It's funny because here in Korea I've been labelled as intense and hardcore with my training and clean eating but the reality of the fact is they have NO idea what hardcore really is. My friends back in Canada were the real hardcores. I had a friend who used to wake up religiously at 4am to get in another meal, an exboyfriend who after me bartending for 10 hours straight used to make me workout with him at 2am, and a former roommate who used to take notes when watching cooking shows. The women in my life in Canada were much more hardcore than me but I always respected and admired them for that. They knew what they wanted and what they wanted to be was better.
I don't think I'm rightly due the label of "intense" or "hardcore" in comparison to my friends in Canada and I think it'd kind of sad that in comparison to those here in Korea I have been given these labels. I find it to be both encouraging and very discouraging. It's encouraging in that I think my so-called intensiveness is influencing others and helping others become more health, fitness-conscious. But it's discouraging to me in that I don't have that pool of strong, buff women to lean on and look to for encouragement and motivation. I used to love training with Anna back in Canada. She used to intimidate the heck out of me with how much she could push herself at training and how toned and trimmed her body was. She was like a superhero, curling those big boy weight as if they were nothing. I miss having such a figure in my life here and I want to look out while I'm training and be like, "See that woman, one day I'm going to be just as rough, tough, ripped and kicka$$ buff as her!"
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