MEGA MUSCLE GIRL

… will save you. With her muscles.

I was 23 years old before I had this feeling. I was a strong cyclist, an intrepid hiker, a (very) occasional runner, but when I moved out of my parents’ house, I remember having a genuine fear that if a bookcase fell on me, I wouldn’t be able to get out from under it. Not necessarily a particularly big one, or anything, just some flatpack from the local Scandi-design-type place.

After I finished college, I joined a gym, got introduced to the rowing machine, and, when the trainer asked me what I’d really like to be able to do, said, “bench press my weight.” I was about 120 lb at the time, and I can tell you right now, it was all legs. They had a light bar – only 20 lb – and I struggled with it. Still, slowly but surely over the months, I could bench more, and it was CRAZY how great it felt.

One of the many things I love about this little girl is that she’s not wasting her time with the classic bench bro clichés. She doesn’t care about “beach muscles,” and she’s certainly not fretting about bikini season. Girlfriend is already cleaning bars from the ground and getting ready to punch the sky. That’s my wish for every girl — and woman: see something that needs to be lifted overhead, even if it’s just her roller bag in the steerage section of a jumbo jet, and be able to say, “Yeah, I can do that.”