Editions of Me

December challenge: 30-minute #powerlifting total Not my cleanest lifts, but there's only so much one can do in half an hour 😬 I didn't even match my current #benchpress max (boo), but I hit a 425 #backsquat and 465 #deadlift for PRs (yay)!!! Challenge total: 1,045 All-time total: 1,065 #girlswholift #fitness #fitnamese #everydayislegday #beastmode #anchoredsc @anchoredsc A video posted by Thu 📚🏋💄💜 (@acciobeastmode) on Dec 23, 2015 at 8:03pm PST I am not gonna lie. This was hard. I'm never worried about big numbers (well, maybe for my bench press), but limiting my time to 30:00 is a whole new ballgame. I am totally the one who takes looooooong rests in between sets. This one meant that I had to go in with a plan, and my plan had to include time constraints and working on much less rest than I am normally used to. (Also, I recently took a few days off from coming in for finals and yada yada, and I'm not sleeping well, and I'm having Lady Issues, so

At Anchored we have a group of Viet girls whom Steve likes to refer to collectively as "Fitnam."  This could be because I live in the Bay Area, but at the two powerlifting meets I've attended, I've noticed that there are a lot of Asians. There are a lot of Asians in weightlifting, period, and there was a large contingent of Asians at the Crossfit box I used to go to too. (And I include South Asians and PI-ers when I say "Asians" here.) I'm not going to pretend that I know the whole history of Asians and weightlifting, but what I can  tell you is that it's at such odds with what the rest of pop culture/American mainstream media would show you about us. Asian men are often portrayed in such emasculated ways. (Unless they're "kung fu fighting," right?) They're always geeks, sidekicks, comic relief - so rarely the hero who gets proper respect and the love of the audience. (There are plenty of cartoonish Asian villains.) Or the l

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Yesssss! 175 on my #benchpress (just barely)!! That's a 20lb #PR, and it really felt like a fight. Been hitting this lift more lately and I finally feel like I'm making some #progress. New total: 1,026!!! #powerlifting #fitness #fitnamese #girlswholift #anchoredsc @anchoredsc A video posted by Thu (@acciobeastmode) on Dec 10, 2015 at 6:56pm PST Is it weird that I'm more excited about this PR than my other ones? I think it's because I really had to fight for this one - the bench press is my weakest lift, as it generally is for women. As you can see, I'm not even up to bodyweight, though judging by the weightlifting standards for the bench press , it's generally not expected anyway. But it's my goal all the same. Part of it is that I'm just way stronger in my legs, and part of it is that I don't bench as consistently as I squat and deadlift, so I'm much less experienced and much less confident in this lift than my other two. I ha

Monday was my birthday! It was a great day! I was absolutely flooded with messages, posts, and hugs, and even though it was a regular Monday (and not conducive to wild party celebrations), it was still a special day. Thank you to everyone who took even a moment of their day to think of me on my birthday :) Special thanks especially goes out to my lovelies at Anchored for surprising me with cake and presents when I came in to work out! I love these people so much! How am I ever supposed to say goodbye to them? :(

( Photo by Bobby Menbari) After I started lifting last year, it wasn't long before some of my students - namely, my freshman boys who were hoping to make the football team - found my lifting videos on my Instagram. (It is public, after all.) It's a never-ending source of amusement to me - do fourteen-year-old boys usually look up to their female English teachers when it comes to weightlifting? I'm thinking not. There's one kid in particular who pops his head into my room every now and then to ask about my numbers, and this week, after a particularly awe-filled shake of his head, he followed up by asking, "How do you DO that? How do you get your total so high?" The truth is much more complex, but what I told him was: "I show up and I put in the work." I mean, yes, my genetics plays a huge role. I honestly don't know where in my family this comes from, because if you look at my parents, my grandparents, and all my aunts and uncles, ther