A few of my friends have shared this article recently on social media, and it's stuck with me.
Two pairs of identical twins were mixed up in the hospital at birth, and raised as two pairs of fraternal twins.
Photo from newyorktimes.com.
Friday Find: Core Exercises for Rowers and Non-rowers
There is, I think, a fairly common misconception that rowing is all about arms. When I started rowing I got a lot of comments about how jacked my arms would be. And while my arms for sure are getting stronger, everything else is too. As one of the coaches said recently, rowing is both aerobic and anaerobic: it's a full body workout, requires a lot of leg and core strength, gets your heart pumping and all your muscles sore. And if you're not sitting up tall, you're going to have problems. So while rowing is definitely helping my core, I also need to work on it outside the boat.
Listen to me now and hear me later, girlie men.
I asked said same coach for a list of any core exercises that would help, and she sent me this article from Real Simple with six core moves. It's got some nice variations on standard planks and crunches.
In particular, I like how this rope climb approximates the angle we lean back at when in the boat. I always really feel it starting in my lower abs, and it forces me to think about my posture, as does this move.
Do you have any favorite core strengthening moves? I'm always in the market to switch it up!
Friday Find: About the Friday Find
A while back some friends and I (hi Andrea & Michelle!) started sending each other funny clips, interesting articles, and gif-laden emails on Fridays. Other days too, but there was something extra fun about that little extra fun on Fridays. So when I started up over here I decided I could turn this little habit into a feature, for no reason other than to share fun, interesting, and/or thought-provoking things. A clip, an article, something of interest or entertainment that I'd come across during the week.
An unintended consequence of that is that I started to fear it appeared clickbait-y to share posts that generally contain very little of my work, and possibly a call to click through to another article - particularly when it's something that might be making the rounds on Facebook and thus be something you've already seen. Clickbait certainly wasn't the intention. So I felt like I should jazz these posts up with some actual writing, which is fine. Except then it became something totally different and for the most part I stopped posting Friday Finds because it felt like I needed to post something much bigger, which sort of defeated the point of the whole thing. And that's a bit silly. So! You know what? On Fridays I'm just going to keep posting funny and interesting links, stories, clips, articles, and whatever else catches my eye during the week, and you can come check them out if you'd like. If you've already seen it or read it, then hey, sorry. It might be something I saw on Facebook too.
This week's find comes from my (beautiful and supremely talented) friend Natalie, who did indeed post it on Facebook. If you're someone who, like me, loves to read, then I hope this tickles you as much as it did me. There's a bit of salty language and while it's not supremely vulgar it's probably also NSFW, but hey, a lot of literature isn't something you'd read aloud in the office either.
Things I’ve Learned About Heterosexual Female Desire From Decades Of Reading
An excerpt: "It’s really good when a man could hurt you and maybe spends a lot of time hurting other people but makes an exception in his hurting-people schedule for at least one woman he doesn’t hurt, but he could if he wanted to, only he doesn’t, so it would be great if he murdered everybody except for you and didn’t murder you even a little bit."
"Someone understood him once but then she died."