Alyssa Ages, SECRETS OF GIANTS: A Journey to Uncover the True Meaning of Strength
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[1:03]Alyssa Ages is the author of Secrets of Giants, a journey to uncover the true meaning of
[1:08]strength.
[1:09]As a journalist, her work has appeared in self, bustle, slate, GQ, parents, the Globe and
[1:13]Mail and others.
[1:14]She is a mom of two, an endurance athlete, and a strong woman competitor.
[1:18]Welcome, Alyssa.
[1:19]Thank you so much for coming on mom's.
[1:20]Don't have time to read books to discuss Secrets of Giants, a journey to uncover the
[1:25]true meaning.
[1:26]Strength.
[1:27]I feel like I need to lift weights, just even have this conversation with you.
[1:31]Thank you for having me.
[1:32]I'm so excited to be here.
[1:34]Tell us, and there's all about your book.
[1:36]Start from the beginning.
[1:36]So, okay, I was this not particularly athletic kid.
[1:40]I have this very strong memory of playing Little League Baseball when I was about 10.
[1:45]And I remember that I never hit the ball.
[1:48]Just, I don't know, I never made contact with the ball.
[1:51]And for the next 10 years of my life, I told myself this story that I was not an athlete.
[1:56]And so I just, I didn't try anything.
[1:59]And fast forward, I'm working one of my first jobs and I had to play actual softball
[2:03]game, you know, with grown-ups.
[2:05]And I went up to bat and I hit the ball and I got on base.
[2:10]And I ran off the side of the field and I called my mom and I said, I have to tell you
[2:14]something.
[2:15]I finally hit the ball.
[2:16]After all those swings and misses, I finally hit the ball.
[2:19]And she's like, oh, that's great, but it's not that you never hit the ball when you
[2:25]were playing Little League.
[2:26]You never swung the bat.
[2:29]Yeah, I've set me off on this kind of, oh my gosh, I've told myself this story for my
[2:34]whole life that I was not an athlete.
[2:37]I was not good at sports.
[2:38]And it turned out that I just never actually tried at all because I was so scared of failing.
[2:43]I went from there and decided to basically swing at everything I could.
[2:46]I started doing marathons, even though I couldn't run more than a mile.
[2:50]I started doing trathons, even though I couldn't swim more than a lap of the pool.
[2:55]And then I found my way into the strength world from CrossFit and then into Strongman.
[3:00]And the impetus for this book was I've been training in Strongman for about two years.
[3:06]And I explained what Strongman is.
[3:08]Oh, yes.
[3:09]So most people, if you know about Strongman, you might know it from late night ESPN reruns
[3:14]of World Strongest Man where it's just huge dudes lifting rocks and logs and pulling trucks
[3:20]and airplanes and buses sometimes.
[3:23]But there is this thriving world of amateur competitors and we are literally competing
[3:27]in like suburban strip mall parking lots just to see, I don't know who can who can do
[3:33]the most stuff with their body in their strengths.
[3:36]It's a really, it's ridiculous, but it's a lot of fun.
[3:38]I've been training for competition.
[3:40]I was with my coach in the gym and I remember I was picking up an atlas stone, which
[3:44]is kind of that quintessential piece of equipment for Strongman.
[3:46]It's like a big round concrete boulder.
[3:50]And I remember feeling really tired and it was this level of exhaustion that wasn't
[3:53]this workout is hard, but there's something else going on.
[3:56]I went home that day.
[3:57]I took a pregnancy test.
[3:58]I found out I was pregnant and then three weeks later I found out that I was miscarrying.
[4:04]And I very quickly went from being the strongest I'd ever been in my life to suddenly
[4:08]feeling the weakest and the most vulnerable here I'd been for these last however many
[4:12]years feeling like if I told my body to do something, if I told it to run a marathon or
[4:16]do a triathlon or lift a weight, it would do it.
[4:19]And I told it to stay pregnant and it wouldn't do that.
[4:22]And I lost a lot of trust in my body.
[4:24]One of the things I did as I was kind of going through the recovery from that and going
[4:30]through fertility clinic visits was that I would go back to the gym.
[4:33]And I would work out with my trainer and I couldn't explain it at the time, but I felt
[4:37]like that was bringing me back to life in a way.
[4:40]I would walk a little taller.
[4:42]I would have my head held high when I walked out of there.
[4:45]And it got me thinking, well, maybe I've had this thing all wrong for all these years.
[4:49]Maybe it's not about how much weight we can lift, but maybe strength is actually about
[4:54]how we take the things that we learn from those experiences in the gym and bring them
[4:58]into how we handle all the struggles that we go through outside of the gym.
[5:02]That is my long visit answer.
[5:05]What a story.
[5:07]Going back to the beginning, right?
[5:09]If I figured out that I could play baseball and I didn't think I could, I'm not sure
[5:14]that would set me off on the course of then running a marathon.
[5:17]So like in terms of who you are is a person and where this all comes from, like, what
[5:22]was the context for the rest of your life at that time?
[5:25]Like one of the things that you tried to master, like what was your life like in school?
[5:29]Are you a perfectionist?
[5:31]Have it this all happened?
[5:33]I would consider myself to be wildly stubborn and driven.
[5:36]So if I set my mind to something, I'm going to figure that out.
[5:40]I'm going to do it.
[5:41]My marathon story was a little ridiculous.
[5:43]I was living with a roommate at the time who decided it was the year that P did he run
[5:47]the marathon and she was like, let's go to the P did he run the marathon and we did.
[5:54]And she turned to me and she was like, I think we should do this next year.
[5:57]Let's do a marathon and I was like, Jenna, you're like a pack a day smoker.
[6:03]I don't.
[6:04]And I don't run.
[6:05]I don't think we're going to do this, but I kind of, I got that bug in my head.
[6:09]My dad is a marathon runner and I said, okay, I'm going to run the New York City marathon
[6:13]and he just went, okay, I'm going to do it with you.
[6:16]Oh, and we did.
[6:18]We started training together and we run the marathon together.
[6:20]We run four marathons together.
[6:22]That is so sweet.
[6:24]Oh my gosh.
[6:25]That sounds like such a nice relationship with your parents.
[6:28]That's great.
[6:29]Yeah, great.
[6:30]I mean, that's true.
[6:31]Are you the oldest?
[6:32]What is your family?
[6:33]I'm the only child and then I have steps at length.
[6:36]Okay.
[6:37]I was going to say oldest or only, but I'm the oldest.
[6:40]Either one of those would have been fitting.
[6:45]So what are the main takeaways?
[6:48]I understand you go from strength to sort of feeling out of control, which any woman,
[6:53]I mean, and I don't mean to, well, I mean, I have to say women.
[6:56]Any woman who was gone through this whole pregnancy thing and the men who are there as part
[7:00]of it or the partners or whatever, you know, you make plans, God laughs kind of thing, right?
[7:05]Oh, it seems out of your control.
[7:07]You know, I say this to my kids all the time, you know, my fourth kid was like, that's
[7:11]90's like, well, maybe wish you hadn't had me because then you'd like already be asleep
[7:15]right now and you would not have put me to bed.
[7:17]That's a big issue.
[7:18]No, not at all, but like, you definitely take your sweet time showing up, you know?
[7:24]Like, we can't control these things that are so fundamental to our lives.
[7:28]It's crazy.
[7:29]We should be able to control it the most and we can control it the least, but I've never
[7:33]sort of linked that to my, like, physical fitness in any way.
[7:36]So tell me a little bit more about that relationship and how you feel about that now.
[7:40]Yeah, I think, I mean, one of my biggest takeaways was about learning to not just kind
[7:46]of accept failure, but expect it and ultimately kind of learn to love it.
[7:51]When I would go out for a run when I was training for marathons, I knew that, let's say
[7:55]I went out for an eight mile run, I knew that barring some catastrophe I was going to complete
[7:59]that run.
[8:00]It would be slower that day, maybe it has to take more breaks, but I'd probably get back
[8:04]home.
[8:05]Strength training isn't like that.
[8:07]When I go into the gym, no matter how much I want to lift away that day, it might just
[8:11]not be what my body's willing to do.
[8:14]And as you kind of push more and more towards your limits, anything that doesn't have
[8:18]to be what I'm doing and strong man, you know, that can be picking up a slightly heavier
[8:22]dumbbell in your group fitness class, right?
[8:26]And maybe the instructor in that class tells you to do 10 reps and you can only do seven.
[8:31]But you get that glimmer of, okay, well, this is more possible than I thought it was, you
[8:37]know, I'm so close to it.
[8:38]And maybe if I just do this a little bit differently next time or do this a little bit differently,
[8:42]I'll get there.
[8:43]So you start to understand that failure doesn't make you a failure.
[8:47]It's not this end point, right?
[8:48]It's a point to kind of jump off from.
[8:51]And that became something that I took into the rest of my life.
[8:53]So even writing this book, you know, working on the narrative arc for it and literally
[8:58]putting up post-its on the wall and then looking at them and going, oh, my God, that doesn't
[9:02]work and your instinct is to like tear it down and say, you know, I'm terrible at this.
[9:06]I'm not going to be able to do it.
[9:08]And I would sometimes go and work out and then get that reminder, that physical reminder
[9:13]that, you know, failures, okay, come back and look at it and go, okay, how can I rearrange
[9:18]this to make it to make this work the way that I want it to?
[9:22]That was a huge one for me.
[9:23]I think the other one and the one that I hope really resonates with in particular women
[9:26]who read the book is about body image.
[9:29]I think when we start strength training, we typically get told one of two things either
[9:33]don't lift weights because you're going to get bulky or if you're talking to people who
[9:38]are into lifting, they might say, it's okay, you won't get bulky from lifting.
[9:42]But either way, we suggest that bulkiness is this negative thing, right?
[9:46]And when I started writing about it, I thought, what is the actual definition of bulky?
[9:51]So I looked it up and then a bulky is taking up much space typically inconveniently.
[9:58]And it was that last little bit.
[10:00]Well, inconvenient part.
[10:01]And I went, oh, oh, I get it now, right?
[10:04]Because taking up space as a woman,
[10:08]it's inconvenient because it's assumed we're
[10:10]taking up that space from a man, right?
[10:13]Challenging gender norms with the way
[10:14]that our bodies look if they're more muscular.
[10:17]That's inconvenient for people.
[10:19]But what the women that I spoke to when I did
[10:22]the interviews for this book and what I learned
[10:24]is that taking up space is awesome.
[10:28]Physically, emotionally, mentally, not just in the gym,
[10:31]but in your home at school, at work, in social settings,
[10:37]that's what we should be doing.
[10:39]That's what I want my kids to get from my journey
[10:43]and from hopefully when they're old enough and read this book.
[10:47]One of the nicest things that I've heard
[10:48]is from a lot of male readers who've said,
[10:50]I'm buying this for the young women in my life
[10:53]because that's a message that they need to hear.
[10:56]And that's pretty cool.
[10:57]I love that.
[10:58]Oh my God.
[11:00]Do you worry about, or did you worry a lot about injuries?
[11:04]Isn't that like a whole thread?
[11:06]I'm just projecting my own worries onto you.
[11:08]I was like, did you worry?
[11:11]What if your back goes out?
[11:12]What if you're competing?
[11:13]What if this, what if that?
[11:14]Yeah.
[11:15]The movements that I can control like a deadlift
[11:18]where I know kind of how to move my body and brace,
[11:21]I don't so much, but putting things over my head
[11:23]has always been terrifying for me.
[11:25]I've always just assumed that if I get it wrong,
[11:28]it's going to fall on my head.
[11:30]And that was this real fear-based thing.
[11:33]And something I explored in the book too
[11:35]was I actually spoke to someone who's
[11:37]an expert on understanding what fear does to us.
[11:40]And he really helped me understand
[11:42]that the only way around that is to go kind of head first
[11:44]into it and really keep exposing yourself to it
[11:48]until it's not scary anymore.
[11:50]I worked with a performance coach also
[11:52]who helped explain to me, hey, your fear failure
[11:55]isn't what you think it is.
[11:56]What's happening to you is that you're relying on this idea
[12:00]that you have a fear of failure.
[12:01]And so when you go to lift something,
[12:04]you're thinking about, OK, well, look,
[12:06]Ed, scary, or can I tell myself it's late?
[12:09]And what happens is that because you're not actually
[12:13]doing that with the full level of your ability,
[12:16]if you fail, you can say, oh, well, I was just scared.
[12:20]But go into it with these specific cues.
[12:24]Because then, yeah, if you fail it,
[12:26]you have to accept in that moment
[12:27]that it's not something that you can do yet.
[12:30]But maybe it'll be something you can do down the line.
[12:32]But at least you've given it everything that you had.
[12:36]Was that your approach to writing the book as well?
[12:38]Yeah, yeah.
[12:39]As much as it's good, the original idea for this book
[12:43]was a history of the sport of strong men.
[12:45]And a lot of very wonderful people in my life
[12:48]said to me, I know you think that's interesting.
[12:53]I'm not going to have a wide audience.
[12:56]And I got really, really pushed by someone actually
[12:59]that you've had on the podcast before David Sacks,
[13:01]who's a very good friend of mine.
[13:02]Oh, yeah, yeah.
[13:03]He really helped me out with the proposal.
[13:05]And he kept pushing me.
[13:06]He's like, this has to be your story.
[13:09]And people are going to care about a 40-something-year-old mom
[13:13]of two who thought, no, I'm going to see
[13:16]if I can pull a truck at 40 years old.
[13:18]And they're going to care about the fact
[13:20]that you were coming back from feeling distrust in your body.
[13:24]And they're going to care about the fact
[13:25]that you're not this natural athlete.
[13:28]I think it's important to note that every single strong
[13:31]of my competition that I've entered,
[13:33]I have come in last unless I'm the only one competing.
[13:36]And I don't care anymore.
[13:38]I just love it.
[13:40]I love doing it.
[13:41]It's just taking that chance.
[13:44]Isn't it crazy?
[13:45]It's still called Strong Man?
[13:47]Yeah.
[13:49]Yeah, I sort of think of it as Iron Man as Iron Man.
[13:51]It's almost a corporate name.
[13:52]Yeah, yeah.
[13:55]So what is your workout now?
[13:58]What is your daily life and where are you on the Strong
[14:03]Spectrum, if you will?
[14:05]I work out my trainer once a week.
[14:06]I have a built-a garage gym that I work out in.
[14:09]And one of my favorite things is actually on Saturdays,
[14:12]instead of waking up at 6am to work out.
[14:14]I wait a little bit and I bring my daughters in with me.
[14:17]And I let them hang out on the side while I work out.
[14:20]And they get to try to pick up things.
[14:22]And one of the most powerful realizations for me doing
[14:26]that has been seeing that, until you tell a kid
[14:30]that something is not possible for them
[14:33]or something is scary, they don't know that.
[14:35]So my almost four-year-old the other day was like,
[14:38]I'm going to pick up the sandbag.
[14:40]And it's 112 pounds sandbag.
[14:43]And if it was something that was maybe
[14:45]in the realm of her ability level and would have been dangerous,
[14:49]I would have said, okay, maybe let's not do it.
[14:50]But I know she's not going to budget.
[14:52]And so I just said, yeah, go, try it.
[14:55]Maybe you can.
[14:56]And she went and she tried and obviously it didn't move.
[15:00]But I said to her, okay, so you can't do this today.
[15:02]But I bet you at some point,
[15:04]you're going to be able to come back in here and do that.
[15:06]And I think that's a really incredible gift
[15:08]to be able to give them.
[15:10]Oh, it's so nice.
[15:12]Oh my gosh.
[15:13]Wait, so what happened after you tossed the idea
[15:15]and David Sachs told you what to write,
[15:17]like were you like, okay, now I'm just going to whip out a book?
[15:22]No.
[15:22]So I will also say I have a whole lot of thanks
[15:26]to Shapiro whose class I took on pitching
[15:29]because I had been a journalist for years.
[15:31]And then I wasn't for a while.
[15:33]And when I went back into it,
[15:34]I was like, I got to treat this like, I'm a beginner.
[15:36]So I took a class on pitching.
[15:37]And one of the best things I learned from that was
[15:40]you have to get really personal.
[15:42]And you have to be willing to share the bits
[15:45]that you don't want to share.
[15:46]And so I tried to just do that as much as I could.
[15:48]I would, you know, I'd write a passage or I'd write a section
[15:52]that had an athlete interview in it.
[15:53]And then I would go, okay, now how do I pull that back
[15:56]into something that relates to my life?
[15:58]The body image chapter was by far the hardest one
[16:01]for me to write because I wanted to be able to go
[16:06]from being a victim of diet culture
[16:09]and always wanting to be smaller to in the end going,
[16:11]nope, I don't care.
[16:13]I'm just like, I'm just gonna be bigger, I don't care.
[16:15]And I didn't, that's not real life.
[16:17]And so I tried to share that as openly as possible.
[16:20]This kind of back and forth that I went through
[16:23]as I was building muscle of like sometimes my jeans
[16:25]aren't gonna fit the same way.
[16:27]And it's not easy for me to just go,
[16:30]but that's okay.
[16:31]You know, I still, I still don't like it.
[16:34]But at least now I've learned to kind of challenge
[16:38]that feeling and go, well, okay,
[16:40]why do you feel like that?
[16:42]Well, it's more important to you, you know,
[16:44]is it lifting this thing and accomplishing something
[16:47]or is it how you look in your clothes?
[16:49]And sometimes it's the other, I'm not perfect,
[16:54]but that was really hard to write.
[16:55]And then obviously right about the miscarriage
[16:57]and everything was really difficult.
[16:59]But I think one of the most powerful things that I learned
[17:02]during a research for this and talking to people
[17:05]and spoke to a couple of people who practice trauma
[17:07]and formed weightlifting,
[17:08]just basically they work with people who've found
[17:10]through trauma and help them use weightlifting
[17:12]to heal from that.
[17:13]And I didn't understand when I went back to the gym
[17:16]after my miscarriage.
[17:17]I didn't really understand how it was helping me.
[17:20]But what I learned was that, so in order to do,
[17:23]let's say like a heavy deadlift, right?
[17:24]I'm wearing a weight belt.
[17:26]And I have to brace my core muscles to protect my back.
[17:29]And when I do that, I'm feeling my stomach pressed
[17:31]against this belt.
[17:33]So I'm getting that kind of tactile feedback.
[17:36]And if I'm going to lift that heavy barbell
[17:40]and I'm gonna brace my core that way,
[17:41]in that moment, I have to believe that that part
[17:44]of my body, that was the site of pain and weakness
[17:47]and distrust could also be a place of strength.
[17:50]Otherwise the bar wasn't gonna move
[17:52]or it wasn't gonna move safely.
[17:53]And that was learning that that was part of the healing
[17:57]was pretty incredible.
[17:59]So what challenge is next for you?
[18:01]Well, I'm continuing to freelance
[18:03]and try to kind of put out as much as I can
[18:05]around this book.
[18:06]I feel like, you know, this from writing your own books
[18:10]and having your own publishing company
[18:12]and even just, you know, the core of the book
[18:14]that you just wrote, this part is really challenging.
[18:16]I don't think enough people talk about how hard it is
[18:20]after you write the book and put it out to the world.
[18:22]And it doesn't go like this.
[18:24]You don't, you know, get on the morning shows
[18:27]the day that your book is out.
[18:29]So for me, a lot of my focus since the book came out
[18:32]and still is just how do I get the word out there?
[18:35]There's times where I feel like I'm hand selling every copy.
[18:38]But I've gotten the feedback that I get
[18:41]when people take the time to send emails
[18:43]makes this all really worth it hearing from people,
[18:47]hey, I don't actually lift.
[18:49]I don't do strength sports,
[18:50]but this, the story of this book was really impactful
[18:53]because that's what I wanted.
[18:54]I didn't want people to look at this and go,
[18:56]oh, this is a book about how to lift weights.
[18:58]Like there's nothing prescriptive in here.
[19:00]I'm not telling anybody how to get six pack abs
[19:03]or bigger biceps.
[19:03]I don't get those by the end of the book either.
[19:05]You know, it's just about,
[19:08]what does it feel like to push your limits
[19:09]in any part of your life?
[19:11]Whatever it is that you're doing.
[19:12]What does it feel like to go,
[19:14]the limits here and what if I try to go past that?
[19:17]What if I challenge my capabilities?
[19:19]So yeah, so I guess what's the next challenge
[19:22]is just continuing to put this out
[19:24]into the world as much as possible.
[19:27]You know, there's also, I feel like this misconception
[19:30]that it has to be done in the first like week or two.
[19:33]It's a slow burn.
[19:34]Like I'm still doing events for the memoir
[19:36]that I had come out like year and a half ago.
[19:38]I mean, honestly, it's like, yeah, sure.
[19:41]I'll do this.
[19:42]I'll do that.
[19:43]It doesn't end.
[19:43]The book is always out there.
[19:45]So I don't know.
[19:46]There's too much pressure
[19:47]because so many books are, you know,
[19:49]breathing down your neck, you know,
[19:51]coming down the pike, but books are here to stay.
[19:54]And sometimes it takes longer to find your audience,
[19:57]but it doesn't, it's never over, right?
[20:00]ever an expiration date on a book.
[20:02]Yeah, that's helpful for me to hear.
[20:03]I appreciate that.
[20:04]That's much too sense.
[20:06]Well, what advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[20:09]Honestly, it goes back to the failure thing, which is,
[20:13]it's really scary to go, I'm going to write a book.
[20:16]I think if you're a writer, that's a secret dream
[20:18]for probably all of us for most of our lives.
[20:21]And if you don't try it and you're never
[20:25]going to know whether or not that's something
[20:27]that you could do and fail, it's OK.
[20:30]Fail, rip it up, start again, keep working at it.
[20:35]And I also think whatever outlet there is for you
[20:38]outside of writing, find that and do that and take those breaks.
[20:42]Because yeah, I lift a lot.
[20:44]But the biggest thing for me actually
[20:45]was often going on a run.
[20:48]Just letting my brain kind of clear,
[20:51]that would often help me bring in those new ideas.
[20:55]When I went back into freelancing,
[20:56]actually the very first article that I placed somewhere,
[21:00]the idea for that came on a run.
[21:03]So there you go.
[21:05]Yeah.
[21:07]Melissa, thank you so much.
[21:08]And by the way, thank you for coming to meet me
[21:11]in unlike a 120 degree day in the summer, driving an hour,
[21:16]whatever you did.
[21:17]I didn't even know how that all happened,
[21:19]but it was awesome.
[21:20]And I'm delighted that you did that.
[21:22]And it speaks to determination and why not.
[21:27]And that's what you have to do.
[21:28]So I love it.
[21:29]It's I'm glad our paths crossed.
[21:31]And you're really articulate, strong woman.
[21:37]It's a great role model to have on here.
[21:39]So there you go.
[21:40]So much.
[21:41]And I have to say, I feel the same about you
[21:43]that is why I wanted to meet you that day in for a chance.
[21:45]And thank you for the ice cream.
[21:47]You won't come anytime.
[21:49]No, I can undermine someone's commitment to fitness
[21:52]in like a minute of knowing me.
[21:54]I can suck out all the strength.
[21:56]And I love ice cream.
[22:00]And actually one of my great things
[22:02]with all of the competitions or races that I do
[22:05]is I have this, I have one superstition.
[22:08]And that superstition is there has to be a cookie,
[22:10]chocolate chip cookie in my bag.
[22:13]Because while I'm doing that event,
[22:15]I can always in my brain go just get to the cookie.
[22:17]Just get to the cookie.
[22:19]Amazing.
[22:20]So there you go.
[22:21]There I go.
[22:22]Well, we share that love then.
[22:24]All right, well, congratulations, secrets of giants.
[22:27]Way to go, strong woman.
[22:29]You said that.
[22:30]OK, bye.
[22:31]Thank you, Sammy.
[22:32]Thank you.
[22:32]Bye-bye.
[22:34]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[22:36]Don't have time to read books.
[22:38]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens.
[22:41]And at Moms, don't have time to read books.
[22:43]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[22:46]and sign up for my virtual book club
[22:47]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[22:50]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[22:51]at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[22:54]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[22:56]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.