I have to admit, I don’t quite see eye-to-eye with the concept of “visualization.” I was first exposed to it in high school, when I stumbled upon a paperback copy of Louise Hay’s bestseller You Can Heal Your Life. There was a rainbow on the front, and also a heart, and possibly even roses and a unicorn, and the word “can” in the title was underlined or capitalized or maybe had an exclamation point after it. I remember thinking I could have designed a better cover for a Coke and a Kit Kat.

The message was straightforward: imagine that you are a healthy person — physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, et cetera — and you will become one. Screw hard work and lucky breaks; just think your way to success. Whatever you want can be yours if you simply envision it.  Seductive, huh?

But there’s a dark side: if you happen not to be flourishing in any particular province, it’s your own damn fault. Clearly, you aren’t projecting the proper pictures onto the movie screen in your mind. A grain of negativity has burrowed into your oyster and, rather than fashioning a pearl, has wrecked the house. Squint a bit and you might see empowerment here — if you’re the one shitting your bed, then you’re also the one who can stop it. Be a victor, not a victim. Yet bad things routinely befall the innocent. Do we blame a six-year-old’s brain tumor on her failure to think happy thoughts? Were all those Jews killed in the Holocaust subliminally asking for it? That, my friends, is why I can’t buy this woo-woo philosophy, most recently popularized in The Secret.

This topic is of especial interest to me now because Mr. Back Squat has discourteously stabbed me in the lumbar region. Again. And though this setback likely is my own damn fault, it isn’t because I harbored inauspicious thoughts; it’s because I apparently don’t learn well. You know that definition of insanity attributed to Albert Einstein — doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results? Yeah, well . . . guilty.

Regardless of how and why I ended up on Brokeback Mountain, the fact is I’m here, and I need to get back to Kansas. Can visualization help with that? Crazy as it seems, I think so.

It’s now widely accepted in scholarly circles that mental rehearsal can improve sports performance. Personally, I’ve spent months imagining every detail of myself deadlifting 225 pounds, from the sight of the four big plates on the bar to the feel of the iron beneath my chalky calluses to the sound of the huge breath I gulp as I brace my abs. And guess what — my pulling is going well, and 225 is up next. I’ve had trouble, on the other hand, picturing myself military pressing even 70 pounds, a weight I theoretically should manage smoothly. I can neither “see” what I look like heaving the bar overhead nor “feel” what my body is doing. Not surprisingly, my overhead presses are currently sucking canal water. So for my sample size of one, creative visualization does indeed correlate with successful performance.

Mental imagery works because it forges neural pathways in the brain just as though the body were actually doing the imagined activity. So why don’t I try imagining that my back is functioning properly? I’ll close my eyes, pretend I’m playing some Yanni (I don’t own any), imagine I’m stretched out on a comfy feather bed (instead of a pile of unfolded laundry), and picture my spine as a supple chain of power (instead of a twisted zipper of pain). My vertebrae interlock like shiny white Lincoln Logs, pillowed by my pleasantly plump intravertebral discs. It’s an architectural marvel, really, a true work of art. I wish you could see it.

Hey, I’m feeling better already. But just in case, I’ve booked some slots with the chiropractor.

When I was looking for a good daycare for my firstborn, everything I read and everyone I talked to said I needed a NAEYC-accredited center. As explained on its website, the National Association for the Education of Young Children “sets and monitors standards for high-quality early childhood education programs and accredits programs that meet these standards.” I had no clue what those standards were, but I figured they were plenty lofty, and anyway, the NAEYC people surely knew more about caring for children than I did. (I was still dumbfounded that the nurses had actually let me leave the hospital with the tiny Bean.)

Years later, when I was on the board of directors at the daycare I ultimately chose, I learned lots about NAEYC. A crisis had erupted. New NAEYC standards required the majority of the teachers in the center to have college degrees, but only one teacher had that distinction, and the others were either uninterested in acquiring it or unable to afford the tuition. We toyed with the notion of footing, or at least subsidizing, the college bills, but our little nonprofit operation couldn’t swing such charity without a hefty rate hike of our own — and parents were already ponying up a grand a month per kid. And once the teachers became better credentialed, they’d naturally expect a pay raise, resulting in even more exorbitant childcare prices.

We scratched our heads and wondered why NAEYC insisted that daycare workers should have letters after their names. An associate’s or bachelor’s degree does not confer nurturing ability. Yeah, somebody’s gotta school you in the rock-bottom basics — support an infant’s head when you hold him, don’t let a one-year-old play with marbles, and so on — but nobody can teach you how to love a child. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not anti-education. But when a roomful of toddlers all go thermonuclear at once, nobody gives a damn whether you have a college degree, least of all the toddlers.

One of my gym peeps (we’ll call her “Scout” to protect her privacy) wants to be a personal trainer. She has a marvelous vision of helping women, particularly older ones, get off the sofa, march past the elliptical, and claim their rightful places in the weight room. Scout is not only strong-like-bull herself, but she also knows her way around the gym and has exactly the right personal qualities to be a bang-up trainer: she’s friendly, compassionate, committed, authoritative, and smart. What she doesn’t have is a piece of paper from one of the half-dozen or so outfits that confer personal training credentials in exchange for a modest fee and an even more modest score on a multiple choice test.

Another woman I know (we’ll call her “The Contortionist”) has the right papers to be a bang-up personal trainer.  She also has the right look — tan and tight, with pink running shoes and a Spandexed ass on which you could bounce quarters. The Contortionist, however, is not a bang-up personal trainer. She leads her disciples, many of them obese beginners lacking the basic strength for even a modified push-up, through bizarre gymnastics maneuvers that I’d have a devil of a time managing myself.  It’s neither effective nor pretty.  Last week I had to quit the building briefly when The Contortionist giggled at her red-faced, sweat-drenched, gasping client, who was teetering on a Bosu ball in a semi-arabesque while clutching two kettlebells.

That client needed honest help, not high-priced humiliation.  All the theory in the world about anti-rotational core stability won’t do the trick, and might even spook her out of the gym entirely.  Sure, personal trainers need to know the fundamentals of human physiology and how the body responds to exercise. But no piece of paper can bestow common sense, and really, who wants to hear tittering when you’re doing your damndest not to pancake in front of a roomful of strangers?

That woman didn’t need The Contortionist; she needed Scout. Scout can’t train people without the right papers, but thank God she’s about to get them.

Raise your hand if you remember card catalogs. You know, those hulking wooden file cabinets crammed with musty index cards listing the author, title, and other details of a library’s holdings? Or how about encyclopedias? Back in the day, my parents sprang for a complete set of World Books that hogged three shelves in the living room bookcase and guided me all the way from a third grade poster on whales to a high school presentation on the Roman Empire. Nowadays, research tools like these are quaint antiquities. They’ve been supplanted by the internet, which can tell you nearly anything you want to know, no matter where you are or what time it is.

How far is it from Bangor to Bar Harbor? What’s the average healing time for a navel piercing? Does the Southern Powerlifting Federation allow the use of belts with velcro fastenings in deadlift competition? These are all questions I recently put to my intelligent phone, which delivered the goods (about 45 miles, 4-12 months, and yes) faster than I can fail a heavy squat.

But these are straightforward queries. There’s a right answer, which you can find at any number of different websites without fretting overmuch about the reliability of your sources.  Yeah, so Google Maps advises that the Maine trek is 46.6 miles, WikiAnswers says 45.8, and bangorinfo.com reports 44 — they’re close enough for government work, and anyway, what’s an extra mile or two when you’re on vacation.

But what about more complex inquiries?

Where should a family of five stay in Bar Harbor?  Are navel piercings hot, or are they trashy?  How can I pack twenty pounds onto my deadlift by July 28?  With these questions, there is no single correct answer; one forsakes the terra firma of certainty and plunges into the abyss of opinion.  Setting aside vacation planning and body art conundrums (I’ll handle those on my own time), there are tons of strength training websites out there that — surprise! — don’t all recommend the same thing.  In fact, the advice can be so conflicting it can make a grown woman blubber all over her Bosu ball.

Over the past two years of scouring the internet for information about how to get stronger, I’ve acquired a few favorite hang-outs.

Stumptuous.com (the name is a combo of “sumptuous” and “stumpy”) first turned me on to the notion that people without penises not only can, but should, pick up heavy things. Run by Mistress Krista, who is equal parts sass and compassion, this place is rich in information, inspiration, and irreverence.

On the other side of the playground is T Nation (“T” for “testosterone,” of course), a behemoth of a website whose most helpful features are a video library of exercises and an archive of articles published every weekday by people who pretty much know their shit. Less helpful, though perhaps more entertaining, are the ubiquitous pix of ‘roided out gym rats and the formerly tawdry forums (which, sadly, appear to have been the victim of a recent clean-up campaign).

And somewhere in between this yin and yang — exactly where he wants to be, I suspect — is Dan John, a track and field coach, strength guru, and religious studies instructor who runs a website loaded with information on exercises and programming.

Though these are my mainstays, there are plenty of other fitness websites I frequent. I have to give another shout-out to the great guys at my gym, who have started Find Your Strength, where they post a new video every single stinkin’ day showing a strength, mobility, or conditioning exercise. Gillian Mounsey, a CrossFitter-turned-powerlifter, keeps up a blog with such gems as videos of herself repping out overhead presses with the big wheels, which can either invigorate or depress me, depending on the day. And Starting Strength is always there when I need a dose of cantankerous snark.

And let’s not forget fivestrong.net, where you can read all about the misadventures of a forty-something mom who’s trying hard not to be weak as a kitten.

When Mr. 5 asked me to last Saturday night’s adult prom, my first question — because I’m a girl — was:  What on earth will I wear?  My high school prom dress (white satin sheath with a big black bow where my rack would be, if I had one) went MIA years ago, so my friend Kathryn and I ventured out to consignment stores last week for a suitable substitute. I ended up with a silvery, slinky, strappy gown whose best virtue was that it set me back only sixteen bucks.

The problem?  How to hold up the girls in a dress with spaghetti straps and a plunging back.  At my age, going commando is not an attractive option, so after a little research, I purchased an adhesive bra. Yep, I spent the evening with chicken cutlets glued to my chest, sort of like Lady Gaga, only — thankfully — not.

The best part? The boob trouble was the only real hitch. I didn’t fret about bingo arms or jiggly thighs or a pot belly. Not because my body is immune to these issues, but because they just don’t seem as important now that I can pick up 205 pounds off the floor. Nope, my worries centered on something that strength training cannot correct: the effects of gravity on the female bosom.

Thankfully, the cutlets did their job. Even while I was wiggling my wobbly bits to Lady Gaga.

I’m not cocky about many things, but Boggle is one of them. I’m good at it. Really good. So good, in fact, that no one has ever beaten me. Not surprisingly, I adore playing the game, though I rarely find takers. (Sometimes, when I tell Mr. 5 I got a new deadlift PR, and he responds by asking how many box jumps I can do in a minute, I calmly suggest a friendly round of Boggle. He invariably declines, with belated compliments on my pulling prowess.)

Naturally, most of us enjoy the things at which we excel.  I’m reminded of some recent comments on a friend’s training log at IronStrong. She was bellyaching about squats, a sentiment with which many of us heartily empathized. Another woman, who squats two hundred pounds like a knife through hot butter, bemoaned all the squat hate. I looooove squats, she wrote, with a kissy emoticon for emphasis.  The kvetcher pointed out that this squat ardor likely resulted from the woman’s enviable proficiency at the exercise.  The woman’s response?  It’s a chicken-or-egg thing.

Maybe so.  Mastery begets warm fuzzies because, really, who doesn’t enjoy feeling competent?  And if we like something, we do it frequently and get even better at it.  It’s a sweet little feedback loop. But what if you’re terrible at something and you hate it (a common combo, at least for me)? How do you stop circling the drain?

In his engaging book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes that it takes about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert at something. The Beatles spent about that much time playing clubs in Hamburg in the early Sixties; Bill Gates racked up that many hours programming computers in high school; and so on. In Gladwell’s view, talent is overrated and practice — oodles of it — makes perfect.

So the answer to the kvetcher’s problem, and mine, is straightforward: we just need to squat for 10,000 hours. Then we’ll be proficient, and the love will flow like maple syrup on a hotcake. Great, but . . . ten thousand hours of squats? Holy fuck. I’d rather be waterboarded. Happily, less extreme measures may suffice. Another IronStrong friend cured his acute case of Squat Dread by doing — yes, I’m afraid so — more squats (or, in Internet parlance, Moar Squatz). Though he hasn’t logged 10K hours (yet), he squats thrice weekly, doing countless sets with copious reps. Sure enough, he’s improved, and he no longer despises them.

I’m afraid, though, that if I try this approach, it will turn out like the Brussels sprouts debacle of my childhood. When I was little, it was very important to my mother not only that I consume produce on a regular basis, but that I eat a wide variety of differently colored vegetables. I cheerfully munched on carrots, yellow squash, cauliflower, and even beets, but I had no affinity for green stuff. I turned up my nose at broccoli, spinach, peas, green beans, zucchini, bell peppers, and asparagus. Finally, my mother said that there was one green vegetable we hadn’t yet tried, and she really hoped I liked it because my health, her happiness, and the future of our nation depended on it. That night she presented me with a plate of Brussels sprouts. Unfortunately, those shriveled, bitter orbs were the nastiest of the lot, but I choked them down and feigned a fondness because, after all, the stakes were so very high. Thereafter, Brussels sprouts befouled our dinner table at least twice a week until I left for college. After all that exposure, did I develop a genuine liking for them? Hell no; I still think they’re tools of Satan.

I’m going to suck it up and do Moar Squatz. Will I become Boggle-rifically good at them? Will I turn out to be the John Lennon or Bill Gates of the squat rack? Probably not. But I hope, at least, not to hate them as much as I loathe Brussels sprouts.

Unless you know me fairly well, you probably have no idea that I can be Type A sometimes.  It’s selective; I certainly don’t try to overachieve at everything. Just check out my yard (weed field), my car (shit box), or my hair (rat’s nest) if you don’t believe me. But I can become a bit intense about things that really matter to me, and strength training has become one of those things.  Some recent signs that an obsession has cropped up:

I dream about deadlifting.  Vividly, and often.

I haven’t donated blood in more than a year because I know I won’t be able to lift heavy for days afterward.

Last month I snagged a t-shirt that said “Moderation is Overrated” off the rack at Dick’s Sporting Goods and hustled to the cash register without even checking to see if it was on sale.

The strongest argument against me getting a belly button ring was that I might not be able to wear a weightlifting belt during the lengthy healing period.

I tried to plan our family’s summer vacation around a late July powerlifting meet (my first!), until Mr. 5 gently suggested that perhaps my priorities were a bit skewed.

I do air squats in the break room at work while I’m waiting for my lunch to heat up in the microwave — even if I’m wearing a dress and heels.

I’ve back-burnered my goal of penning a best-selling novel in order to keep up an obscure strength training blog.

There’s nothing wrong with drive and determination — without them, we’d still be spending our days grunting at each other in dark caves – but those qualities can make you miserable if you let them run amok.  Fact is, you aren’t going to get a PR every time you set foot in the gym.  Some days when you step under the barbell, you’ll feel like a nonagenerian coming off a two-week drunk.  Occasionally, you’ll tweak a muscle or strain a tendon or smash your head into the bar because you weren’t watching what the feck you were doing.  You’ll have days, or even weeks, when a particular lift feels so unnatural that you can’t believe you ever did it properly. Every now and then, you’ll feel marvelous yet inexplicably struggle to lift twenty pounds less than you did last time.  You’ll wonder why you even bother picking up heavy shit.

Here’s where I turn to the wisdom of Jason, the guy who co-owns the gym where I train and also — along with resident badass Alex — runs an awesome website called Find Your Strength. On that website, Jason writes: “Consistency is critical. Concrete progression takes time. Screwing up is a part of the process. There are many paths to the same destination. Rest is as important as work. Don’t forget to have fun.”

That last sentence is so important that it bears repeating: Don’t forget to have fun. Trainers who vary their clients’ workouts every single time are onto something, and it isn’t muscle confusion; it’s enjoyment. Slogging through rep after rep of squats that are so crushing you’re afraid you might pee yourself isn’t fun. Sure, heavy squats are good for you — not unlike tetanus shots and Brussels sprouts — and so you do them, but they certainly aren’t fun. (Is my squat antipathy showing here? Sorry. Feel free to substitute your own personal boogeyman lift; the principle is the same.)

Along with the dreaded green-veggie lifts, you must make room for fun.  Maybe it’s learning something new. Cleans and snatches, anyone? Prowler or sled work? The Evil 8? Or maybe hip thrusts, the barbell exercise most likely to get you a date (if you’re a woman) or an accusation of sexual harassment (if you’re a man)? Perhaps your idea of a good time is doing the same basic lifts for more reps at a lighter weight, where failure is not a looming threat. Or maybe you need to get out of the gym entirely for a while and push your car down the street, or run a 5K, or take up pole dancing.

No single day, week, month, or even year of strength training will make or break you.  The most important thing is sticking with it over the long haul. And you won’t stick with it if you aren’t having fun, no matter how Type A you are.

Mr. 5 spent last Saturday doing an adventure race in the North Georgia mountains. He and two friends used a compass and topographical map to canoe, run, and bike to remote checkpoints. These men — fit soccer players, all — are more than equal to the physical challenges of everyday suburbia, but the whole “orienteering” thing jacked them up. That, and the Toccoa River rapids — at one point, they were literally up the creek without a paddle. Mr. 5 shelled out a hundred bucks (not counting the gear he bought) for the privilege of enduring scrapes, bruises, discombobulation, and clammy undies. And he can’t wait to do it again next year.

What we ruh-quire is that you get yer goddamn asses up in them woods.

Along similar lines (playing fast and loose with the word similar), I’ve signed on to do the Dirty Girl Mud Run later this month. No compass is needed (thank God, given my abysmal sense of direction), but there are walls to scale, fences to jump, and mazes to navigate along a 5K course. Shortly after I registered for this frolic, a friend invited me to join her in the Muddy Buddy race, another event in which citified moms leave the safety of their minivans for the relative dangers of rope ladders and mud pits.

These adventure challenges were on my mind when I took The Bean to see The Hunger Games over the weekend. Unless you live under a large rock (in which case you may well be my neighbor), you’re familiar with the post-apocalyptic story line. Katniss Everdeen and twenty-three other teenagers selected by lottery battle to the death in a woodsy arena for the amusement of the residents of Panem, a totalitarian nation that rose from the ruins of North America.  To survive, Katniss must sprint over rocky terrain, scramble across boulders, and shinny up trees.  (Spoiler alert: Katniss winds up winning, thanks to her cleverness and her knack with a bow and arrow, though I couldn’t help but think that a rigorous regimen of squats, presses, and pulls would have made her an even fiercer contender.)

The Hunger Games offers ample food for thought, if you’ll excuse the wretched pun. It’s fiction, of course, but children really do fight for their lives in many parts of our world. The Syrian government arrests, tortures, and guns them down. Elsewhere in the Middle East, they’re fashioned into soldiers or used as human shields. Mexican drug cartels recruit them to be lookouts and hitmen.  Mortal combat isn’t a popcorn-and-Junior-Mints affair for scores of kids out there.  And we should probably wonder why we’re so entertained by the spectacle of teenage gladiators.

These grim considerations aside, it’s clear that some of us cosseted Americans have an appetite for adventure that isn’t slaked by cutting people off in traffic or waiting until the last minute to do our taxes.  Strength training helps, but those spotters, safety bars, elbow sleeves, knees wraps, weight collars, and bumper plates generally shield us from true peril.  It rarely gets worse than this, which is my left leg after a recent afternoon of trying — and failing — to learn to snatch:
So we daredevil wannabes pay good money for the chance to pit our muscles and wits against various obstacles engineered by distant gamemakers. We fill out registration forms, sign waivers, and stock up on Cliff Bars, CamelBaks and carabiners. We want to face off against the unknown and the unpredictable, though not the truly treacherous. We’d like to get roughed up, but only enough to collect a few good stories, and maybe a new Facebook profile picture.

Katniss can keep her bow and arrow. I’ll stick with with my mud pit.

If you’ve ever thumbed through a women’s magazine while logging time on the road to nowhere, you’ve seen one of those multiple-choice quizzes that pop up like mushrooms after a spring rain. Are you a party animal or a party pooper? Do you drive men wild or drive them away? Which Jersey Shore character are you? Every time I take one of these asinine assessments I end up with an equal — or nearly so — number of answers fitting more than one outcome.

Apparently, I defy categorization. I am a “none of the above.” I am a unique snowflake. I am . . . oh, never mind.

With this backdrop, it’s no surprise that I have repeatedly failed to achieve a clear-cut result on the Myers-Briggs test, the gold standard for personality assessments. I’ve taken it several times in different contexts over the years, and I invariably end up straddling the fence between “introvert” and “extrovert.” Depending on the phase of the moon, how much sleep I got, and whether I’ve recently had chocolate, I could be the life of the party or part of the wallpaper. We humans are moving targets.

There is one constant, however: I’ve never been a joiner. I never belonged to a sorority. I can’t imagine affiliating with the Junior League or the country club. Hell, I thought long and hard before signing on with the PTA. I have a melange of friends from various milieus, but no central clique. If I had a party and invited everyone I knew, most of the guests would wander around shaking hands with strangers.

When I started going to the Y a few years ago, I was a determined loner. iPod charged and loaded with perky pop, ear buds lodged in place? Check. Downcast gaze to discourage any and all conversational gambits? Check. Beeline to the closest cardio machine? Check. Not surprisingly, I made no friends there. The people in the childcare center knew my name, but nobody else did.

Then I stumbled upon StrongLifts.com and glimpsed the glory of the barbell. Within weeks, I had tapped into an on-line community of people — including (gasp) other women — who were doing the same things I did in the gym. They had abandoned recumbent bikes and rubber dumbbells in favor of the power rack.  They filmed their squats to analyze the minutiae of back angle, foot stance, and knee position. They meticulously tracked their training and encouraged me to do the same. This was heady stuff, indeed.  But these were, as my virtual friend Joe calls them, Internet People.  Until I actually met one of them on a family trip to Colorado last fall, I wasn’t convinced they really existed outside of their 2D avatars in the blue glow of my computer screen.

In October 2010, I left the Y for CoreBody Decatur, a neighborhood sweat spot that’s spectacularly stocked for its size. At first, I slunk incognito through the weight room, interacting with my fellow gym-goers only as much as basic manners demanded. ‘Scuse me, you using this bench?  But then one of the owners began greeting me by name. (I’m not special; he’s just gifted that way.) And before long I struck up conversations with the smattering of others I saw squatting and deadlifting. I discovered that a few of my neighborhood acquaintances were members, and then my former personal trainer migrated over. I got to know the folks who work the desk. Even people I’d never talked to smiled and nodded hello. I wasn’t anonymous anymore.

It’s gone even further now. I know a handful of people at my gym by first and last name. They ask about my workouts, show me their 5/3/1 spreadsheets, and gently correct me when I’m fucking up. They take this shit at least as seriously as I do. They’re stronger than I am (as are most folks who’ve been lifting longer than, say, a week), but they don’t seem to care that I’m a weaksauce. I get a little disappointed when I show up to lift and they aren’t there, so I bug them with text messages about my PRs. Worse than that, I’ve even seen them outside the gym. We’ve met for drinks a few times and discussed topics other than strength training. I’d like these guys even if we didn’t share this barbell compulsion.

I’m no longer a fitness recluse. Somehow, I’ve acquired gym peeps.

Best of all, there’s no secret handshake.