The Zen Of Sweat Women Who Work Out Find The Benefits Are Nearly Limitless

Why do we work out?

So when 10 minutes late we can race up a flight of stairs to a meeting without wheezing.

So we can haul both sacks of groceries at once from the driveway to the kitchen.

For washboard abs. Buns of steel. Toned thighs. To lower our risk of heart disease, breast cancer and osteoporosis.

There are other less palpable gifts of physical bravado, however, that spill over from courts to careers, ballfields to bedrooms, from the pool to our piece of mind.

Women who push their physical boundaries report improved self-esteem, reduced anxiety levels, increased focus and more moxie in academic and social situations.

With female athletes gaining prominence as pop culture role models, strong, healthy women are now considered more powerful rather than less feminine. Retailers are taking notice.

Chevrolet sponsored the America3 all-woman sailing team in the last America Cup. Nike’s marketing campaigns this fall include shoes endorsed by basketball giant Cheryl Swoopes, beach volleyball star Gabrielle Reese, Olympic downhill skier Picabo Street and soccer standout Mia Hamm.

“Do not resist chances. Take them like vitamins. Let go of the brakes,” reads one Nike ad targeting women.

“See what happens if you go five more miles. Footbridges be damned, find your own way across. Don’t worry about bumps and bruises. Your body can take them. Don’t steer around the bits that scare you. Go over them. Go through them.”

The trend’s not just among professional athletes and young hardbodies. Sportswear companies are banking on older women buying into new lines of walking gear, for example.

As exhibiting athletic prowess becomes increasingly socially acceptable, more women of all ages are working out, and not just for physical health and fitness.

Some gain self-confidence in tough situations.

Kickboxer Layla McCarty knocks out memories of abusive stepfathers, while protecting herself from the shadowy characters catcalling as she walks to work on East Sprague in Spokane.

Some learn how to prioritize their own needs.

Moscow writer and lecturer Lois Melina’s daily workout is an appointment with herself, an escape to rejuvenate creative energy, problem-solve and stay in touch with her surroundings, whether it’s a bustling foreign city or the Palouse wheat fields.

Some set and achieve new goals.

Three-time ironman triathlete Donna Messenger finds athleticism helps her prioritize and keep her home life orderly. Standing before a sinkload of dirty dishes, Messenger sets her stopwatch and digs in, hoping for a personal best.

Some make it their primary social outlet.

College student Robyn Scarth would rather hike than hang at a frat party. She’ll strap on snowshoes with friends again this winter despite a hellish trek out of the Sawtooth Mountains last year. After an avalanche accident broke her foot in four places, Scarth hiked two miles to alert a search party about her wounded friends.

For a growing number of women like these four, confidence through athleticism has become a conscious choice. Instead of feeling at the mercy of their psyche, they have become the creators of it.

As a girl, Donna Messenger wore long-sleeve dresses to hide her muscles.

She cringed when her brothers, recognizing her natural athleticism, enlisted her to play softball. She was embarrassed by the beads of sweat that formed on her forehead and seeped onto her clothing.

“Now I love to sweat and I don’t mind wearing my jog bra and shorts (out in public),” Messenger said with a grin.

The muscular 54-year-old Coeur d’Alene woman runs 40 miles a week in between marathons, ironman triathalons and coaching Coeur d’Alene High School’s cross-country team. Exercising relieves stress, enhances energy and has made her more of a risk-taker, Messenger said.

“I’m more willing to just jump into new situations than I used to be, I’m more assertive and aggressive.”

A few years ago, Messenger’s sense of defeat was acute as she hobbled into the tent, doubled over in pain, her muscles cramping as first-aid volunteers at the Penticton Ironman Triathalon hooked up intravenous tubes.

“What am I going to tell my kids,” she thought, agonizing about not finishing.

When she called home, she told them she’d return the next year, and she did. “Each time it’s like, ‘So I failed, I’ll do it again and make it a more successful experience.”

It’s advice she relies on in the workplace, too, where rejection from sought-after positions hasn’t fazed her.

When Messenger turned 50 four years ago, she made a list of 100 things yet to accomplish in her life. Goal-setting shapes her daily life, from household chores to race training. Do I want to finish? Place? Win? How fast? How far?

“With a job, trying to train and having a family, you have to set goals and priorities to get all the things done you want to do.”

Kickboxer McCarty has a black belt from the school of hard knocks.

“I’ve done a lot of rolling with the punches,” said McCarty, a lean, street smart kickboxer from Spokane.

In the ring. At her home. On the street.

McCarty, 18, began martial arts lessons as a young girl tagging behind her brother. As a kid, she moved frequently and battled with a series of “screwed-up stepdads,” before coming to Colbert with her mom eight years ago.

One slammed her up against a counter after she balked at the dishes. Another shot her animals. One shoved a loaded rifle in her mother’s face.

“I always thought about what I should have done,” McCarty said. Never again.

“I want to be aware and if anyone gets in my zone, I’m ready.”

A rising star in the controversial world of female boxing, McCarty credits athleticism with keeping her safe, giving her strength, cooling her anger and buoying her future.

She moved out on her own at age 15. While finishing Mead Alternative School via correspondence, she works part-time jobs to pay her $125 rent, and spends the rest of her time at the gym, training to go pro. Her bold spirit, swift strength and mean 1-2 combination has won some matches.

She outboxed the Canadian national lightweight champion this spring, then won two out of three amateur kickboxing matches and three boxing matches this summer. Newfound confidence has prompted her to pursue stunt school and eventually a job with Bruce Lee Productions.

“This was something I could carry with me anywhere, especially when I’m confronted.”

It happens. McCarty volunteers the midnight-6 a.m. shift at First Step, a club for recovering alcoholics on East Sprague. There’s no shortage of crime and drug-related violence, and McCarty said too often, passersby assume any woman walking the stretch is a prostitute.

If a stranger comes within her sidekick range, she gets edgy. Within arm’s length, they get a warning. Any closer and they might “find themselves on the cement,” McCarty said, explaining her safety zone.

Enhanced bravado is different from a false sense of security, she adds.

“I know that if there’s a big guy, the big guy is going to win just because he’s big. But at least I have a chance.”

Self-control is McCarty’s most powerful self-defense move. She’s learned to detach emotionally and walk away from conflict. “When you are in a heated fight you can collect your thoughts and calm down.”

Unwittingly, McCarty speaks in metaphors. Ducking her head back and forth, she explains the importance of learning how to take a punch, then recover and come back unshaken.

“When you take a few shots, then you’re right back at ‘em.

It might be gray and stormy on the Palouse, but if it’s winter, it might be Lois Melina’s only dose of natural light that day.

“It has to be icy, hailing, with severe winds and rains for me not to run. If you let your life be dominated by the weather that is just one more area of your life where you feel out of control.”

The 45-year-old Moscow author swims and paddles, too. But running most easily accommodates her writing and lecturing career, which takes her across the globe speaking about adoption.

“On those occasions all I would see is the inside of hotel rooms and convention centers if I didn’t insist on getting outside for a run. Sometimes I get a 36-minute tour of a city and that’s it.”

The children can’t reach her. Her HarperCollins book editor can’t nag. An hour’s workout is time reserved for clearing the mind’s clutter, problem solving and replenishing energy depleted by the day’s multiple demands, Melina said.

“I come back and I’m ready to write because I’ve been over what I’m going to say, or I have a problem that I’ve worked out.”

Girls at the Catholic School Melina attended growing up weren’t encouraged to be athletic. “By making it a priority, you are making yourself a priority and I think that’s really important for a woman, especially when you have young kids and are being pulled in a thousand directions.”

Becoming more powerful physically has also helped shift her body focus from appearance to performance.

“Instead of looking at just the size of your thighs, it’s ‘Can they get me up the hill? Can they kick through the water?’ You are less concerned about size and shape when its muscles that make you look how you are rather than cellulite.”

Robyn Scarth’s a good friend in the backcountry. Just ask Erin McGarry and Angie Guerricabeitia. They waited eight hours for a search team after they and Scarth careened 200 feet down an avalanche while snowshoeing on Proctor Mountain in Idaho’s Sawtooth Range.

Scarth, a Coeur d’Alene native and sophomore at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., hiked two miles with her foot broken in four places to alert rescuers about her injured comrades.

“It was traumatic. But it made me appreciate life more,” Scarth said.

Athletic women often develop a mental toughness they rely on to pull them through crisis situations. “Once you start being really active, you can’t go back,” she said.

Scarth hasn’t. She’s got hiking boots, but no high heels.

As a freshman, Scarth met her best friends on a college-sponsored hike into the Olympic Peninsula. In high school, her closest companions also ran on the cross-country team or played soccer.

“You have similar traits like perseverance or being adventurous, and those traits are what make you run or hike or whatever.”

Formidable tasks often seem less difficult for those who have trained their mental fortitude through challenging physical activity.

“Meeting people in college - that’s a scary thing,” Scarth said.

“But if your mind is telling you to go, you can usually go.”

Outdoor activity has been a conduit for Scarth’s most valued social connections. “We have more in common, and it seems that women who do sports are a little bit stronger, a little less afraid.”

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