Weight training plays a vital role in
my daily life.
I find in it a realm where action meets a
consequence that I can understand.
Weight training hurts.
I love that truth.
The pain is precise. It indicates the effort, its
intensity, its limit. It requires no
interpretation.
I do weight training because it is based
on routines, sets, repetitions,
numbers.
I know the load, the movement, the number of
sets, the recovery time. I know what I’m
asking of my body.
Lifting weights is anything but gentle.
The metal is cold, the muscles burn, my breathing
quickens, my nervous system protests.
The bar either goes up or it doesn’t. The
movement holds or it breaks down.
The weight never lies.
It knows nothing of misunderstandings, nor of invisible rules, nor of social games.
It offers my body precise resistance.
I push.
It responds.
On some days, a usual load becomes
heavy. Sleep, diet and recovery
have shifted something.
The response changes.
The laws remain the same.
I can observe what is happening, adjust the
load, modify the effort.
I train, I eat, I recover,
I make progress.
Every cause produces a clear consequence.
Drawing does not offer me the same certainty.
A single line can shift an entire shape. A
colour can alter all those around it. I
don’t always know what’s going to happen.
Yet, here too, I look for connections.
I look at what a gesture transforms, what a
shape triggers, what a colour does to the others.
In the gym, the weight offers resistance to
my body.
When faced with a drawing, the shape resists in a different way.
I move a line. I add a colour. Something
responds.
Biomechanics, nutrition, programmes, the
figures give me access to the connections that
run through my body.
I feel them before I understand them.
The muscle burns. My breath becomes shorter. My strength
wanes. I know what’s happening.
Nothing is fixed.
But nothing is hidden.
The effort brings together what would otherwise scatter in
all directions.
Here, I have nothing to guess at.
I push.
The weight responds.
Find Juliette Savaëte on her official website: www.juliettesavaete.fr
