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More Than Likes is a series about social media personalities trying to do positive things for their communities.
The video begins with an instructor and a bar, like so many on Instagram. But then, as Casey Johnston, the instructor, lifts the bar – 45 pounds, plus 160 pounds of additional weight – to his waist, a notation appears in the corner: “Things we need to pick up regularly that weigh 25 + books He then lists examples such as suitcases, coolers, furniture, etc.
Ms Johnston, 36, has built an online community around advocating for the functional benefits of strength training and demystifying a form of exercise that can be intimidating to outsiders. For Ms. Johnston, weightlifting is about taking ownership of your body.
She doesn’t promise the secret to washboard abs or a slimmer waistline, like many fitness influencers do. Mrs. Johnston, instead, provides him with more than 34,000 instagram followers and nearly 25,000 subscribers to her Newsletter It’s a Beast with the tools to build a body that can move more easily through everyday life. And she writes sharp, incisive takes on the modern discourse surrounding fitness, diet, and other related topics.
“It’s often guilt, guilt, guilt. You can never do enough,” Ms. Johnston said of the traditional fitness climate. For her, gym sessions are “not about feeling as much pain as you can tolerate. It is about developing a basic skill accessible to all.
In Ms. Johnston’s experience, this difference, in turn, can lead to better emotional and mental health. “It becomes a rewarding feedback loop, where it’s like, oh, ‘I can get stronger, and my body doesn’t just exist to be a meat sack holding my brain down, or to look attractive to other people. ‘”, she says.
Ms Johnston, who was an editor at Wirecutter, a New York Times company that reviews products, from 2014 to 2018, began writing to him Ask A Woman Swole column for the Hairpin site in 2016 (“swole” means very muscular). She found her writing resonated with readers eager for more accessible fitness writing, and after the site shut down in early 2018, her column rebounded into the paid version of her newsletter. She also wrote an e-book, “Take-off: from the sofa to the barwhich is marketed as a “weightlifting guide for the rest of us” (it has sold over 10,000 copies), and she has a channel on the social app Discord, where she tunes in directly with readers.
Before she started lifting weights, Ms Johnston focused on running and calorie restriction to pursue the body type that had been glorified when she was growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This pursuit was fraught with negativity.
“I think people around my age grew up in extremely difficult times in terms of how the media acted towards women and ridiculed them for the slightest flaws,” Ms Johnston said. “There was such a right in the media to control how women looked or behaved in public. Britney Spears is probably the most canonical example.where there were constant headlines about if her weight fluctuated.
In 2013, Ms Johnston came across a Reddit post featuring a female bodybuilder that piqued her interest. She was ready for a change: she didn’t eat much and her hands and feet were often cold. Through weightlifting, she realized she could more intelligently balance her food intake and exercise. But it is not there to judge other approaches.
“I radically accept whatever people want to do. I’m not here to argue with them about what they think works,” Ms Johnston said of those who prefer other forms of exercise to weightlifting. “My only position is that I think strength training has a bad reputation.”
The first time she went to the gym – an “intimidating place”, she said – she put aside her feelings of insecurity and performed three exercises: squats, benches and rows, three sets of five “reps” or reps.
Then, she said, she headed straight for the bodega. “I was so hungry,” Ms Johnston said. “My body is, like, demanding its feast after going into battle.”
Ms Johnston soon began to structure her meals around her ascent, eating more protein and carbohydrates. She rejoiced in her newfound strength.
“She constantly thinks about her body as a system,” said Seamus McKiernan, her partner. “What’s going on in there?” And what can you make him do? And how can it help you feel better and do more? »
Its platforms give “people a place where they know they are with others who are on the same page as them, where they are geared towards more functionality and sustainable practice,” said said Mrs. Johnston.
Her friend Chore Sicha, editor of New York magazine and former Styles editor of the New York Times, bought Ms Johnston’s e-book in 2021. After sitting at her desk for long hours during the pandemic, he realized his body was on the verge of “deteriorating” and challenged himself to do something that made him “deeply uncomfortable”, as Mr. Shisha. He became a volunteer firefighter but realized he needed to get stronger.
He turned to Mrs. Johnston’s lifting guide and found the philosophy behind his work resonated.
“She knows we’re not all going to be champion lifters, and she knows we’re not all going to be good looking when we do,” Mr Sicha said. “It’s just very anti-Instagram-aesthetic. It’s very pro-human.
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