Tuesday Tribute: Krista Scott-Dixon

Tuesday Tribute #3: Mistress Krista (Krista Scott-Dixon to the ‘real’ world)

Krista Scott-Dixon rocking the back squat, circa 2003(?)

It started with squatting. Doesn’t it always? If you think about it, a lot of things start with squatting, like childbirth, a good start to a day, et cetera…

OK, I digress. Back to the squatting that involves iron. It was around 2003. I was reading a few different blogs about weight lifting and female strength training in general. Then I found HER. This petite but fart-joke-loving strong diva of a woman named Mistress Krista. She used an old nickname – something about her diminutive size, I imagine – to adorn her blog: stumptuous.com

On that site she catalogued her thoughts on strength, eating, training, and more – all with a laser focus on women. I read a bunch and then some more. Then I noticed her series on how to squat, and how she broke the HUGE commandment drilled into anyone doing squats in the 1990s – never, ever let your knees go past 90 degrees. Krista came right out and said that is bullshit – IF you have good form and you feel no pain. Anyone with bad form and/or pain need to adjust accordingly, but for many folks, going ass-to-the-grass is totally great and fine and normal. Toddlers do it every day. We’ve forgotten how.

It's actually natural. We forget and tighten up.

It’s actually natural. We forget and tighten up.

Once I learned how to actually squat correctly, I got myself OUT of the stupid Smith machine contraption I was using to try to do squats, and did them like a ‘grown up’. It took about 6 months and my 10 years of runner’s knee went POOF. Gone.

But Krista is oh so much more than squat technique. She’s a powerhouse of information about women in many dimensions – as workers in Information Technology (and wrote a book on it), as athletes, as 40 year olds, and as powerful creatures.

She’s a coach, a writer, a no-bullshitter, and damn funny, too.

Krista, bravo. A zillion times.

P.S. About “TUESDAY TRIBUTE” and the why: a few weeks ago my mind went off a-wandering during my run. As it often does, it strayed into the realm of wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if ideas. Ideas like memes and tributes. It is refreshing to see gratitude posts directed at a certain person or community, someone that made a difference even if they didn’t know it. I thought about those 52 week challenges to leave little notes for strangers or smile more. I decided on a new challenge for myself: I will take every Tuesday to highlight someone from my life, past or present, who has changed my outlook, nudged the course of my life, or given me reason to make a positive change.

There are only two guidelines: First, I must have interacted directly with this person. Authors or public figures that have had positive effects in my life are not candidates if I do not know them well enough to call them an acquaintence. Second, those I choose to highlight are in no particular order. There is no implicit hierarchy or chronology.