Giving muscle to encouraging strong women
Saroj Corr in Colombo recently. Pic by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
Saroj Corr cannot help stopping the traffic when she obliges us by posing for the camera by Galle Road, near Crescat, at a golden dusk. She is 57, yet draws looks of admiration for her beautifully sculpted musculature and grace.
Briefly home for a cosy Christmas with mother and sister, Saroj lives in the USA, and is a bodybuilder and fitness specialist focusing on older adults.
She was not, however, always this symbol of feminine stamina.
Just eight years before, Saroj a mother of three in Washington DC suddenly found herself completely broken down by a hectic career in corporate real estate.
She had a herniation, had to take three spinal injections, and realized just how fragile she was.
Forced to go for physical therapy, at the gym she was struck by a strong woman who was deadlifting 325 pounds. It was Saroj’s entree into bodybuilding. She realized that women bodybuilders don’t have to be androgynous or ‘look like men’.
It was not the aesthetics of bodybuilding that seduced her but the strength, and it is strength training that Saroj advocates for Sri Lankans – especially women.
While everybody does not have to be a bodybuilder ‘everybody needs to have muscle’.
“Asian women are prone to get osteoporosis and strength training and building muscle prevents osteoporosis but it’s also about joints,” says Saroj.
If one doesn’t have strength in the joints one is barred from functioning properly- bending down, picking up your grandchildren, squatting at a toilet. “Without muscle mass you won’t have core strength and will be prone to end up with a walking stick or a wheelchair,” she says.
Saroj’s transformation as a bodybuilder was not just about deadlifting, it also involved food. Her initial illness was in fact caused by stress and not eating. “You can lift till kingdom come but without proper nutrition, you will not have results.”
A proper relationship with food, understanding how to fill your body with food is as important as less consumption of sugar, alcohol and fatty foods.
There is a mental transformation too. Being a bodybuilder and even for strength training one needs tremendous discipline. It is a lifestyle and even during her Christmas holidays she trained five days in a gym.
“I still maintain my macros- meaning portions and food that I need to eat. Of course I have a balance – I am enjoying all the wonderful food here I don’t get to eat, but still in the back of my head I know what I need to be on and it comes naturally. It’s not a torture for me to avoid eating.”
“It is not at all about the aesthetics, but what strength training can do to you.” In her case, she says the training has given her relentless determination. “The feeling that you are unstoppable – “whether it’s going after a job; achieving something I want to, starting my own business.”
“If I can do it, anyone really can. What it gives you is that mindset you can go after, that nobody can keep you in a box. That you can change that and go after it and do whatever you want to. You just have to have the grit and the will. That’s how it changed me.”
While Saroj laments that bodybuilding is still male-oriented in Sri Lanka, she says that in the last two years she has seen more and more women at High Octane, the gym where she trains while in the island.
“I rarely see a bunch of people on the cardio machines. I see more people on the floor lifting weights. That to me is encouraging. But the body building sport has a little bit more growth to do in Sri Lanka and I’d love to see it expand.”
“I’d love to see the amateur league of the IFBB pro league which is the largest professional league ( NPC, the National Physique Committe is the amateur league) – I’d love to see them do a show here. Because there are several Sri Lankan women who have reached out to me, women who are interested.”
Saroj says that it is not really about bodybuilding but the journey it takes you on. She wants to break those stereotypes of what women should be doing and how women should look.
“It’s about their wellness. And their longevity – how they can be healthy at any age. I’d love to see
Sri Lanka moving more and more in that direction.”
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