To shirt or not to shirt, that is the question

I was reading an that listed various fitness companies and the Black Friday specials each were offering.

The article itself was a good idea, it cuts down the “aimless” web browsing time trying to find the best deals of the day.

I did check out a couple of sites that were listed in the article but nothing jumped out at me so I didn’t follow through with a purchase.

In fact the only thing that did catch my eye wasn’t even anything that you could buy it was a link to a “related post” at the bottom of the article that was written by Carrie Anton about mens attire whilst training.

“Shirts on or off while training?”

I thought to myself “You’re kidding right?” that would be like asking, “Sprint training with or without holding an umbrella?”

Are there actually women out in the world who prefer men to keep their shirts on? If there are, I’m not one of them, toe shoes freak me out far more than the sight of a bare chest.

In fact if I was opposed to shirtless men training, I wouldn’t have lasted very long at Ludus! I would have been “disgusted” at seeing all of the glistening shirtless men and left after the first week. 😉

After reading through Carrie Anton’s post her conclusion seemed to be that it was ok for a man to train shirtless if;

They were of the rippling variety
They trained hard and
They didn’t sweat

Sweating seemed to be a BIG thing amongst her research group. I’m not however sure how point number 2 and number 3 work in combination, train hard but don’t sweat?

I was curious if I was the only woman who didn’t care if a man (regardless of their body shape) trained without a shirt so I did my own “scientific study” eg – I asked my girlfriends.

My respondents decided the following;

Taking your shirt off because you were hot was “hot”. Taking your shirt off before the warm up was not.

The type of activity engaged in was of far greater importance to my census than the “sweat issue” of the RX Review respondents.

Shirts off were deemed acceptable if the men were Running (outdoors), doing Crossfit style WODS (which included Ludus and Bootcamps) or MMA and after some somewhat heated discussion Bikram Yoga was *begrudgingly*  added to the list.  We did not include any type of watersport to our list as being shirtless was usually a per-requisite.

Shirts off however are never acceptable whilst standing in front of a mirror doing bicep curls in a globo gym or when combined with toe shoes.

We actually concluded that no one should wear toe shoes, ever ..

Not even you, Channing! (I’m now scarred for life)

Till next time