adiemus

There is an enormous amount of research, both experimental and clinical, with respect to pain and gender. Can I suggest you go beyond MedicineNet and search Medline and PsychInfo for good research over the past 20 years or more? Some review article references are attached.

As I said, detection, or the point at which an individual indicates they experience a nociceptive input, is the same but tolerance, which is the point at which an individual says they cannot tolerate the input any more is very different between men and women. Although various influences are known, and are being studied actively, one significant factor is the presence of oestrogen. Some of the studies acknowledge gender roles (as differentiated from sex, which is around chromosomal differences), do play a part - others suggest that there are alternative issues...

gender pain refs.txt

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Eve

there are lots of variables so I'm on the fence for this one, before your period is one, cultural differences are another, people who engage in sports especially at a competitve level are likely to tolerate more pain than those untrained.

adiemus

situational context (eg the meaning you draw from the pain) makes a difference (I'm happier to cope with pain from an innoculation than I am if someone is coming at me with a loaded, dirty syringe!); expectation for the future also changes your experience of pain: if I think the pain is doing me good, bringing me closer to g*d, or is a 'rite of passage' then I'm more prepared to tolerate it, if I expect that by experiencing a pain that it will end badly, then I'm less prepared to tolerate it.
So individuals interpret pain differently from one another. However, I'm not citing individual differences, the references I've cited are statistically different for males and females, given the same stimulus in the same context...of course what we can't tell is whether the participants have had the same life experiences!!
I started to post on pain here because I think there could well be some learned behaviours and attitudes that differ across gender groups - with the noted exceptions amongst us of course. Little boys are often involved in more robust physical activities than little girls. Little boys are trained to 'not cry', while little girls are much more 'allowed' to cry. Loads of different reasons - and I'm not say ALL females and ALL males behave in gender-stereotypical ways. But it's an interesting thought: I can cope with pain when it's related to dance, but I don't carry on with plain exercise partly because of the pain!

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Brea

adiemus- and these basic differences in our raising, along with a million million other little things along the way, are why I think we think it's an actual biological difference.

I was taught not to cry and also be involved in more robust physical activities. My entire upbringing was very different...and has prompted very weird reactions to my personality because people have no way to process a girl that doesn't fit in some way their stereotyping upbringing, even if they live outside the gender norms themselves. It's a very knotty problem.

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adiemus

Brea, if it is simply a 'learned' difference, I venture to suggest we'd find different cultures would demonstrate differences in reported pain tolerance - instead it's across cultures, the lifespan (except where hormonal changes are present), and contexts (both acute and chronic pain). There would also be less of a difference both structurally (in both gross brain structure as well as microscopically) and functionally (in fMRI especially) between the sexes (as opposed to genders).

I'm not attempting to convince you, because it's clear that this is something you believe quite strongly, I'm simply looking at the experimental/scientific evidence. Which, as we all agree, represents generalities compared with individuals.

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Brea

Adiemus - I am not sure about pain tolerance, but physical strength is a curiosity to me.

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Mago

I'm of the mind that pain, while important when it signals injury, is often the price you pay for excellence. We as performing artists (I play capoeira, so I get in this, as well) have paid physical dues in terms of sore body parts, aching, and stiffness in the name of whatever art we choose to excel in... as was said so well in "A League of Their Own" - its supposed to be hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

This is true of a lot of things. We innately ignore the difficulty of what we do when its what we love - perception is key. Even if we fall off the proverbial horse a hundred times, we are back on. IMHO life should always be like that - we should give as much to all the activities as we do our various beloved arts.

How does this relate to WL and raqs? So many times this thread wandered off as people wanted research on this and that, this site vs. that site - for every bit of research indicating one thing, there was research showing something else. It comes down to this, in my eyes... there are proven benefits in most mainstream arts, including ballet, hip hop, breakdancing, and capoeira, that strength and resistance training can impart greater strength, more stable cores, and more power and sustained strength than simply training these on their own. Even figure skaters manage to be strong without sacrificing their dancer's body over it.

I could point out this one capoeirista who can bench press as much as me and her arms are half of mine (this would be that study of smaller but more densely packed muscle fibers I posted before bearing out) in size. Or another girl who can powerlift more than I can but is very definitely slim and feminine....

Let me ask this: Does anyone have a systematic workout program, like routine A on Monday, Routine B on Wednesday kind of thing? I have the basic idea - shoulders, core, and legs, but I was looking for more specifics. A sample workout would be ideal.

Thanks.

da Sage

I don't know why you are asking us, since you are the licensed professional here. Although maybe someone will share their workout routine with you.

I also think you are projecting this "fear of bulking up" onto us belly dancers. I'm so fricking tired of people condescendingly telling me "Don't be worried about getting too much muscle", when I have NEVER IN MY LIFE said or done ANYTHING to make a logical person think I am afraid to gain muscle.

Where in this thread has anyone said that they are afraid of losing their girlish figures due to weight training?

Why don't you talk to the women whose bodies you admire (and cited above) about how they got that way? Since your stated purpose is to help change your wife's appearance, it's rather silly to ask advice of people whose bodies you haven't seen.

Or if you want professional advice, I would recommend that you seek out a local trainer whose work you admire. If you want bellydance-specific professional advice, contact Gerson Kuhr on the East Coast - he specializes in training bellydancers.

Ankebuzz

Agreed!!!

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Mago

Thanks for the pointing out - working with dancers is one thing, but raqs is something else.

As for this comment:
I'll thank you not to cast aspersions on my credentials. I am not expert in ME dance, and I'll be the first to admit this. There are aspects unique to this art that need to be accounted for. This was my goal. If you feel that this somehow makes my certification less, well, that's not my issue.

Never said you, specifically. If I have in some way, by direct action or omission, implied, intimated, or otherwise said that you were worried about your girlish figure, I sincerely apologize. Although, I must say that from here, it sure seems like you are finding fault with most everything I say. I'm sorry to see that. Thank goodness I'm not thin-skinned, or I might think that this attitude was prevalent among the dancer community.

I refer to a general concern. Most of the women I know that begin working out have this conception that they will wind up with heavy musculature... Yes, a generalization, but hardly something worth excoriation over.

Imagine, someone asking the people who do an activity what they would recommend for a workout... wow, how illogical! Jeez, some folk....

Sarcasm aside, let me flip the question back on you. Why do you find it so strange for someone who knows little about ME dance to ask the people on a ME dance forum for some suggestions? I don't know how it works on your end of things, but here we communicate with those who are practicioners of an art to find out things that are not commonly known, especially when it comes to performance issues.

If that came across as offensive somehow, see the above apology, tailored to that.

Thank you for the tip. I hadn't heard of him specifically. In fact, there was no response in any of the PT forums concerning anyone training ME dancers. I'll track his contact info down and get in touch with him for further specific questions.

For those who helped, I am grateful. The info that you sent me helped me a lot. For those who debated fairly with me, thanks for the intellectual exercise - it was fun to have to back my stuff up with research. It was entertaining and intellectual.

For those who have been cool, thanks. I appreciate it, and as a thought, I get my own first ME dance class tonight. I guess i should go through the experience in order to understand what Im looking for as a trainer.

Mago