WonderBar! is a women-only masterclass on real strength training – by women, for women. I’ve been asked to help instruct the afternoon, along with female trainers from Crossfit London. I can’t wait to meet a new host of women wanting to get into strength training!

The class is on Saturday 19th May in London. This is the first one – if it’s a roaring success, hopefully there will be more!

Click here to book

The class is suitable for all ages and fitness levels – we are keen to get as many women involved in strength training as possible.

It’s going to be a fun, friendly atmosphere and full of inspiration, so come along and bring your female friends too. You can work at your own level – all exercises will be scaled as appropriate.

For you fans of strength, this is a great opportunity to persuade a sceptical mate that strength training is eminently do-able, fun and effective.

We will focus on the deadlift, the overhead press, the back squat and the pull-up, classic strength exercises that work the whole body. You will be taken through technique step by step, with encouragement all the way.

And I’m sure there’ll be chances to ply the expert team of instructors with any other questions you have.

The masterclass takes place at Crossfit London’s gym in London, E2. You can book via the Crossfit London website here.

I hope to see you there. Let me know if you’re coming along!

Women have trained with weights for centuries, but it has flowed in and out of fashion. Right now, it’s a growing trend. But is it growing fast enough to gain real momentum?

Rising standards

There’s no doubt that more women are lifting weights than ten years ago.

The growth of personal training has much to do with this; women who have personal trainers are much more likely to be doing some kind of resistance training on a regular basis than women who don’t.

Expectations have risen; clued-up personal trainers – still unfortunately in the minority – now understand that most of their female clients, with the right training and guidance, can aim to squat and deadlift more (sometimes much more) than their bodyweight.

This is progress indeed; I remember a time when even wanting to use a 20kg Olympic bar caused consternation and presumptuous concern for one’s wellbeing! ‘Are you sure you want to lift that?’

In fact, I had to revise the Strength Standards for Women that I originally put together in 2008, as the standards of the ‘normal’ weight training woman have risen. If I need to revise it again in 2 years’ time, I’ll be happy.

Positive influences

The growth of Crossfit has been a positive influence and – the occasional controversy aside [who can forget Albany Crossfit?] – has done a fantastic job of presenting women’s lifting in a positive light and actively encouraging women to get stuck into serious lifting.

Crossfit has been particularly successful in busting the ‘lifting will make you bulky’ myth, with its focus on leanness, performance and fitness.

I remember seeing those early Crossfit videos around 2005 with Annie, Nicole, Eva and the rest and being impressed and inspired. My first experience of olympic weightlifting was through Crossfit; now it’s my favourite hobby and I’ve just qualified to lift at the British Championships. So I have good reason to be thankful for Crossfit.

The internet and social media have made it much easier for women to access good, reliable information about weight training, be inspired by elite female athletes and meet like-minded women online. Stumptuous from Canada remains the mistress in this category, still going strong. Girls Gone Strong is a recently-formed US collective that will no doubt be influential in years to come. I do my bit here in the UK, with this website and my Ladies Who Lift courses.

I am, however, looking forward to seeing women’s strength training getting beyond the ‘mutual validation’ and ‘aren’t women brilliant?’ phase (which we women do so well) and into a more practical phase where we just do stuff and enjoy ourselves.

Worrying trends

There are one or two aspects of this social media growth that I’m less enthusiastic about.

Of late, I’ve noticed a conflation of weight training with being super lean. There’s a trend of posting images of very cut women as role models for weight training or even strength. In my opinion, they are more role models for dieting than for strength.

I have no problem with women being super lean if they want to, I just think that the issue is getting confused. ‘Strong is the new skinny’ is becoming ‘extreme dieting is the new strong’ in certain quarters. Personally, I like ‘women are the new strong’. Maybe I’ll put that on a t-shirt.

Something else that hasn’t moved on as fast as I thought is the mainstream women’s media, primarily women’s magazines, catching on to this new trend of female strength and performance.

While the men’s magazines have picked up on the ‘functional’ craze and generally seem more diverse in their training coverage, women’s magazines still inhabit the comfortable, familiar realms of cardio, yoga, swiss balls and pink weights. I realise that strength training is never going to make the top story, but the odd feature would be nice.

Women-only training

Women training with other women is important and should be encouraged – your girls will make better progress.

My own Ladies Who Lift women-only courses are growing well and I’ve seen women-only lifting sessions springing up at a few other clubs and gyms (such as Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club, Crossfits London and Reading and Olympic Gym in Eccles).

I used to think that I would make better progress training with men because they lift heavier and often have a more aggressive approach to training, but I have changed my mind on this. Having trained over the years with both men and women, I find training with other women who are physically similar to be more motivating and productive than training just with men.

Women can train hard and be aggressive, it just looks a little different – and I will be expanding on this in an upcoming article. But it’s also true that many women, myself included, blossom under a more positive atmosphere. It doesn’t matter whether you rant and rave or not, if the outcome is that you improve your lifts and grow in strength and confidence.

On a side note, I’m pleased that the ‘train like a man’ trend has subsided. This phrase, often used by male trainers to berate their female clients, puts the ownership of weight training squarely with men. In order to do it properly, women are supposed to behave ‘like men’. Hmm, no wonder they didn’t come flocking.

Now the rhetoric is ‘train like a girl’ and this is coming from women themselves – a much more positive development.

Incidentally, I love Nia Shanks’ reply to a girl who approached her while she was deadlifting and asked, ‘Why do you train like a man?’ Nia replied: “Take a look around the gym. Most guys in here bench press every day and then spend an entire hour working on their biceps. And the closest thing to a ‘leg exercise’ they perform is walking to the water fountain. So you see; I don’t train like a man.”

The future

The future is bright for women’s weight training but there are a few areas that I would like to see develop and I will be doing my bit to make this happen:

• More opportunities for women to lift with other women on a regular basis.
• More recognition from women’s magazines that proper resistance training is something to aspire to and will get results.
• Higher standards among female trainers in resistance training and being role models in their own gyms

And yes, we still need to make the argument that lifting weights won’t make you bulky and unattractive. This is a tricky one but more people are persuaded every year so I believe it is a case of, keep doing what you’re doing, to everyone who works hard to make this argument.

So what changes have you seen? Do you agree with my analysis or am I way off base? And what would you like to see in the future? Share your thoughts below!

Put it down, woman!

1. You might break a nail.

2. You could even bruise a male ego or two.

3. You’ll eat properly and still be able to lose fat. Work of the devil!

4. You’ll look more like an athlete and less like a runway model. Skeletal is sexy, right?

5. You’ll be able to lift heavy things without asking a man for help, thus upsetting the balance of the universe.

6. You will be seen in public without high heels.

7. You’ll grunt, sweat and feel sore. So unladylike!

8. You’ll be proud of your pert bum instead of being self conscious about it like a normal woman.

9. You’ll be more active and confident instead of sitting around looking pretty. What are you, some kind of feminist?

10. You’ll be stronger, leaner and sexier – and we all know where that can lead!

It is written from the point of view of an enthusiastic practitioner of weight training who wants to share her passion with other women and persuade them of the benefits of weight training.

The author is a powerlifter but doesn’t have any formal qualifications in strength coaching or personal training. This however is not necessarily a bad thing.

She knows how to train and isn’t encumbered by personal training jargon. Her advice is that of a knowledgeable friend in the gym – quite refreshing really. In fact, this is what I was aiming to achieve with gubernatrix.co.uk when I first started blogging around four years ago.

The book covers basic exercises,  training for various goals, including physique, sport and strength, along with tips about diet, injuries and so on. It includes, succintly, everything you need to know to get started with weight training, delivering what the title promises.

I was happy to see some information about strength sports; not everyone wants to compete but it is good to treat this as a normal progression for women, should they want to take things further.

I also like the information on gym etiquette – it is one of those topics that is often neglected in the ‘serious’ training books but is very useful information for people not used to the weight room environment. The author is clearly very aware of the challenges and barriers facing women who want to take up weight training and has addressed these well.

The book is suitable for complete beginners to weight training and those who have done a bit of weight training but want to explore it further.

Where it comes up short for me is the information on programming. Perhaps this is where the author’s inexperience in coaching shows through. The fat loss programme looks too much like a strength programme and the physique programme is somewhat unbalanced (it includes only one chest exercise but five exercises involving shoulders, two of which are isolation).

Fortunately there are plenty of good beginner programmes available on the internet. I recommend the training information on Stumptuous as a great place to start. A link to Starting Strength is included in the book’s appendix and I would also point beginners to this programme if they want to improve strength and technique.

In conclusion, then, this is a broadly successful book covering everything you need to know to get started with weight training, whether at home or at the gym.

If I’m completely honest, there are better tomes out there on weight training in general – but what this book has in its favour is that it is inexpensive and approachable.

This book could be a nice gift for a friend or partner who doesn’t know where to start and would appreciate a small, friendly book to get them going.

Weight Training for Women: A Beginner’s Guide is available from Need2Know Books.

Gubernatrix stated in her manifesto that “I am more than ever convinced that there is a great need for support for women to get involved, break down barriers, educate and be educated and be able to empower themselves through strength training.”

Not only do I wholeheartedly endorse this statement but I want to add an extra dimension to it, namely the vital role which I believe strength training plays in pre-natal preparation.

A very good friend of mine is Jenny Burrell, a lady who is seen as, arguably, the leading pre- and post-natal training specialist in the UK today. To any woman who is planning on getting pregnant, is pregnant or whom has given birth I implore you to get in touch with Jenny. To any coach or personal trainer with an interest in this field you simply have to get onto one of her training courses (www.burrelleducation.com).

Jenny is someone who eats, sleeps and breathes her field; hell, how many people are so passionate about their profession that they are prepared to be vaginally probed to further their understanding?! More on that later.

Jenny’s approach is far more sophisticated than the traditional, haphazard “just kinda squeeze your pelvic floor muscles every so often” protocol which is basically what the NHS and many other pre/post-natal trainers have long proposed. Although Jenny uses these conscious, ‘squeezing’ techniques, known as Kegels, she largely advocates a much more subconscious approach to training the pelvic floor. If you have read the quite wonderful paper ‘The Myth of Core Stability’ by Dr. Eyal Lederman, then this approach will make perfect sense to you, if you have not then hunt it down.

In this paper Lederman talks at length about his concerns over current trends in training core muscles. At one juncture he states:

“The new models encourage the subjects to “think about their core” during functional activities. One wonders if David Beckham thinks about the “core” before a free kick or Michael Jordan when he slam-dunks or for that matter our patient who is running after a bus, cooking or any other daily activities. How long can they maintain that thought while multitasking in complex functional activities? Maybe thinking about the core is not such a good idea for sports training.”

My contention is that Lederman is absolutely right. In a healthy individual the core muscles work reflexively in sporting environments as generally actions occur far too fast and far too unpredictably for blanket ‘core bracing’ to have any relevance.

There is actually a very strong argument that bracing the core, e.g. setting the transverse abdominis, whilst training for sporting activities impairs that ability of the core muscles to receive a reflexive training effect and thus their function in a real world sporting environment is heavily impaired. I often watch videos of my weightlifters frame by frame and some of the work you see take place in the trunk is quite simply phenomenal…but I can guarantee you they weren’t thinking about that mid snatch or jerk.

So what is the relevance of this borderline tangential debate to pre/post natal training? Well let me sum it up in this way: you’ve just had a baby, you’re up at the Comedy Store, someone tells a funny joke, by the time you’ve thought to brace your pelvic floor you’ve already wet yourself!

Which brings us back nicely to Jenny’s subconscious, reflexive approach to pre/post-natal training. Jenny and I have actually done some very interesting EMG based testing of exercises and the involvement of the pelvic floor in each. As I mentioned previously, Jenny’s passion for this area is so great that she volunteered to perform these exercises whilst wearing (I’m really not convinced that’s the right word!) a vaginal EMG electrode probe. This probe allowed us to measure the activation of the pelvic floor in each exercise, measured in microvolts (µV). The results were fascinating to me. The traditional Kegel exercises, the fundamental shortfalls of which have already been discussed, brought about an EMG response of just over 75µV.

Now when we tested a wide stance squat (unloaded) what did we see? Interestingly the EMG recording showed peak values of almost double that recorded with the conscious, ‘isolation’ Kegel exercises; they were getting on for 150µV!

To understand this we need to go back to the Dr. Lederman debate and some basic physiology.

The pelvic floor is quite simply a ‘figure-8’ of muscles which surround, in a woman, the vagina and anus. In the basest of terms these muscles exist to stop your insides falling out of your body through your holes. So logically if your feet are wide spread and you drop into a squat there is a reflexive, instinctive response contraction (a stretch reflex perhaps?) in your pelvic floor muscles; there simply has to be or else everything falls out!

It appears as if the response is even greater if speed of squat is increased. What is interesting is the magnitude of this contraction, i.e. the EMG signal with a reflexive contraction is almost twice that of a conscious one!

To those of us who understand how to take advantage of the stretch reflex in a countermovement jump, jerk, push press or the transition/’double knee bend’ phase in a clean or snatch, this will make perfect sense. The subconscious is less inhibited than the conscious when it comes to innervation, contraction and force expression.

We then took things a step further and had a look at squat jumping. The results were staggering. We witnessed EMG recordings approaching 900µV! That is 12 times greater than the Kegels!

Clearly under explosive conditions the reflexive, subconscious engagement of the pelvic floor takes what we saw in the wide stance squat to new levels.

So what can we take from this information? Well how about this as a recommendation? “Just do stuff”. It strikes me that what this evidence should be telling women is that if you want to keep your down belows in the best condition possible through pregnancy and after you simply have to move and move vigorously.

The other thing I find interesting is that squatting and jumping give us the greatest responses. Hmmm…squatting and jumping, sounds an awful lot like Olympic weightlifting no? Now if we can get a response 12 times greater with a bodyweight squat jump, imagine what we could produce with a 1.5x bodyweight clean and jerk, or bodyweight snatch!

I will end this discussion with a real world example very close to my heart…and in fact physically close to me as both of the two people I am about to mention are lying next to me as a I write this. On August 25th 2010 I was blessed with my first baby, a beautiful strapping little boy called Dallas David Nourse. Now my wife, Veronika, started training in Olympic weightlifting for about a year before we conceived little Dallas and competed until 3½ months pregnant. Even after stopping lifting competitively she continued to train at a lower intensity and was sumo deadlifting around 50kg (very light for her), as well as squatting, benching and shoulder pressing, until 8 months gestation.

What was Veronika’s payoff? Well the pregnancy was textbook, better than textbook in fact, she actually enjoyed every day of the process. The labour was, dare I say it, easy. Little Dallas came out with so little hassle that I almost missed it parking the car after dropping her at the maternity wing! The midwife simply could not believe how straightforward it was. She said that every mother would like to know Veronika’s secret. None of them could get over it. I, of course, knew the secret.

There is a lesson to be learned here from both the science and the real world experience. Women simply need to be more active, they need to be vigorous in their activity and they need to develop strength and power. They need to move quickly and learn to handle the forces this generates. This is how pre-natal, and eventually post-natal, training should be addressed and it shouldn’t just start when you find out you’re pregnant, it’s too late by then.

As Gubes said, “I am more than ever convinced that there is a great need for support for women to get involved, break down barriers, educate and be educated and be able to empower themselves through strength training.” Ladies…this is ‘The Secret’.

Folks, Phil originally wrote this piece last year. I bumped into Veronika a few months ago at a weightlifting competition;  I thought she had come to watch, but she was back competing about 6 months after the birth.

If you are interested in more real life experiences, check out my friend Sally Dixey‘s Crossfit-while-pregnant blog, and for a great post-natal story read about my friend Lieke’s experiences via Stumptuous.

More from gubernatrix

How low should I squat?

Mythbusters! The best of the web

Strength standards for women

Turbo charge your fitness with a simple deck of cards

Anyway, let me bring you up to date with a couple of exciting projects. First up:

Ladies Who Lift: the 6-week beginners weight training course

Last call for adventurous ladies who want to get stronger! With a week to go, there is just one spot left on the Tuesday morning course and one on the Sunday course!

So if you have been thinking about it, now is the time to grab your place and get training with a great bunch of like-minded women.

Click here for more information and to book your place on this unique course, hosted by yours truly.

UK Strength and Power Series: discover your inner strongman/woman!

Now in its third year, the UK Strength and Power competition is bigger and better than ever. This competition is a fantastic entry into the compelling world of strongman and it is suitable for men and women.

I’ve done it two years in a row, and last year I was joined by five other awesome chicks. This year we hope to make the women’s classes even bigger and even more awesome. Need some encouragement? Read Jules’ story here. Jules is around 8 stone but was flippin’ the same tyres as the guys!

And men, you’ll need to get your skates on as this event sells out very quickly. If you’ve ever fancied hefting stones or pulling extremely large vehicles, this is the event for you!

Click here for more information on Facebook.

When you mention muscle building or muscular hypertrophy to someone – male or female – they generally picture big, bodybuilder-type muscles. So for anyone who doesn’t want to be ‘big’ (and that’s most people, to be honest), they will claim not to want muscle building or muscular hypertrophy.

But that’s a mistake – understandable but nevertheless, a mistake. Everyone, from Johnny Teenager down the road to your old mum, needs muscular hypertrophy. And here’s why.

Peak muscle

We need our musculoskeletal system in order to do, well, anything. Sit down, stand up, take the stairs, carry things.

When we are young, our bodies build muscle well, without us having to do much about it. By adulthood, about 40 per cent of our total body mass is muscle.

Without any particular training or dietary strategy, muscle mass peaks at around 16-20 years old in women, and 18-25 years old in men. Muscle strength peaks a bit later, around age 20 in untrained women and around 30 in untrained men.

Muscle decline

After the age of 25, muscle loss is around 10 per cent per decade!

In fact both bone and muscle mass decrease with age. Bones become less dense and therefore frailer (osteopenia) and muscle mass decreases (sarcopenia).

But weight tends to increase with age – which can only mean that the extra weight is fat!

Well I don’t know about you guys but I’m in my mid thirties and I am not happy about the idea of it being downhill all the way after age 20! We are surviving longer than ever before – do we really want to ‘peak’ having run only 20-30 per cent of our lifespan? Do we want to spend most of our adult lives fat and weak?

Muscle building

So the truth is that after our early twenties, muscle building is what we have to do to stop the otherwise inevitable decline of strength and ability, and the increase in fat and weight. Muscular hypertrophy needs to be at the top of everyone’s fitness agenda.

Here’s an illustration of what I mean. This diagram shows what muscular hypertrophy really means for the normal person who just wants to stay in good shape for as long as possible.

The red arrow is the ‘do nothing’ scenario: no weight training and bad diet results in steady loss of muscle and bone mass and increase in body fat and frailty.

The blue arrow is the ‘regular resistance training and decent diet’ scenario, staving off the decline of muscle and bone mass for as long as possible.

Now I usually try to avoid giving personal examples since they don’t necessarily apply to everyone. But I think my own example does illustrate this process well.

I’m 35 years old and I’m stronger, slimmer, with less body fat and more muscle than 10 years ago. In other words, I’ve been able to reverse that trend by taking action.

I’ve not done it through ‘cardio’ or by starving myself. I’ve done it through regular weight training and a good diet.

This is not about how great I am or what sacrifices I made. I’m not a professional athlete or bodybuilder, just a regular person who has committed to being in good shape for as long as possible.

So this is about how blimmin’ easy it is once you’ve figured out how to do it. Muscular hypertrophy along with fat loss is the strategy that will get you and keep you in shape.

By the way, I have Dan John to thank for putting this strategy in such simple terms, making it so easy to communicate (read more of his wisdom here as he answers readers’ questions).

The way forward

It is taking a while to get this message across. It is not just women who are not getting the message; I hear plenty of men in the gym who are reluctant to do any weight training for fear of getting too big and bulky.

As my friend Allyson Goble from Bodytribe Fitness puts it, people “deserve to have strong muscles and bones and ligaments and tendons, etc. AND look good in their undies too!”

Rest assured there are many different techniques in resistance training, to meet many different goals (just have a browse around this website!). But if you don’t build it in order to maintain it, you’ll lose it.

More from gubernatrix

• Basic barbell programmes reviewed
• Coach Dan John answers your questions
• Femininity and muscle
• Lifting and carrying – are you getting enough?
• What does ‘in shape’ look like for you?

Photo by Helen Armstrong

I live in America. I like it, but in my opinion, we do not pressure our women into being strong and confident.

When I scan the magazine racks at the grocery store or the dentist’s office, the pictures suggest that we value two things in our women: breasts and razor sharp clavicles. Well, three things: STDs seem to get a lot of press as well…good grief.

You might call it a wretched case of extremely backwards priorities. The heartbreaker for me is so many of the girls I know, including my own sisters, buy into the stereotypes. In fact, they aspire to them in some cases.

Tuesday night kettlebell class

Every Tuesday night I teach a kettlebell training for beginners class. (I also throw in a bunch of other stuff, but it’s called a kettlebell class.) It’s  basically a “get really strong” class. 90 per cent of my students are female. When they first meet me, we shake hands, exchange names, and then they immediately tell me how weak and out of shape they are. I show them the kettlebells and demonstrate movements with a light weight.

“Oh, I can’t do that.”

When I tell them that we’re doing to do deadlifts they often say “Oh, I’m not in shape enough to do that” or “My back can’t handle that.” My response to these questions is always gentle, but pointed: “Says who?” Most of the time these lovely people can’t figure out where they got these silly notions. It’s because women are taught to underestimate themselves. It sinks in and they start to believe it.

Slowly my class has become – I don’t advertise it this way – my lab for the sole purpose of making women stronger without them realizing it.

Required pressing, required reading

Three months ago I began with a class of eight women. Every single one of them told me that they did not want to press overhead because it would give them big shoulders. In the second week I taught them the kettlebell press and the bottoms up press (turning the kettlebell upside down).

I now begin every class with everyone working on their favorite movement for ten minutes. Every single one of those women chooses the press nine times out of ten now. Some of them are pressing more than the men I see in the gym. Nothing makes me happier. There is nothing more fun for me than when the light flashes in their eyes and they realize I can do this. It’s the same process as the I’m-weak indoctrination, but in reverse: it sinks in and they start to believe it. And when they start to believe it, do not get in their way.

At the end of my classes, I write this URL on the board: http://gubernatrix.co.uk/. It is all that I do for required reading. I even make the men read it, which they are usually happy to do, especially when they realize that Gubernatrix is way stronger than they are. Good information is good information. And that’s all I am trying to give these women.

The change doesn’t occur because I am a genius or because I know something about strength training for females that nobody else does: it’s simply because I say the opposite of what society usually says.

I say:

1. Gain 10 lbs of muscle and you will be sexier than you can imagine

2. Lift as heavy as you (safely) can and you will be more confident

3. You are stronger than you think

4. Ignore your clavicles (most men aren’t looking at them)

5. Being strong does not mean sacrificing femininity

6. I know a five-foot-nothing homecoming queen who deadlifts 315

7. When someone tells you what you “should” be doing, ask yourself why

8. If you are not getting the results you want, something needs to change

9. You are stronger than most men I know

10. Perceptions will only change if enough of us work together to change them

It won’t happen fast, but it can happen. Every time I step into my class there are more women in it. It is because word gets around that it is fun to be strong. That there are people out there who say that women aren’t supposed to be weak, submissive, and that clavicles are seriously overrated.

Go get ‘em.

More from gubernatrix

• Ladies who lift
• Strong is beautiful
• A girl’s guide to choosing a kettlebell
• The toning problem: why women are missing out when it comes to weight training

Let’s break the false link between building muscle and becoming less feminine.

Women have muscles, it’s a physiological fact, and if we want to do anything useful or impressive with them and look sexy to boot, we’d better start training them!

Here is an incident that happened to me recently. I was talking to a bloke in the gym about the fact that I was training for strongwoman and I happened to mention that I would like to put on a couple of pounds of muscle.

He said, with a grimace, “Really? But you don’t want to lose your femininity, do you?”

So putting on a couple of pounds of muscle is going to make me lose my femininity, is it? This is typical of the casual ignorance displayed by many people about muscle building. I’m an athletic-looking size 10, I weigh 136 pounds. What difference is a couple of pounds of muscle distributed around my body going to make to my appearance? I doubt most people would even notice.

Me (right) and Caroline Pearce, aka ‘Ice’ from Gladiators. Note the tragic loss of femininity experienced by these two strength training females. Don’t let this be you!

I’m not trying to dictate what men or women find attractive. Long hair, cute bob, big tits, curvy, athletic, muscular, long legs, nice bum, spiky hair and tattoos, tanned and outdoorsy, pale and interesting… there are so many ways to look sexy and feminine.

A powerful woman needs powerful arms! I bet POTUS isn’t complaining…

Muscle, whether you realise it or not, plays a huge part in looking feminine. Pertness of bum? Gluteus maximus, baby! Shapeliness of calf? A toned gastrocnemius, of course. ‘Michelle Obama’ arms? Bi’s and tri’s my dears, not to mention the delts.

And you can’t build muscle using 3lb pink dumbbells. Your handbag weighs more than that! The weight’s gotta be heavy.

(Not convinced? Read Why lift weights? for a simple answer to that question.)

The truth is that for some people, any mention of muscle building is an automatic no-no. This merely reveals ignorance about the human body and the importance of muscle.

Although we can use muscle to scuplt particular parts of our bodies into nicer shapes, this isn’t the primary role of muscle.

In fact, everybody needs to be concerned about building muscle, since we spend most of our lives slowly losing it and becoming more and more frail.

Even this poor girl has muscles, but wouldn't you agree she could do with some more?

We all have muscle in the first place and we all need it in order to lead active, healthy lives. From the way some women talk, you’d think they didn’t even possess muscles!

But they do, and they are neglecting them because of this pernicious link.

For most people, building additional muscle doesn’t happen automatically, it has to be done deliberately (especially after your early twenties). What we do build automatically is fat. It’s very easy to get fatter, more difficult to build muscle.

But building muscle helps us to lose fat. Muscle burns more calories than fat, so the more of it we have, the more we can burn excess calories. Muscle also takes energy to be built in the first place, energy that would otherwise be stored as fat. This is true for both men and women.

These days most people want to look lean and athletic, with less fat. The way to do this is to build muscle but still in the eyes of many people this is only deemed acceptable for men. No wonder so many women spend years dieting unsuccessfully or acquire dangerous eating disorders that keep them weak, malnourished and either too skinny or too fat.

Why do guys like this picture?

So back to the guy who so baldly expressed his opinion on my femininity. Of course, we know what’s really going on here. We know that the image he has in his head is of a female pro-bodybuilder on stage under the lights with all the fake tan, dehydration, flexing and so on. He has equated this snapshot image (which doesn’t even reflect the everyday reality of a pro-bodybuilder, let alone anyone else) with general weight lifting of any kind undertaken by a woman – and moreover has decided that this is not what he finds attractive.

(Incidentally, there is an issue about people associating weight training with bodybuilding but not other sports. You might be talking about strongwoman or weightlifting, but it is the bodybuilder image that immediately appears in people’s minds and not, say, the slim and athletic Marilou Dozois-Prevost who graces the top of this post.)

What’s odd is that Random Gym Guy is quite admiring of my figure as it stands at the moment – a figure which has been developed over several years by muscle building and heavy weight training.

So there’s a serious disconnect between the evidence of his own eyes and his preconceptions and prejudices about ‘muscle building’ and ‘femininity’.

Apparently I have reached some mysterious boundary where I look good at the moment but if I build a smidgen more muscle I will suddenly turn into a she-hulk!

Two female bodybuilders: the difference is DRUGS, not lifting weights

With pictures like the one on the right, I guess it is not surprising that people get hugely distorted views about women and muscle. The media love to dwell on the ‘freak’ aspects of any activity but it is drugs not weights that are the cause. Just say no, kids.

(The original female bodybuilders still looked feminine. Read more here about what went wrong. Clue: it wasn’t lifting weights!)

Ironically many men will find particular bodies attractive that have been built by careful dieting and weight training – but they don’t realise it. This is about education, about breaking that seemingly automatic link between the desire to build muscle  – for health, looks, performance or whatever – and loss of femininity.

Allyson Goble, trainer at Bodytribe Fitness, tackled this thorny subject in our recent Women’s Strength Symposium. She comments that if masculinity is defined by strength and muscle building, does that mean that femininity must be the opposite: weakness and fat? Femininity = weakness? Surely we are past that in the 21st century.

The truth is that you can look very feminine (whatever that means to you) and also build muscle, lift heavy weights and generally enjoy yourself.

Here is some of the positive testimony from Allyson’s discussion.

Katydid: “As a person who has gone through challenges with eating disorders and body image for a very long time I’ve found weightlifting and being a powerlifter, and the resultant strength to be the best medicine in the world.”

Louisa: “Until I started weight training, with fantastic results (not only because my body shape improved but because I felt more confident and got a buzz out of it), I really didn’t believe how good it would be for me. I have never really worried about getting bulky. I know I look better and feel fitter than I have for over 20 years. However, people around me do ask if I’m not worried about bulking up. And I have struggled to get my husband to understand that I’m not going to end up looking like a female body builder on steroids.”

Allyson: “Girls deserve to have strong muscles and bones and ligaments and tendons, etc. AND look good in their undies too!”

The beautiful and be-six-packed Allyson Felix

Men care what you look like – they are visual creatures after all. But men also care what you think you look like.

Lack of confidence in your own looks is not sexy. Obsessing about whether your bum looks big is a real turn-off.  If you have a nice bum from squatting, be proud of it! If you have a great six pack from training and dieting, show it off. I am a big fan of the female six pack myself, I think it is super sexy!

So back to where I started. You might be wondering, ‘why do you care what Random Gym Guy thinks anyway?’

Well, I don’t, as he’s just some random guy down the gym. But what about the men who do matter in our lives? I know from discussions on the Women’s Strength Training Network that many women do have these issues with their other halves. We can’t just say ‘well I don’t care about your feelings’. But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Louisa, who was quoted above, says “I have struggled to get my husband to understand that I’m not going to end up looking like a female body builder on steroids.” Time will prove Louisa right, and perhaps her husband will get used to her having a bit more muscle than before.

I know that my perception of muscle on both men and women has changed, the more I have been around it, seen it, and most of all, experienced the amazing things you can do with it!

This is why I am committed to changing perceptions, and why I believe that eventually a cultural shift will occur and women will no longer be considered less feminine because they have muscles and can use them.

More from gubernatrix

Girls and Strength Training: Are We Able To Shift Our Perceptions? How Else Are We ‘ABLE’? By Allyson Goble

Women’s Strength Training Network

Strong is beautiful

The toning problem: why women are missing out when it comes to weight training

All the fabulous photos by Helen Armstrong

Earlier this year I was approached by a young woman called Chantelle who had been lifting weights for a few years, loved it and now wanted to share her passion for lifting heavy things with other women.

Chantelle wanted to set up a series of weight training workshops for women only – and this is why:

“Like many of the women reading this, I train alone and have made very few friends in my weights room in all this time…I could say that my girl friends think I’m insane for lifting weights, or think that it’s not for them; that the guys in my gym think I’m a freak for lifting so don’t talk to me, or stare because I have bad form.  What’s missing from the analysis is what I’m doing and who I’m being….

I learnt almost everything I know from fantastic internet bloggers like Gubernatrix and Stumptuous, but have never passed any of this on, or given anything back.  I think I just worried about ridicule or rejection. Realising this made me decide to turn my passion for weights into action.”

You can read the full story in an article Chantelle wrote for the recent Women’s Strength Symposium called Turning passion into action. As you’ll see from the comments, this idea generated a lot of interest.

In the meantime, Chantelle got right on with organising two workshops and enlisted myself and personal trainer Ade Abudu to develop and teach the sessions.

The workshops are described below and I have also included some of the feedback we received. This is not to make us sound awesome (no, really) but to show that the concept and format really works.

I can safely say that a few of those brave souls who turned up were a bit sceptical, suspicious and otherwise unsure whether this was really what they wanted to be doing on a Sunday morning. But by the end, everyone was smiling!

Philosophy

Right from the start we knew we wanted to hold the workshop in the weights room itself. The idea was to help to demystify this space, break down the barriers (psychological, emotional, physical) preventing women from entering it and train on proper equipment.

Hiding away in a studio lifting plastic bars was not the plan!

We also wanted to hold the workshop in a normal, commercial gym – rather than a weightlifting club or Crossfit box – because we wanted people to be using the kind of equipment that they will find in their own gyms. Our workshops took place in LA Fitness.

We decided to teach the big, compound free weight exercises such as squat, deadlift, bench press and so on. We didn’t want to do ‘girly’ versions or avoid the ‘heavy’ equipment.

“I would never have been brave enough to try barbell lifts without this opportunity, and after this I was emboldened to go down to my local council leisure centre and ask if they have a squat rack.”

We wanted the atmosphere to be positive and enabling. We wanted participants to have fun but also to be pushed further than they would push themselves on their own. What better opportunity to challenge yourself when you have a supportive group of like-minded women around you?

“it was very non-confrontational and I didn’t feel that I was being tested or looked down on which made me more willing to really try things out”

We held two workshops, two weeks apart, and we encouraged people to come to both. In the end, for the second workshop we had a mix of those who had been to the first workshop and some who were newcomers.

Workshop content

In both workshops, we started the session in a studio so that we could all get to know each other and do a warm up together.

We also looked at squat technique to make sure that everyone was comfortable with the movement and had no major issues before we headed to the weights room.

I find that women generally have good movement, balance and better flexibility than a lot of men to start off with, so it is delightfully easy to teach movements like the squat! None of the participants failed to perform a decent bodyweight squat within twenty minutes, which was very impressive.

We then moved into the free weights area where we split up into smaller groups and worked on back and front squats, deadlift, bench and overhead press and inverted rows.

The weights area was being used by normal gym punters as well; we didn’t have the room to ourselves. This was both good and bad – the atmosphere was that of a normal gym day, but we did somewhat hog the equipment! Still, kinda funny when a bunch of women chuck the hapless bicep-curling bloke off the squat rack…

I’ve found in the past that the gym instructors I’ve worked with have been very reluctant to put weight on the bar (or even give me a barbell), even when I’ve clearly been perfectly capable of lifting more. In our workshop, despite the fact that most participants had never squatted with a barbell before, everyone worked up to lifting with a good deal more than just the bar.

At the end of the second workshop, we finished off with a group bench press session where everyone went for a personal best! This was great fun and ideal to try for a best when you have a group cheering you on.

“I really liked the bench press and being encouraged to try heavier weights. That Ade thought I could do more gave me the confidence to push myself harder.”

What particularly pleased me was the fact that people were willing to attempt a lift and fail! I have heard from many women that one of the things they are most nervous about is failing a lift in front of other people – and this used to be a big issue for me as well. In the workshop we made a point of getting people deliberately to ‘fail’ a squat just to feel what it is like (and to see the safety bars on the squat rack in action!). When it came to the bench press, people were so confident and ‘up for it’ that they really didn’t mind going for a heavy weight and not getting it. Knowing that they had pushed themselves to the limit was more rewarding.

It was fun, as you can see from the pictures. We didn’t force people to smile while heaving weights over their head!

Chantelle wanted to give people something to take away both as a reminder of the workshop and also as a spur to further action. So every participant got a free workout journal with a workout programme developed by Ade which covered all the exercises we had learned in the workshop. Chantelle also printed out an exercise technique handout so that participants had something to refer to when trying the movements on their own.

“Great instructors, good content, and great vibe from all participants”

I don’t know how many people went away from the workshop and started lifting immediately. I have been in touch with one or two whom I know are getting into their lifting with enthusiasm, which is fantastic. For others, the experience may work its magic in the background and may have a less tangible but still postive effect.

The aim was not to turn out an army of female powerlifters but to give women a positive experience of proper lifting and introduce an alternative to the ‘cardio bunny’ model that we are used to seeing in the gym.

“It was a really positive experience and I don’t honestly think I know of any way it could be improved, sorry!”

I personally was monumentally stoked to be part of this project. I came away from each workshop absolutely buzzing. It didn’t feel like teaching, it felt like training with a group of friends.

I plan to put on more of these in the near future so watch this space!