One of the nice things about going to national or international drug free powerlifting meets is that I get to catch up with the other female lifters. There aren’t many of us and we are scattered around the country. It’s mainly at competitions where we can renew our acquaintance and watch each other lift. I [...]

An essay on strength training as if people mattered. I love strength training. You know it, but I’ll say it anyway, I bloody love it. It’s one of the most happy, positive things in my life. I like knowing I’m strong and I’m only getting stronger. Why the sudden strength affirmation? Well a number of things [...]

Choosing the right weight of kettlebell is easy. Think about the basic moves you will be doing. The reality is that you will probably need one bell to swing and one to press and snatch.

I have been to many circuit classes in my time and in every class the women are allowed to do ‘girly push ups’ – push ups on your knees. This is fine for beginners and it is a fact of life that the vast majority of women, myself included, start off with a real disadvantage [...]

  Alex Puccio on A Maze of Death v12 from Bishop Bouldering Many people are turning to indoor climbing for fitness. They may, or may not have ambitions to climb regularly on rock but the indoor climbing environment is a fun adjunct to a gym routine. Rock climbing however is quite technique dependent. I meet [...]

I have lost count of the number of women who say to me, “I don’t want to do weight lifting, I just want to tone up a bit.” I am sure that many of you have heard the same sort of thing and as people who understand the benefits of weight training you want to [...]

I did my first powerlifting competition last weekend. It was great fun and I thought I would share my experiences with you. Perhaps it will encourage some of you to enter competitions too, if anything has been holding you back. It would also be interesting to hear from anyone else who competes in powerlifting. The [...]

After a recent discussion here on strength standards for women, I have come up with some standards using the collective wisdom of All Round Strength Training! Click to go straight to table of strength standards for women (below) There’s not much general knowledge about what is “good” for women’s strength training. In many cases, a [...]

This is a question as much for my male readers as my female readers: do you have a conception of how much weight women can/should be lifting? Because relatively few women lift free weights and of those who do, many are new to lifting, it is deemed appropriate to be encouraging about any lifting stats [...]

A woman’s weights: Catherine Imes’ painted kettlebells It struck me recently that whenever the topic of women and weights crops up, we feel the need to address the ‘fear of bulking up’ issue. The usual argument proferred in defense of weight training is that it doesn’t make you bulky or masculine; actually it can help [...]