The last time I was in the weight room at my local gym, I was one of only a few girls in a sea of grunting, sweaty men. There were plenty of girls in the gym itself, toiling away on the ellipticals or doing tiny crunches on yoga mats or puttering out 1,000 reps with a two pound weight in an attempt to spot-tone their triceps, but there were very few women actually lifting heavy weights. Why is this? What keeps us, as a lady populace, out of the weight room?
If you have the time and the means to belong to a gym, you really probably ought to be lifting weights (says Rob Lowe’s character on Parks & Recreation). But going into a room full of men who know what they’re doing when you feel like a novice can be intimidating. It might be difficult to overcome one or more fears- the fear of being bulky, the fear of male judgement, the fear of not knowing how to lift- but those fears are infinitely surmountable.
I spoke with Caitlin Constantine at Fit & Feminist and Marina Tronin, a professional weight lifter and trainer, about ways to get over the hump and into the weight room.
1. Stop thinking that lifting weights will make you look like the cast of The Expendables.
Women’s magazines tell us that we’re at our prettiest when we’re at our tiniest. The ideal of ladydom is to be bony and birdlike, and to be bulky is to be masculine. Many women shy away from the weight room because they’re afraid that tearing themselves away from the elliptical will ruin everything and instantly make you into the Jolly Green Giantess. Not true. Both Caitlin and Marina were pretty adamant about this.
Caitlin says,
Women’s physiology generally does not allow for us to put on that kind of muscle – at least, not without some injectable help. And those women you see who are bodybuilders and who do have a lot of muscle? They didn’t get that way by picking up a ten-pound dumbbell and flailing around with it a few times. Those women have put in several years of serious training, coupled with strict nutrition and supplements. To point to them as a concern for not doing “guy” exercises is like saying you don’t run because you don’t want to be an Olympic sprinter.
Adds Marina,
This will not make you bulky. The basic deadlift, squat, bench and military presses WILL NOT MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE ARNOLD! I cannot stress this enough.
Image via AP
2. Get a program, and commit to following it.
Marina says,
The worst thing you can do is show up to the weight room without a plan. Aimlessly wandering around and doing 8 – 10 reps of what you’ve seen some trainer do before is not going to cut it if you’re hoping to see any progress. Some excellent strength training resources on the topic of building raw strength and good technique come from Jim Wendler of the 5/3/1 fame, Dave Tate of EliteFTS and Mark Rippetoe who wrote Starting Strength …. All of the above programs are excellent for a novice lifter.
Once you have a program, Marina says you should give it six months to work. If you flit from program to program when you don’t feel the results you want right away, you do yourself a disservice.
Image via Shutterstock
3. Don’t pay attention to the sweaty grunting men giving you side eye.
First of all, they’re probably not giving you side eye, anyway. Do you pay attention to what you’re looking at when you work out? I’m usually zoning out and staring off into space or paying attention to my form. Since it’s the gym, there’s a good chance that a dude giving you The Eye might actually be aiming it at another dude.
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