During her first year of college, Elisabeth Bradley was inspired to try weightlifting after she followed a woman tracking her fitness transformation on social media, one barbell at a time.
Then, Bradley found herself to be the only woman in the weight room at San Diego State University.
“I felt like I stuck out a lot, and I just thought, ‘OK, I’m gonna look dumb,’” she says. Intimidated by a room full of grunting, muscular men, she moved over to the cardio area, mirroring countless women who, for various reasons, avoid the free weights and machines.
But with research mounting on the benefits of resistance training, experts say a few things need to change at the gym to make it more enticing to women.
Michelle Segar, a behavioral scientist at the University of Michigan who studies exercise habits, said that making the environment more palatable and familiarizing women better with weights will lead more to use them. More representation will in turn get more women to continue.
Why women should lift weights
The National Institutes of Health recommends that everyone — men and women — do resistance training at least twice a week. That includes all kinds of activities that require physical force, such as weight machines, resistance bands, or body-weight exercises like pushups and squats.
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Resistance training has been found to help prevent heart disease, improve long-term mobility and lower blood pressure, said Brad Schoenfeld, professor of exercise science at Lehman College in New York City. Some research suggests that women may even benefit more than men from weight training because it staves off osteoporosis and age-related muscle loss, which women are more susceptible to, he said.
“The bottom line is, resistance training is a cure for all sorts of issues,” Schoenfeld said.
Why many women don’t want to
Daisy Arauza, a 30-year-old mother of two in Menifee, California, does some Pilates and cardio-based exercise at home using videos and online tutorials, and would like to invest in a gym membership to help with strength and weight management.
But she lacks confidence, she said, and doesn't know enough yet about weights and gym etiquette.
“I have a lot of self-consciousness because of how my body looks right now. When you think of the gym, you think about people that are already more fit. And so it feels like I have to make myself fit into this mold before I can feel comfortable being in a gym setting working out in front of other people,” she said.
There’s also still a stigma about women lifting weights, Bradley said. Told for years that being skinny is the ultimate goal, some falsely believe strength training will make them look bulky.
Schoenfeld said few women need to worry about building too much muscle because it’s hard for anyone to gain a significant amount — especially women, who have lower levels of the muscle-building hormone testosterone. And it’s easy to reduce training intensity if you don’t like the results, he said: “It’s very, very easy to lose muscle.”
What gyms and women can do about it
Months after her initial bad impression, Bradley shared her strength-training goals with a male weightlifter in her dorm, who showed her the bodybuilding ropes. The boost inspired her to found Girl Gains, a female weightlifting club that now has dozens of chapters at colleges across the country.
“Other things get shoved down our throats, like Pilates and cardio and yoga, but they complement each other,” Bradley said. “Being stronger in the gym is going to help you progress in Pilates. Having muscle is going to help make you a faster, better runner.”
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Women embarking on strength training should do so with an empowering and realistic message, advocates say.
Complementary introductory training sessions can help, but a cursory introduction from a trainer in a revealing outfit won’t, said Segar.
“Most women have tried to achieve the perfect body for decades, and it only leads to a sense of failure,” she said. Instead of focusing on how the exercise makes them feel, they're thinking about how they’re being perceived.
Women who find community in the weight room work together on their own targets, getting stronger and pushing themselves, Bradley said. “One of the things we always say is, ‘The gains look good on you.’”
Women's gyms and child care
Some women find they can focus better on their workout when men aren't around.
At the women-only Goddess Gym in Peterborough, England, Charlie Sturgeon said she's happier than she was in mixed-sex gyms where she had "some quite weird experiences where people would just stare, pull faces, make comments. And here, with being women only, it just feels like there’s a sense of community.”
Some gyms try to make women more comfortable by offering day care on site.
Michelle Kozak of Phoenix, who has two young children, canceled her membership when her gym stopped offering child care.
And she isn't comfortable with hard-core gym culture.
“I don’t want to make the gym my entire personality," she said. "I just want to have some time to prioritize being healthy.”
