Why Girls Won’t (and don’t) Lift Weights!

For decades now there has been a discussion on why girls don't lift weights. I could retire, or at least get a new sweatshirt if I had a penny for every time one of my female clients or female friends has asked, “Won't it make me bulky?” There's a never-ending barrage of misinformation out there about how girls “should” approach our fitness—take a look at Instagram or the Health & Fitness section of Pinterest to see for yourself! You’ll see row after row of photos of thin girls looking happy, because that’s what our culture says fitness “should” mean for girls: looking thin.  When clients ask me these questions, it’s all I can do not to ask if their vegan tofu salad was delicious and then rant about the benefits of resistance training for women, the skewed cultural standards of the female physique, and the perpetuation of antiquated gender stereotypes in gym culture…but I’m getting ahead of myself. In my programs, I am ALL ABOUT girls in the weight room! So, here are some of the common reasons girls don’t want to lift weights—and then debunk them, one by one.

Girls, this post is for you—but if you’re a guy, DON’T STOP READING! Impress the ladies in your life by educating yourself on gym gender politics, and help set a well-informed example!

1. "I'll get bulky.”

False. The female body, magical and wonderful though it may be, simply doesn’t have the same testosterone profile as men! Testosterone is the primary hormone that promotes the development of muscle and bone growth. Although women secrete testosterone too, adult men produce about 20 times more than adult women. As a result, females simply cannot physiologically reach the same muscle hypertrophy (size) as guys.  (Unless you are doing some serious, illegal supplementation…but that’s another post for another day.) 

So this one is pretty simple: girls just don’t have as much testosterone as guys do. Female muscles DO respond to strength training stimuli by increasing in size—but simply won’t support huge, “bulky” musculature. It’s science!

2. “Strength training won’t burn as many calories as cardio does.”

(insert hysterical laugh!!!)

False again! Actually, if one of your goals is to lose non-lean body mass (body fat), strength training is your secret weapon! When you lift weights—heavy weights—your body signals to your brain that you are working overtime. This means that even when you put down the barbell, your body continues to work—and burn calories—to repair itself.  One of the best ways to understand this metabolic effect is to think about the different energy systems your body uses to fuel different types of activities.

“Cardio,” as in steady-state aerobic activity, burns calories from your body’s fat stores after about 30 minutes of movement. So if you jog on a treadmill at a medium-intensity pace for 60 minutes (yes, you need 60 minutes to get any benefit), you will burn fat in the scientific sense. However, as soon as you hit that stop button, your body will also stop using fat calories for energy, and thus stop burning calories altogether. This is in contrast to anaerobic activities, like strength training. Let’s say you strength train with heavy weights for 30 minutes—while your body is deriving much of its energy from glucose (carbohydrate) in your bloodstream DURING your workout, AFTER your workout is a different story. Because you tax your metabolic pathways more during a strength training session, your body continues to repair itself (and burn calories doing so) after you stop. So, while the total number of calories burned during an aerobic workout might be more, the total number of calories burned both during and AFTER a strength training workout is MUCH higher—making strength training an essential practice not just for athletes looking to get stronger, but also anyone looking to lose body fat.

3. “Lifting weights is for boys.”

OK, this one is true and false!  Historically, the realm of strength training has been presided over solely by men. Take a peek into a gym in the 1970’s and you’d probably see only dudes in the weight room. But times they are a-changing! Thanks in part to our culture’s recent movement for gender equality, the gym is becoming more and more a place for both guys AND girls. There is nothing centrally “masculine” about the weight room—those are just old perspectives about what being male or female actually meant in society. Heck, take a look at my group training sessions…… 90% female!  This had more to do with our sociological roles than our physical bodies. The weight room nowadays is just as “feminine” as it is “masculine”. 

So, even though this “weights are for dudes” misconception has been true in the past, this stereotype now false. Nobody bats an eye these days when they see a girl setting up her bar for power cleans, actually I walk over and hi-five her! And while there may be a remnant of this old-school thinking in the gym, ladies re chipping away at that remnant with every single back squat!

4. “I don’t know how to strength train!”

This one is the easiest reason of them all to debunk—because the answer is simple, get a trainer. Seriously though, sales pitch aside: one of the primary complaints I hear from girls who want to lift weights is that they don’t know how (which makes sense, because as we addressed in #3, the gym used to be considered just for guys). But now, thanks to the magic of the Internet, there is information galore available about ANYTHING you want to know about! And in fact, this is generally my mission: to make safe, effective strength training programs accessible to anyone and everyone. By using proper programming, my male and female clients and athletes get weekly workouts that specify exercises, rep counts, set counts, rest periods between exercises, and more. That’s why I’ve fortified my comprehensive online exercise library with detailed instructions, photos, and videos—to equip ALL athletes to learn how to lift weights. No more excuses, girls (and guys)!

I hope that this post has helped debunk some of these mythical reasons why girls don't strength train. (In fact, I almost hope you haven't made it to this final paragraph but instead got halfway through, put on your lifting shoes, and ran to the weight room!)

An accurate approach to Strength & Conditioning!

My approach……

Approach it with specifics…. No matter if I’m working with a Division 1 college team/athletes all the way down to a small high school team/athletes, specifics are vital!

A uniform approach to strength and conditioning simply isn’t the best way to help athletes perform better and stay healthy. So why do others do it?  CONVENIENCE, that’s why, it’s simple and easier!  S&C can’t be uniformed, because training must look different for different sports. After all, you wouldn’t train a tennis athlete — or a cross country runner — like a football player.

The safest and most effective way to prepare for a sport is to train appropriately and specifically for that sport. Here are 3 reasons why.

1. Different Performance Goals
The athletic performance traits that must be prioritized in one sport's strength and conditioning are different from those in other sports. With my program, as an example, we prioritize muscle mass (hypertrophy), maximal strength, and explosiveness as the primary performance goals for football. But softball players need to develop rotational power, and distance track runners need muscular endurance, and all these qualities are developed through different training protocols. All athletes benefit from building a foundation of general strength and work capacity, which is why you’ll see squats on the program for almost every sport. But when it comes to sport-specific strength and movement qualities, what works for one sport may not work for other sports.

This becomes especially clear when you look at the bioenergetic requirements from sport to sport. Just look at the duration and speed of play in a rugby sevens match compared to an 800m track race, or a baseball game compared to a 90-min soccer match, and you’ll see the unique energy system requirements that make an athlete successful in each sport or event. This is why we not only identify the three primary performance goals for each sport on a strength training level, but also constructs sport-specific conditioning programs that develop the proper energy systems utilized in every sport.

2. Different Movement Patterns
Each sport has it's own primary movement patterns. The primary movements you’ll see in a football game are sprinting, cutting, jumping, blocking, pushing, and tackling. In a properly designed football strength and conditioning program, exercises in the weight room are specifically chosen to first develop the general strength capabilities to tolerate those positions, and then the specific strength and power adaptations needed to execute those actions explosively.

But the movements in freestyle swimming, for example, could not be more different.
Good strength and conditioning must be targeted on the specific motor actions required in each sport. And again, while athletes across all sports benefit from developing a base of general physical strength and capability, a properly designed program will train sport-specific movement patterns. My programs, for example, examine the main movement patterns in each sport—like hip extension/flexion for track sprinters and scapular elevation/depression in swimming—to create training that emphasizes sport-specific strength qualities in those positions.

3. Different Injuries
Besides the idea of access for athletes across sports (and genders), this, for me, is the single biggest reason any type of uniform, sport-agnostic workout plan—doesn’t cut it for athletes in other sports. A strength and conditioning professional always considers vulnerable or frequently injured muscles and joints when designed sport-specific training (and, if possible, looks at the individual strengths and weaknesses of each athlete on the team). While football carries a lot of inherent injury risk to many different areas—hamstring, ACL, ankle, etc.—these are not necessarily the same areas at risk in other sports.

Golfers may need extra hip and low-back strengthening to avoid injuries. Tennis players need more elbow and wrist work. Failing to address joints and muscles that may be at risk of overuse (like the rotator cuff for baseball pitchers) or at risk of acute non-contact injuries (like the hamstrings for soccer players) is a failure to prepare athletes optimally for their sport. We incorporate targeted injury mitigation exercises in every sport program—from extra glute med strengthening for female soccer players, to isometric anti-rotation holds for baseball and softball players. This specificity in injury mitigation is something that a static 12-week training program simply cannot offer, and it can make or break the success (and health) of a team.

The Takeaway
We are specific!  The approach to strength and conditioning shouldn't be uniform for every sport—but it does need to be unified. The unique performance traits, motor patterns, and injury risks involved in different sports requires a sport-specific approach, but one that can also create a cohesive training methodology.  Remember, our job as a S&C coach isn’t to make the athlete a better football – baseball – softball – lacrosse – whatever sport player, it is to do two things, 1-obviously improve their S&C, 2-build durability in the athlete-so they can play longer, faster, quicker, stronger, with minimizing the potential for injury!

Some Basic Reasons Runners Should Start Strength Training, NOW!

For runners, "training" means running. And with all those miles logged each week, and all those hours of long runs and hill sprints and fartleks, it's easy to see why strength training isn't your first priority. But while runners have historically been anti-strength training ("It will make me bulky and slow!"), strength and conditioning science is finally catching up and more runners than ever are sprinting to the weight room to reap the many benefits strength training has to offer.

 

Here are reasons all runners—from elite marathoners to weekend stroller joggers—should start strength training NOW.

1. Run Faster

It may seem like a no-brainer, but strength training helps you run faster! Strength training places stress on your body in the form of resistance (weights), which prompts your body to adapt and make changes in order to increase its ability to withstand that stress. Over time, these physiological adaptations can have a huge impact on your running speed. This is why it’s important to train on a comprehensive program designed specifically for running performance—in other words, you can’t do a few random strength workouts and expect to see results.

 

Not only does strength training increase your body’s fat-free mass (bone and muscle mass) while decreasing your body fat %, it also increases the amount of force your muscles are able to exert into the ground with each step during your runs. This helps to make each stride more powerful, increasing your maximal speed and improving your ability to maintain high submaximal speeds for longer. Strength training also increases your muscular endurance and anaerobic power, making it easier to tackle that final kick in a race.

 

2. Stronger Bones, Tendons, Ligaments, Fascia, and Cartilage

Here’s an abbreviated table adapted from the 4th edition of the Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning detailing some of the performance benefits you’ll see from starting a strength training program:

 

The repetitive nature of running (“pounding the pavement”) leaves runners highly susceptible to injuries—especially overuse injuries. In addition to stronger muscles, strength training creates positive adaptations in your bones and connective tissues (tendons, ligaments, fascia, and cartilage) which can help mitigate and prevent overuse injuries like stress fractures.

 

A quick anatomy recap: muscles attach to bones through tendons (muscle tissue blends into tendon, so it’s all one continuous structure). Tendons have little blood flow, which is why they’re white in color illustrations of the musculoskeletal system. Ligaments connect bones together. Cartilage is a dense but flexible connective tissue that helps joints move smoothly and absorbs shock forces through joints. Fascia is a band or sheet of connective tissue that helps stabilize and separate muscles. All these connective tissues are made primarily of collagen, and all respond positively to strength training.

 

Just as your muscles respond to the stress of resistance by growing stronger, stronger muscles exert a greater pull on the bones they attach to, causing the bone and the structures around it to respond by grow stronger, too. Bigger and stronger bones, thicker cartilage, and sturdier and stiffer connective tissues help runners withstand and absorb more pavement pounding. The Achilles tendon in the heel and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the knee are prime examples of how important connective tissue strength is for runners.

 

3. Better Running Economy

You can measure a car’s fuel economy by how many miles it gets per gallon of gas—and you can measure your running economy (RE) by how much energy and oxygen you use to run at a given pace. The less energy and oxygen you need to sustain a pace (say a 6:30 pace in a 5k or 8:00 pace in a marathon), the better your RE. Your RE is a good indicator of how efficient and effective your body is at running, and can be improved through—you guessed it!—strength training.

 

Strength training helps perfect your running form (see reason #4), making your strides more efficient. And when you can run better, you can train harder—running more miles per week, or sustaining faster paces for longer durations. All this adds up to better running economy. Even better, improving your RE can also enhance your maximal aerobic capacity (VO2max) and lactate threshold, both measures of aerobic fitness and markers of endurance performance. In short, a better engine makes for a higher-performing car, and the same is true for running.

 

4. Better Running Form

The human body is a pretty amazing machine. Most of us have a dominant side that is more muscularly developed, and most of us have stronger anterior muscles (on the front of the body) and weaker posterior muscles (back of the body)—and these strength imbalances can create some imperfect movement patterns. Ever wonder why only one knee will hurt after a run, or one side of your back and not the other? It’s not hard to imagine that if your right glutes are twice as strong as your left glutes, it will alter the way you move. If you do have some funky movement patterns, your body—smart animal that it is—will use other muscles to help out, like recruiting your left lower back muscles to help your weak left glutes extend your hip.

 

This must have been especially helpful for our human ancestors’ survival. Imagine if instead of recruiting other muscles, your body just shut down the malfunctioning muscle—not good if you’re trying to run away from a sabretooth tiger. But these compensatory movement patterns, created by muscle imbalances, can lead to pain and injury over time, especially if you’re running mile after mile with subpar form.

 

A strength training program designed specifically for runners will focus on correcting the muscular strength imbalances that cause bad movement mechanics. This is especially important for your quadriceps and hamstrings—most runners have super strong quads (front of the body) and super weak hams (back of the body), which can alter your stride and cause injury. By evening out these imbalances, you can “turn any” any inhibited and weak muscles and achieve better, more efficient running form. Better form means less risk of overuse injury from bad movement patterns, and more effective running.

 

5. Prevent Injuries

For runners, all other benefits of strength training really add up to this: fewer injuries. Ever been sidelined by an injury halfway through training for a race? Ever had shin splints, tendonitis, IT band syndrome, plantar fasciitis, low-back pain, or other injuries that caused you to skip a run (or several)? A well-designed strength training plan for runners will help strengthen the muscle groups surrounding the most frequently injured joints (ankles, knees, hips, back, and [interestingly] wrists) and make you all-around stronger and more durable. When you’re stronger, your running mechanics naturally improve, helping avoid injury caused by poor running form. And when you’re more durable, you’re better able to withstand all the repetitive ground forces during your runs, without causing injury.

 

Improved durability also unlocks your capacity to run a bit more, a bit harder. Training at higher intensities—whether it’s a faster pace to hit a PR or longer distances to train for a half or full marathon—allows you to achieve new levels of performance previously unattainable. Being stronger, and staying injury-free, help you attack every track session, every tempo run, every long run with 100% effort. Higher quality training = better performance, plain and simple. And here’s the really important part: when you are able to run and train without injury, you actually enjoy running more! In this way, strength training helps you get the most out of your runs, both physically and mentally/emotionally. After all, it feels good to give your full effort!