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!)