If you’re a woman who's not strength training you need to start now! Here’s why

I asked physiotherapist and runner, Dr Kathleen Walker, to write this piece because it’s a subject she (like me) is passionate about. But she also has the facts and figured to back it up.

Running isn’t the only sporting activity that is surrounded by unhelpful myths. Strength training has its own mythology that continues to be perpetuated and unfortunately, for a lot of women, still creates a lot of fear and trepidation. Women I’ve spoken to in clinic and online are fearful of entering the gym space, specifically the weight training areas, for a myriad of reasons, choosing instead to stay close to the easy familiarity of the cardio machines. I’ve been told it is boring (it can be, but so can running sometimes!), it’s scary and it’s intimidating.

Women have shared fears about getting ‘bulky’, concerned about gaining extra weight that might impact their running. In the running community I feel it’s seen very much as and continues to be sold as a tool for injury prevention and rehabilitation that can be picked up for a bit and put down again. Women also fear the space because they feel they don’t know what they should do when they get to the free weights or weights machines. Not knowing what to do will make all of us shrink away and hide from something that we might not fully understand, concerned that we will look silly or do something wrong.

Reframing strength training

But what if we came at strength training from a different perspective? Instead of looking at it as a form of running injury prevention, or something for men or something that gives us big muscles, how about we look at it as a form of exercise that is transformative for health and as an activity that isn’t just important for our health and wellbeing right now, but an activity that will reap benefits for us as women later in life?