During a brainstorming session on program expansion, the idea of a class specifically geared towards women and encouraging them to weigh lift was born. The W.OW., or Women on Weights, was designed with the purpose of teaching women proper form, technique, and execution of free weight, strength training movements, while empowering them to push themselves outside of their comfort zone, invest in themselves, and change their quality of life. The class is not your traditional “exercise class”, but more like a workshop or clinic where women can learn about proper body movement, why it’s important to learn the movements, and how it translates to other areas of life; what they do in our group fitness classes, exercising on their own, and everyday activities.
Here is what we learned when 22 women went through our program:
- They dedicated two days per week, for 7 weeks without missing a class.
- Pre and Post fitness assessments including body movement assessments, weigh-ins, and measurements showed that they each lost inches and body fat.
- Connections with staff and other participants turned into gym friendships and a commitment to continue their journeys in fitness.
However, the important details are that these women are engaged in other programs like additional personal training services, forming small groups for training, or going to group fitness classes together. They are seen in the free weight areas of our Wellness Center, getting high fives from the “big guys” for their efforts and attention to good movement and effective training techniques. I heard one woman refer to herself as now being a gym rat.
Other quotes from The Girls:
- “I’ve had so many a-ha moments in the past few classes!”
- “I’ve been strength training for 3 months now, 2 times per week. I am so proud of myself. I’ve lost a few pounds and inches all around. I never thought I would be able to move my body like this after shoulder surgeries and knee replacement, let alone start to change my body.”
- “It’s given me a new perspective of not looking at achievement as being a number on a scale, but feeling how proper technique and movement is the real way to judge my success.
- “I felt progress in how I moved from week 1 to week 7 and that gave me confidence in exercising rather than confidence from seeing a lower number on the scale.”
- “I never realized you didn’t need straight cardio to keep your heart rate elevated. Proper lifting technique and programming does the job!”
These are all great, but as a trainer, I know it’s a lot more than just about the look of the body. Strength training has benefits that go way beyond what the eye can see. To help explain the true matters of fact, I found some great stats to help drive home just how important strength training is for women’s lives.
According to Time’s special Addition, The Science of Exercise, “Of all Americans, only 20% also do the muscle-strengthening moves that work major muscle groups.” And for women, that percentage is even lower.
Larry Tucker, a professor in exercise sciences at Brigham Young University ‘It’s also one of the very few ways to make bones denser, a perk that is especially important for women. Lifting something heavy, like a dumbbell, makes bones bear more weight, and in exercise, stressing your bones is a good thing (to a point of course).’
‘Bones are constantly remodeling,’ explains Anthony Hackney, an exercise physiologist at the University of North Carolina. ‘Your body is always adding calcium to your bones and taking calcium away from your bones,’ he says ‘Over time, bone gets less dense and more brittle and prone to osteoporosis, a condition that affects about 10 million Americans—80% of whom are female. The only real way we can increase our metabolism, unless we take drugs, is to lift weights and maintain or increase our lean mass…’
In a 2016 study, researchers from Harvard Medical School and the National Institutes of Health used data from nearly 36,000 older women, who ranged in age from 47 to 98. The women filled out questionnaires for about a decade detailing their health and exercise levels, and one question asked women to estimate how much weightlifting or strength training they had done per week in the past year. The researchers then tracked which of the women had a heart attack or stroke and which developed Type 2 diabetes.
Whether or not a woman did muscle-strengthening exercises indicated a lot about her health. Compared with women who avoided it, those who did any amount of strength training were more likely to have a lower body mass index and a healthier diet and less likely to be a current smoker. They also had a Type 2 diabetes risk that was 30% lower and a cardiovascular disease risk 17% lower than those who did no strength training, even after the researchers controlled for other variables like age, diet and physical activity.”
It is imperative that we encourage women to lift. In addition, at the Y, our mission is providing programs that strengthen our community. Women are pillars of our community and it would behoove us to not have Women on Weights!
Join us at The Ridge Y for the next series of W.O.W.
Res: http://time.com/4824531/strength-training-women-exercise/