So Girls aint Meant To Be Strong

While working in a commercial gym as a fitness advisor then as a PT it was commonly accepted that women were weaker than the men, shouldn’t do full press ups and generally women tended to stick to the cardio area of the gym and the men with exception of the females with advanced levels of strength and conditioning would train in the free weights and strength machine area.
In Jan of 2007 I went from being a member of a gym fitness team and part time pt to fully self employed and went about trying to build and secure a client base for the business I was lucky enough to take on 19 new clients within that first working week of January and take a little pressure of myself. Within that pool of new clients there were 5 middle aged women in the bracket of 45 to 55 years old. Honestly I had never worked with women either pre or post menopause and after doing my home work and needs analysis with them all, my work was going to be cut out for me as they all wanted to decrease body fat% and it looked like I was going toe to toe with mother nature. I remember talking to my mum about it and expressing my appreciation that these women felt comfortable hiring me especially as I was a 30 year old 100kgs 6ft 4 cage fighter.

To this day three of those clients still train with me and it was through my teaching of one of the ladies that I came to understand that strength is a skill that can be learned and with the correct prescription of exercises there is no reason why women cant perform at strength conditioning just as good as the men. ok they may not be able to lift as heavy r ep as much but they do not have to be excluded from tyring to master certain exercises just because they are women.

Client B came to me with no strength training experience what so ever. She was turning 50 years old very soon and had looked after herself over the years she was healthy and a natural size 10. She had been to a core conditioning class regularly but had never been a member of a gym and was very sceptical about the results she might get so much so that I was given an ultimatum get visible results within the first 5 weeks or we would be parting company, now you may be thinking that’s a bit harsh but I don’t client B is a very successful business woman and just the kind of challenge I love she was straight to the point she was paying me a lot of money and she wanted a return for her investment I did explain that I wasn’t a magician but that if we worked together and she did as I asked when following her routine at home (she came to me for 1hr per week and did the rest of her training at home on her own) then her strength would grow and that would mean tone in the muscle.

We worked on body weight compound exercise like squats and assisted push ups along with some free weights (dumbbells) to begin with. After a few weeks of that we progressed to some of the basic kettlebell movements needless to say her strength grew and it wasn’t long before we were training full press ups. Through my research and the teaching of Mr Kettlebell himself Pavel Tsatsouline and his book the naked warrior after training the techniques myself (how to generate strength through the muscle fibres) was able to pass them on to my client so in a way I used her after myself as a guinea pig so to speak and the results were awesome. It wasn’t long before she was doing multiple sets of full press-ups at 10 reps or more with varied hand positions.

After experiencing these results I was on a mission to teach as many of my female clients as possible how to do full press ups. I have always had a 50/50 male and female client base and was excited as to just how many it would work for, as it turned out this was just the start as over time they progressed to full press-ups and I now use it as part of my sales pitch when I consult a new female client the general answer when I tell them that they will be able to do it or when they do it for the first time is that they never thought that it would be possible. All you need to do is go to any general level group exercise class where press ups is part of the routine and you will see 90% of the females if not all doing the assisted version of press ups.

All my clients are strong in relation to their level of experience and it always starts with body weight, to me as a trainer there is no point in starting anywhere else.

Press ups was just the start throughout this year me and my girls have been working to master unassisted chin ups and I’m very proud to say that Jules, Pauline, Lee, Eileen and Lana are all on their way to be able to do multiple reps along with some crazy press ups routines and monster squatting

"The decisions that you make today are the changes that you implement tomorrow"

Yours in fitness

Davie

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