Barbells & Tiaras: 
Encouraging Young Women To Participate in Strength Athletics

       People say that having kids changes the entire way you look at your life. They say once you have a kid you begin to see the world through a different set of lenses. Some of the lenses show a world that is bright and full of learning opportunities. Others, not so much. The others depict a world full of danger and harm. 

        Since the birth of my daughter nearly 3 years ago, I can say that I now see the world through a completely different set of lenses compared to the ones I saw the world through after my son was born. I have always been an advocate for women participating in sport. But, the one thing I believe I have doubled down on is encouraging women to participate in strength athletics (weightlifting, powerlifting, strongman). 

        From the time I graduated high school in the mid-2000s to today, today's culture has changed tremendously. Text messages cost 10 cents a message, Twitter never existed, Facebook was still in its infancy. I can still remember the dial-up tone of the computer connecting to the internet. Yep, I'm old.

       In all of my years spent in weight rooms, whether it was in high school, college, or as a strength professional, there is one thing that I believe hasn't had the same rate of change that everything has. It's something I, personally and professionally believe could change the lives of a lot of people. That something is an increase in strength athletics by females. 

        I understand what I am saying is a MASSIVE blanket statement. But when you look at the gender ratio of those who participate in any kind of barbell/strength-based activity, it is easy to see that the ratio is skewed in favor of males. I want to make one specific point before I continue on. Female participation has increased over the last decade if not more, however, what I am getting at for the purpose of this specific topic is, with all the changes that have occurred in our society today, why is female strength athletics participation still not growing as fast as other societal changes?

        I have been in the field of Strength & Conditioning since 2006 at the collegiate level. At the collegiate level, nearly all teams regardless of gender strength train. With at being said, it can be save to assume there isn't that big of a disparity in terms of the male: female ratio. However, after working with many different women's teams, I started noticing one trend. Many of the incoming female freshmen I was to work with had no strength training experience at all. It was after I started working at the high school and middle school level in 2012, that I began to see the reason why. 

        It was after I can back home from Arizona, I started with a high school during my graduate career. It was during my first day, I looked back over the attendance and out of the nearly 100 athletes who attended the 3-morning training session, I saw there were less than 12 females who had attended. I asked the coach running the program if there would be more girls to come in the afternoon. He said he would be surprised if any of the ones who showed up come back later in the week, and would be even more surprised any others showed up in the afternoon. I can remember a feeling of shock come across my mind after he shared this information with me. I asked him why this was the way it was and he told me none of the female varsity team coaches encourage coming to the weight room.

        It was after this conversation I had an epiphany as to why so many of the females I worked with at the college level had no strength training experience. It was because they were never encouraged to participate in strength athletics, let alone strength training in general.

        It was in 2014 I took my first directors position in at a 4A Iowa high school. It was also in 2014 I became an advocate for females participating in my strength program. I would like to share with you a few of the talking I had with all of the female varsity sport head coaches.

• Stronger Athletic Performance

       This will probably be shorter of the 3 points as compared to the previous 2. Like their male counterparts, females will become bigger (relatively) faster, and overall stronger (physically, mentally, and confidence-wise). This can mean higher levels of athletic performance. It also means lower chances of injury occurring as well. The most prevalent injury that occurs with females is ACL tears. Due to wider hips and a large Q Angle of the knee females are more inclined to suffer an ACL tear than males are. By strengthening the hamstrings, glutes max, and other lower body muscles, and learning proper jumping/landing mechanics the chances of tearing the ACL reduce dramatically.

Female vs Male Development

        During one of my first one-on-one coaches meetings, I remember one of the varsity coaches telling me she didn't want the girls to lift heavy because the girls will get "big and bulky" like a guy.

        I found this statement incredibly mindboggling. Primary due to the fact that the coach I was speaking with was a little older than I was at the time, and she was a former college athlete. And to top it off, she had participated in a strength program while she was in college. I can also remember thinking to myself "I thought we were all past this BS." because that's what this statement is... it's total BS.

        For those who haven't taken exercise physiology or any kind of developmental biology course, unless there is a massive release of testosterone (4-10x that of a normal female) during puberty and all the of the strength training times thereafter, it is nearly impossible for a female to become as muscular their male counterpart. Nature won't allow for it.
        Now, there is one caveat to this statement. Naturally, there are females that have higher testosterone levels than others. These specific females do have a chance of becoming more muscular than females. When comparing females with higher testosterone levels to their male counterparts, the males are prototypically larger.

• Strength Training Will Build Confidence

        This final point could be seen as the most important point of the entire topic. One of the things I have noticed in many of today's female athletes is a lack of self-confidence. Again, I know, it's a blanket statement. But, there is a vast number of female HS athletes who struggle with some sort of self-confidence issue. It might be on the "field of competition" or off the "field". Either way, they are struggling with self-confidence issues. Some of these issues may be as simple as not believing they are as athletic as their peers or more serious issues such as body image and body weight concerns. By encouraging young female, and even male athletes, to participate in strength training and strength athletics, I have seen first many athletes work through said issues.

        One way specifically, female athletes gain greater self-confidence is they realize they are, pound for pound, just as strong, if not stronger, than the males. Once a female truly realizes she can lift just as much pound for pound as a male, self-confidence skyrockets.

        One of the other ways confidence in strengthening is females, and males for that matter, realize they are much tougher than they believe they are. By going through the daily struggle and "grind" that is strength training. Young girls and boys sometimes come to the realization they are a lot tougher than they give themselves credit for. The major difference between the two genders, however, once this fact is realized, I have noticed that females are more likely to not allow their ego to intrude on the training process. By allowing the ego never to intrude on the training process, young girls are more likely to trust the process more than their male counterparts. Which in turn, allows for greater gains in both to occur.

        The final point I want to make comes from my life as a father of a daughter and a strength coach, and that is "strength is beautiful." It is pretty common knowledge that modern American society still places a large amount of unwanted pressure on young women to look a specific way or to possess a specific body style. The bad news is this is still happening today, especially on social media. The good news however is, recently, this idea that "strength is beautiful" has begun to take hold in a few different pockets of American society. It has taken a while, but it is happening. The better news is many of the different communities of strength athletes are beginning to speak out about some of these body image issues that are still plaguing American society as a whole.

        Overall, The one thing I believe we as strength professionals and those who partake in strength athletics is to encourage as many young girls as we can to try these wonderful sports. Most importantly, when young girls do step into the weight rooms or training centers for the first time and have the "deer in the headlights" look, we as strength athletes should welcome them with open arms and minds. Most importantly, we need to teach these young girls what it means to be a strength athlete and share with them the joys we have experienced during our time and how strength athletics has changed our lives for the better.

        Thank you for reading this,

        Coach A