What does a powerlifter look like???
I DO NOT have a penis. PMPM is lying for reasons I can’t even imagine. Probably threatened that I’ll be stronger than her when I make my comeback. Did we get weighed in naked together at the last meet, PMPM?
When I deadlift or squat in the weight room, I am usually the freak show attraction. The only female in there, or the only one using an actual barbell instead of the light dumbbells. This unasked-for attention is OK with me, but such a situation will keep many, many women from even setting foot in the weight room.
To answer to the OPs main question, yes there is still the preception that women who lift weights will end up with big ugly muscles.
I do not see this improving much in the near future. The skinny-fat look for young women is the fashion, and judging from what I saw out and about today, most middle-aged women are just…fat.
Most people in general are just…fat.
It’s become a habit/game to count the people at walmart who are overweight. it’s sad. And I’m weird, haha!
Everyone being fat is a whole other issue entirely, although maybe I can actually add that to this discussion.
Here’s a question to the personal trainers here who are women: have you ever called or hinted at someone you were training (another woman) that they were overweight, chubby or fat? I know male trainers can’t say those kinds of things, socially unacceptable. Men and women trainers can, however, call most men they are training fat, chubby or overweight in one form or another without hurting their feelings. In many ways it just motivates them to work harder.
How can trainers motivate women to try weights out when they can’t even motivate them to push harder without hurting their feelings?
Just to add my two cents…
I’ve heard women at the gym ask their personal trainer, “what is that exercise she’s doing?” in reference to my stiff leg deadlifts and good mornings. And then I heard the personal trainers (twice, different instances) tell their women clients, “oh, you don’t want to do that. You’ll get bulky. See, lifting heavy weights like she’s doing is going to end up building more muscle than her frame can really hold.” ('Cause I look Heeuge! Beefcake!)
In these cases, it was actually the personal trainers fault, in my opinion. Because they spew that crap out their mouths these middle aged women (both late thirties to early forties) who were interested in doing the right thing, are now convinced that they just need to lift pink dumbells for sets of 20 and use the treadmill to walk up at an incline for 20 minutes a day and they’ll look like Angelina Jolie. All because someone they trust, that they paid money to trust, doesn’t know shit and spits crap out their mouth like explosive diarrhea all over my weight room. I’ve never had a woman say she doesn’t want to have muscles like I have, but I have had women say they would never want to even imagine lifting that much weight “'cause they’d hurt themselves”. I believe this is an excuse for not trying because they’re afraid they won’t be good at it. I think there’s a huge untapped market out there of housewives in their 30s and 40s who would love to get into lifting weights if they could be educated on the fact that it won’t make them huge and that they in fact can absolutely be good at it with work and time. I don’t know how you convince them of this, but it’s what I believe, just from talking to women in my neighborhood.
I guess part of my problem in understanding this phenomenon is … I don’t get why women want to look skinny and not have muscle. Mel, you’re hot! You’re not bulky! I know you work hard to get that much muscle, but the thought that any woman in her right mind would say that they don’t want that much muscle… I just don’t get it. Muscles are sexy. Muscles are hot. Women lifting weights is even hotter. The only women I’ve ever seen that have more muscle than I’d want have obviously been juicing and/or are still juicing (which is obvious by their jawline and the cartilage growth in their nose, combined with not being nearly as strong as that much muscle warrants).
Yep, that’s my problem with this whole thing. I think we just see the world completely differently.
The few women that I’ve worked with didn’t need me to tell them they were overweight to put it nicely.
The trainers at my gym are pretty L-A-M-E but the couple of times their female clients asked what I was doing over there, the responses I heard were, “she’s doing X and that’s an advanced move so it’s something I wouldn’t do with you right now, but I would down the road.” I think if I ever heard “you don’t want to do that, you’ll get bulky” I’d take my bulky ass over and knock the guy upside his head. 
[quote]kpsnap wrote:
I like the fact that the serious equipment is usually open at my gym, which translates into little or no waiting time for me. I think other women see me lifting and get worried that they’ll bulk up and look like me if they lift heavy weights.[/quote]
if that is you in your avatar, more women should look like you!
I remember when I first wanted to Deadlift. I went over to one of the trainers at my gym and asked him if he could show me the proper form and movement for the lift. He laughed at me and told me that girls should not do that lift and a slender girl like me… this was when I weighed about 40 lbs MORE then I do now… would hate to get bulked up like that lift would make me. He made me so angry, I finally went through the trainers asking them and got the basics.
My gym doesn’t have trainers, it has ONE trainer: the owner. $30 for 30 minutes.
[quote]PDJD wrote:
[quote]kpsnap wrote:
I like the fact that the serious equipment is usually open at my gym, which translates into little or no waiting time for me. I think other women see me lifting and get worried that they’ll bulk up and look like me if they lift heavy weights.[/quote]
if that is you in your avatar, more women should look like you![/quote]
Thank you. It is me. And I made my initial statement in jest.
My wife used to have that perception but I “broke her” She now trains with me and does squats, deadlifts and everything else I do only more reps.
There is hope.
I lift heavy for a “woman” deadlifts, barbell rows, squats, etc…i work out alone also…i always get a stare down (in a good way). 
My legs (quads) have become a lil mass (my bf calls me arnold) but i surely know they look great. I rarely ask trainers for anything…i read up on most questions i have. Im not a trainer but women at my gym sure ask me alot of questions on what i do…hehe
A lot of non-dedicated, non T-Vixen type women that go to the gym go there for all the wrong reasons:
- To feel like they are working out/feel better about themselves
- To say they went to the gym
- To satisfy a man
As such, it’s hard to expect many of them to really believe what others are telling them. Additionally, I know a lot of men that don’t like women big and strong. There is even a recent SAMA thread talking about how it was actually a turn off for the OP. I don’t agree with him, but I would imagine that most of these cardio-bunny women are concerned about protecting their ego’s and their relationships.
Considering most men prefer to be stronger and taller than their female counterparts (and most women prefer to be shorter and weaker than their men), I’m not surprised that the majority of women are not very interested in lifting big; most of you can outlift the average man.
[quote]njrusmc wrote:
There is even a recent SAMA thread talking about how it was actually a turn off for the OP. I don’t agree with him, but I would imagine that most of these cardio-bunny women are concerned about protecting their ego’s and their relationships.
Considering most men prefer to be stronger and taller than their female counterparts (and most women prefer to be shorter and weaker than their men), I’m not surprised that the majority of women are not very interested in lifting big; most of you can outlift the average man.[/quote]
I would like to think most of us in SAMA refer to the OP of that thread as a “fuckass”. Really everyone has their own tastes, so to each their own. I think he was probably intimidated by her physique though. And with that being said, you girls probably don’t want that kind of man anyways. So please keep lifting, don’t become skinny fat, for the love of god.
Edit: Shit accidently wrote women instead of man, my paragraph took on a different meaning.
[quote]mom-in-MD wrote:
I’m really trying to be a good example…that way if a woman says, ‘well, I don’t want to get bulky,’ I can say, ‘Do I look ‘bulky,’ to you??!’ You don’t just WAKE UP one morning with bulging muscles.
Unfortunately I suck at closing the deal, and I refuse to talk someone into something they don’t really want. I can count on my fingers and toes how many clients I’ve had in the last year. And some of them ended up with the ‘popular,’ trainer who makes them do stupid shit. I refuse!!
Sometimes I wish I worked at a all MENS gym.(is there such a thing?) At least you don’t have to talk them into doing meaningful work with weights! Well, at least 95% of them.[/quote]
MMD,
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sticking to your guns and being the ‘unpopular trainer’ as you say. Be yourself. When you’re selling personal training you’re really selling a bit of yourself. When I was personal training I always sought out those personalities of people who were much like my own, needed help, a little push and wanted to work hard. I’d work with many different types of people, but the ones who stuck with me all believed in my set of ideals. You come in to the gym, you stick with your big exercises, you work hard, fast, and lift heavy as you can. We would do some fluffy exercises, but I generally had a rule that we would only do an exercise that I would do myself. If I didn’t do it, they wouldn’t do it either. I ended up being one of the best trainers there. I wasn’t the most popular because I wouldn’t just let people slide. In the end though I think I had about 20-25 clients, a large variety of people, but they all liked how I trained and how I gave them a good workout everytime, but kept it interesting. You just have to get people to rely on you for a good workout, more like a coach than a personal trainer. Pull your clients along for the ride and you’ll do fantastic.
v/r
Gremlin
Wow okay, my personal training experience as been totally different. I have an entire client load comprised of people of all ages and sexes to LOVE lifting heavy, never did it before they met me, are convinced after a short period that lifting heavy is the only way they’ll get the body they want, and all of the women would fire me if they woke up one day looking like Nicole Richie.
The problem is that they were all scared to use weights, not because of what they’d heard, but because they knew they didn’t know anything about them.
You wouldn’t believe how many women have told me they want an ass like mine, which is not tiny and non-existant.
The only problem I’ve run into is women scared of loosing their boobs.
[quote]ouroboro_s wrote:
[quote]mom-in-MD wrote:
^ Thats because you don’t add smileys :)[/quote]
Smileys turn you into a manly beast?? Fuck! No wonder I’m still skinny.[/quote]
lmao.
When I first started to turn the tide against lard (the butt variety) I did “yoga booty ballet”…“hip hop abs”…then p90x. All fair programs, but certainly none of them are going to turn you into a beast.
By the time I had finished p90x I started recieving comments from my family, mostly the females, about how extreme my life style was, and wasn’t I afraid I was going to look like a man? Ludicrous. P90x felt more like a weighted cardio routine. W.E.
Once I was confident enough to go into a real gym and increase my weights and actually start a split that truly might get me some mass, all I could think about was wanting to look like Ava Cowan and the like. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE training hard and heavy. It keeps me going. It defines me.
In that moment when I give all my body has to give and I’m one rep away from failing but I still make my numbers, that’s me. No one else, just me.
I don’t think I look manly, but just yesterday, my neice asked me if she could use my old p90x dvds. I was suprised and pretty excited and started to talk to her about the weights etc. She cut me off and said “Oh, I’ll just be doing the cardio and plyometrics and yoga and abs parts, because I don’t need to lose weight like you and I don’t want bulky man arms like yours, no offense”
I sat in stunned silence for a second. I finally responded that she’s in no kind of physical shape to be able to lift the kind of weight that it takes for me to get my man arms so not to worry. She got a funny look on her face and excused herself from the room.
Sometimes people’s ignorance makes me want to do something violent :S I can only hope the situation will improve with the popularity of bikini and figure competitions, but even within that arena I find a lot of girls that are very opposed to training hard and heavy in case it makes them bulky.
I think there are many different ways to train but if you are educated about what you’re doing there’s little chance of you walking out looking like Dorian Yates. Ava Cowan trains with very ‘old school’ lifting movements and noone could accuse her of not being feminine.
Epic epistle sized post…sorry, I got a bit heated as I was typing
Thanks Gremlin! All I can do is keep being me! And I’m like you, I wouldn’t train anyone differently from how I train myself…
Everyone has different goals of course, but you can program there training to suit them. Unlike Miss Popularity who’s signature move is Tricep kickbacks, and half repped bicep curls standing on toes…I feel sorry for the guys that she has doing that crap.