Women, weights, (not) weary

Finnish sociologist Satu Liimakka is not well known, and that’s understandable, but her paper published in 2011 is worth knowing. 

While the summary of this oft-cited paper isn’t particularly easy to digest, this small abstract makes it plenty easy for a layperson to understand what is often ignored.  

“How a woman sees her body is mostly reflected based on what society perceives it to be. A woman can feel that her body is alienated from society if it does not appear to be the normal body. It is noted that many girls and women relate to their bodies by regularly monitoring their physical appearance, yet feel dissatisfied and ashamed when attempting to shape their bodies to fit cultural ideals.”

This, the most unfortunate of truths, is exactly why women have battled body dysmorphia through the ages. This, in part, is also why women have steered clear of the weight racks at gyms for long. 

They would rather remain ‘slim’ or ‘voluptuous’ than ‘look like men’. Had that ideology been derived from their own sense of self, it wouldn’t be a problem. But, for the most part, their sense of self in itself is being dictated by society, one which perpetuates that people - men in particular - would not find them appealing. 

The long-standing perception was that lifting weights would make women bulky, thereby unattractive. There is a large population of women who are unaware of the benefits of weight training for their overall health, but even the demographic that does is typically dissuaded by a crude understanding of physiology.  

“… even my mother didn’t like how I looked after I started lifting weights, she made it plenty evident,” says fitness instructor and former bodybuilder Archana Appaiah. “There are a lot of sly remarks made even within the family, but nowadays a lot of women have come to me and said they would like to build muscle like me, but they don’t know how hard that is.”

Here’s a fact: the amount of weightlifting a woman needs to do in order to pack on visible muscle is immense. Even then, they will typically have to engage in supplementation to see results. What this means is most women cannot ‘look like men’ even if they tried. 

Without getting into the details, hormonal constituency - testosterone/ oestrogen levels - has a lot to do to with it besides genetics. A study done in Europe in 2019 showed that for every woman who lifts weights, there are 27 men. That disparity only grows larger in the Indian context to approximately 1:90. 

This is a cultural problem which even Rashmi Cherian, the chief of nutrition at the Centre for Sports Science in Bangalore, has had to endure for years. 

She was fully aware of the benefits of lifting weights as a registered dietician to some of the best athletes in the country, and she went ahead and practiced it eventually but it wasn’t without some jeers along the way. 

The problem, as Sai Prasanna (a world-renowned strength and conditioning coach from Bengaluru) says, is that a lot of people are not aware that lifting - besides strengthening muscles - helps the development of good movement patterns, neuromuscular coordination, increasing Resting Metabolic Rate, improved performance, improvement of bone mineral density, and so on.

“The idea that weightlifting will make women overweight or put them at risk of injury is a misconception,” he insists.  

Here’s the kicker, this cultural concern has historically percolated into the field of sports because female athletes - of the Indian diaspora in particular - are not particularly fond of weight training. 

Fortunately, that’s changing because they now realise that they cannot thrive in this fast-paced world of sports without those heavy bars.

“I don’t exactly lift weights since my injury, but I do use a reasonable weight kettlebell to work on my rotation,” says golfer Pranavi Urs. “I find that through my routine, which also involves resistance bands when I’m travelling, I am way more prepared for the rounds. 

“Golf might seem like a lazy sport but it involves a lot of strength which is why a lot of the golfers have started lifting weights to get that edge, to be able to hit longer, to be able to last the course.”

Archana Appaiah

Track and field legend Ashwini Nachappa said she and her ilk had been using weights, even if they were rudimentary in her days, to improve their performances for a long time. “…and it didn’t matter what people thought about how I looked. I am an athlete, I don’t think I ever thought about how people perceived me. I did it anyway,” she says.

Cricketers aren’t sitting on the fence anymore either. An entire generation of female cricketers have adopted Olympic lifts to help amplify their performance. 

“Gym sessions have become very important. It’s not just your arms or core that you need to generate power with. You also need to have a strong lower body to complete quick singles and convert ones into twos and not fizzle out during a long innings,” Indian skipper Harmanpreet Kaur told a podcast recently.

Harmanpreet is one of the biggest hitters of the cricket ball among women in the world so there has to be some rationale behind her lifting weights as often as thrice a week. Better yet, as the Indian team adopts these new strategies to get better, there is a trickle-down effect. Young girls, some as young as 14, are taking up lifting. 

Before you think lifting at such a young age is bad for them, a paper by Kyle C Pierce in 2022 proves that children can start loading up the weights as early as 7-8-years-old - yes, that includes girls - under ‘proper supervision’. 

The paper also categorically states that this ‘early’ introduction will not impede the child’s growth either. There, that’s another busted myth!

Serena Williams

Surprising as it might seem, even Serena Williams had trouble getting into it earlier in her career, but something changed along the way. She realised the significance of strength training to ensure longevity in the sport. 

She realised another thing along the way: “My view of strength has definitely evolved over the course of my life and the course of my career. I feel like, at the beginning of my career, I didn’t embrace strength. I felt like I had it, looked it, I felt it, and I was it. But I didn’t embrace it. Once I embraced it and didn’t really care about what other people said or what people thought, people started to realise that strength is beauty, and there’s something amazing and beautiful about being strong.” 

Evidently, even GOATs have trouble embracing their bodies - the male gaze is no scoffing matter. But once Serena realised that her aesthetics mattered less than the number of Grand Slams she could win by looking the way she did, having the kind of strength did, and possessing the speed that she did, it didn’t matter to her. 

She lifted. You should too.