This is a strong title for this article, but I feel that it needs to be as I really believe it to be true.
If you google ‘best female-only gyms”, then you will get a load of results showing the type of gyms that are down right degrading to women.
I just don’t see the appeal of a load of crappy ‘air-resistence’ machines in a big circle. It’s different if you are going through a rehabilitation program, but for everyone else, this type of exercise is no where near as effective as ‘free weights’.
I suppose they look a lot less scary, but these machines encourage you to use far fewer muscles than you would if you did the same exercise with free weights. This means burning fewer calories and taking longer to get any results.
RUBBISH!!
The problem we have though is that most people associate ‘free weights’ with that horrible section of most gyms where all of the big, tattooed guys hang out flexing, grunting, admiring and intimidating. You can feel the eyeballs on your back if you are a new face in that section, especially if you’re female!
Why go from one extreme to the other though. It’s been scientifically proven that free weights are much more effective at utilising more muscles and burning more calories, so why would you not make free weights available to be used by women.
Is it because generally there is an assumption that they can’t use them? Or is it that there is concern they will get injured? Either way I think it’s wrong to assume this. Why would a woman have any more chance of an injury if they have selected the correct weight and have been shown properly how to use it?
Rather than treat women any different, Alex and myself encourage all of our clients to lift weights, slam medicine balls, push prowlers, pull sleds, put on a pair of boxing gloves and punch the crap out of a boxing bag. The great thing about doing this sort of variety of exercise is that rather than bulking up, (and due to such low testosterone levels) women end up stripping fat, looking more toned and getting rid of wobbly bits a lot quicker.
The difference between a ‘traditional all female’ gym and our ‘all female’ facility is loads more variety, loads more fun, and much better results.
