This isn’t a literature review. This isn’t about litigating studies or shaming any specific methodology. It’s simply a reflection drawn from nearly two decades of trying to figure fitness out in my own body, and from building a career inside an industry that quietly teaches men and women very different things.
Take what resonates. Leave what doesn’t.
The big idea is simple: something important gets missed when we pretend there aren’t real differences in exposure between men and women, especially when it comes to athletic training. What women are given access to in fitness is still dramatically watered down compared to what men grow up immersed in.
And that difference compounds.
A Small Moment That Says a Lot
Earlier this week, I was updating the exercise video library we use for clients. At Eastside Athletics, about 70 percent of our members are women, so I’m intentional about making sure they see women when they open their training app. Women lifting, sprinting, jumping, and doing demanding work.
I searched for a few basic movements:
- A landmine push press
- A deficit deadlift
- A single-leg box jump
Nothing extreme. But every single time, page one of results was filled almost entirely with men demonstrating the movements.
It was a quiet reminder that it’s still uncommon to see women represented doing powerful, performance-oriented training.
The Information Gap
This should go without saying, but women are no less intelligent or less capable. The issue is that men grow up inside training culture. They’re encouraged to lift, to compete, to chase performance early. They’re not asking whether they should train hard. They’re asking how to do it better.
Women, meanwhile, are introduced to fitness through caution:
- Don’t get bulky
- Be careful
- Is that intensity safe for you?
This starts early. Think back to high school. How many boys took weightlifting as an elective? How many girls? Which teams had priority access to the weight room?
That early exposure compounds. By adulthood, men are debating advanced training concepts publicly. Often imperfectly, sometimes loudly, but out in the open. They refine ideas by being wrong out loud. They take up intellectual space.
Women, on the other hand, are still being reassured that lifting weights or training hard is even a good idea in the first place. Our fitness conversations remain shallow, over-simplified, and strangely unintellectual. When women don’t see themselves represented in serious training, visually or culturally, they internalize the idea that maybe it’s not for them. So when results don’t come, they blame their bodies instead of the system that never loaded them enough to begin with.
How I Found My Way Out
I started working out about twelve years ago. For the first few years, I did exactly what the fitness industry told me to do as a woman: spin classes, hot yoga, barre, group HIIT.
I got exactly nowhere. Then I hired my first trainer. We’d usually start with a compound lift like squats, lunges, bench press, pull-ups and then move to accessory work. Three sets. Four or five movements. Nothing complex or flashy. I wrote everything down in a notebook, then went to the gym on my own and repeated it. And for the first time, it felt like something was working.
Since then, I’ve worked with two more trainers — both men. Women can be exceptional coaches, but I chose to work with men because they were far more likely to be fluent in the methodologies I wanted access to. None of them ever told me I needed to train differently because I’m a woman. No hormone lectures. No implied fragility. The weight was the weight. The program was the program.
When I became a trainer, I was the only woman on a team of six men. My entire education in strength and conditioning came through male mentors. Through debates about resistance profiles, exercise selection, and advanced programming. I soaked it all in an tried it myself. The more my training resembled theirs, the better everything got.
What Actually Happened When I Trained Like Men Do
Over time, the results spoke for themselves. My bone density improved measurably across seven DXA scans. I hit my lowest lifetime body fat percentage while maintaining healthy hormone and lipid markers. Over fifteen years, I gained seven pounds of muscle and lost sixteen pounds overall.
I competed in gymnastics again as an adult and learned skills I couldn’t do as a Junior Olympic gymnast. I summited Half Dome. Ran my first half marathon.
The methods now being marketed as “revolutionary for women” like heavy lifting, sprinting, jumping, power development are simply how men have always trained.
What’s Really Holding Women Back
Women aren’t overtrained. They’re massively undertrained. Only about 24 percent of women meet basic muscle-strengthening guidelines.
Yet the industry continues to sell women diluted programming often wrapped in hormone language or “special accommodations.” In my experience, both personally and professionally, women are far more capable than they’ve been led to believe.
There isn’t one universal answer for all women. Context matters and individual needs certainly matter. But don’t let anyone convince you that you’re inherently limited. Don’t accept light weights and watered-down programming simply because it’s marketed to women. And don’t assume you need special rules before you’ve ever tried training like a fifteen-year-old football player.
What Women Need
Women don’t need protection from intensity. We need what men have always had access to:
- Progressive overload
- Heavy weights
- Real effort
- Advanced concepts
- Coaches and trainers who believe we can handle it
Men and women aren’t physiologically identical but we are far more capable than the fitness industry has allowed us to explore.
My goal, as a coach and as the owner of Eastside Athletics, is simple: to normalize women sprinting, lifting heavy, jumping, and chasing performance. Not as an exception, but as the expectation.