More women take up challenge of weightlifting

As a 14-year-old girl growing up in Bauxite, Brenna Roddy could “throw” a calf that weighed as much as she did - roughly 120 pounds.

“Calf roping is a male sport,” she said.

“They usually don’t let females do it, but I calf roped up until a point where they just wouldn’t let me anymore - until I was 16 and started high school rodeo.”

Now 31, Roddy remembers how her dad taught her basic weightlifting moves - like the dead lift - to help her become strong enough to compete with the boys. And she saw her muscles grow. While her friends struggled with the stereotypic teenage body image issues, Roddy was proud of her strength.

“A lot of my friends were on the dance team or the cheerleading squad and were jealous because I was smaller than them, but I had more muscle,” she said. But many of them were unwilling to train with weights the way she did.

“Some looked at weightlifting like it was a boy’s thing, and they were raised to be girlie,” she said. “And I’m thankful I wasn’t raised that way. I’m thankful I was raised that if I want to do it, I can, regardless of what gender I am.” WOMEN CAN LIFT

With trendy phrases like “strong is the new skinny” stamped across T-shirts coupled with an expanding fitness scene, it’s no longer shocking to see a woman lifting heavy weights in the gym.

“I feel like, 10 years ago, it was cooler for women to be thin,” Roddy said. “I think there’s a huge shift over the past 10 years for women to be fit, and it’s not cool to be super thin anymore.”

Women who talk about “lifting heavy” are not talking about 10- or 15-pound dumbbells. They mean squatting while hoisting their body weight or more. Lifting hundreds of pounds off the ground. Such feats appear more normal on the male side of the gym, but although times have changed on the weight floor, still it’s rare to spot a woman loading plates onto a barbell.

Adele Brewer, 33, a certified CrossFit trainer, thinks more should try.

“People expect guys to be strong, and I don’t know why they don’t expect women to be strong as well,” she said. “That doesn’t mean they’re not feminine. There’s a time and a place to be feminine, and there’s a time and a place for a woman to be strong in her own right.”

She and Roddy are often found in the gym performing technical Olympic lifts - snatch, clean and jerk - and others like the dead lift, press, back squat and front squat.

Roddy’s personal record was a300-pound dead lift. She knows what it’s like to press more than 100 pounds over her head. And to wear a size 6.

“I was lifting the heaviest I’ve ever lifted, and it’s when I looked the best I’ve ever looked,” she said. “I was skinny per people’s standards, and I was very strong.” MUSCLE PROTECTS

Outside of aesthetics, physiological benefits of strength training include joints that are less injury prone, says Kate McCarthy, an orthopedic spine surgeon who is 33, five months pregnant and also a weightlifter.

“My personal approach to weightlifting for any athlete is that’s a wonderful balance to a cardiovascular profile,” she said. “The strength the weightlifting provides for you, in terms of your musculoskeletal function around the joint itself, you can prevent injuries because you decrease the impact load on the joint.”

For instance, when pivoting on a knee, if your hamstrings and quadriceps muscles are strong, they’ll take the force of the movement rather than the knee joint.

However, she’s a keen advocate of moderation and proper form.

“Enough water, enough oxygen and enough love from your mother could kill anyone,” she said. “Everything in moderation. … To have coaching and training done by people who truly understand physiology is very important to doing these movements properly.”

She notes that, as a professional who treats people with injured spines, she tends to err on the side of caution in the gym. At the same time, she theorizes that women are less likely to be guided by ego in the weightlifting room and more likely to listen to their bodies, which in theory should make them less likely to progress to heavier and heavier lifting too quickly and get caught up in competition mania.

Caution, experienced advice and slow progress are key to injury prevention - and injuries incurred on the weight floor can be devastating.

“More than most people, I know what can happen, so I’m the first to throttle back if I feel uncomfortable or feel slight twinges. I don’t try to work through pain like that. I tend to scale back to a lower threshold and probably work through the movement,” she said.

“I think women are better at that than men, and I think women are much more able to recognize their limitations. With men it’s a bit more driven by the competition, whereas with women that same pressure is not always present.”

McCarthy says the benefits of heavy weightlifting haven’t been researched extensively, and so it’s not proper to claim that benefits outweigh hazards. However, strengthening exercises in general have been linked to increased bone density, which helps prevent osteoporosis,which is especially important for women.

“A woman reaches her peak bone mass between the age of 25 to 30,” she said. “If you’ve reached your peak bone mass, no matter what you try to do, that’s the highest point you’re ever going to start from, in terms of if you’re [at risk] for osteoporosis, things dictated by your bone health.”

In the face of bone benefits, McCarthy is bewildered by the hesitation women have when it comes to any level of weightlifting.

“I hope with more awareness of the benefits of seeing people do it, and do it safely, women will be encouraged to do it,” she said.

THE BULK MONSTER

The age-old fear women have is that lifting heavy will bulk them up in a way that’s too masculine.

Elizabeth Hartzell, 25, a personal trainer studying dance at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, had more to fear than most when she began lifting weights. If her form changed too much, it could affect her dancing career. But three years ago, she tried heavier hoisting anyway.

“Because I started dance much later than most people, I was looking for ways to become stronger faster because it requires so much strength,” she said. “Initially I was hesitant about it just because of common misconceptions, so I started slowly. My first dead lift was with a 35-pound kettlebell, and I remember thinking, ‘Can I lift this?”’ she said with a laugh.

“It’s funny to look back on it because, of course you can lift 35 pounds.”

After weeks and then months she was happy with the results of her experiment.

“I didn’t lose weight in pounds, but my measurements got smaller and my dance outfits fit better,” she said.

From a trainer’s perspective, she says, women tend to be weaker than men typically are in their lower back musculature and are more inclined to hunch forward from their shoulders. So she likes to focus on training their posterior side with back squats and dead lifts as well as pulling exercises that will reinforce good posture in the shoulders.

“By focusing on those areas that could be risk factors,you’re making them structurally so much stronger,” she said. “They won’t have as many back issues and hip issues. They’re going to feel better in their everyday life.”

Many of her clients lift heavy.

“I’ve never had any negative feedback from any woman that I’ve trained,” she said. “They generally are a lot happier. A lot of women, when they come to me, they want shapely thighs or they want a booty, and weightlifting will give you that.”

There’s no reason for a woman to not at least give it a shot, said Josh Saavedra, 26, a personal trainer at CrossFit Above and Beyond in Little Rock. Muscle isn’t permanent.

“If you enjoy doing it and you like the way you look, then keep doing it,” he said. “But if you start to see lifting heavy is changing your body in a way you don’t like, you stop, and you find something else. There are tons of ways to work out.”

But to be strong, eventually, women will need to put down the 5-pound dumbbells and pick up heavier weights, he said.

“To get fit and to get strong, you’re gonna have to move some serious weight,” he said. “It might not be a lot in the beginning, but progressively, if you want to see your body get better and change, it’s going to have to get heavier.”

Saavedra’s been a CrossFit coach three years and began coaching his clients in Olympic lifts a year ago. He’s seen muscles start to swell on the shoulders and backs of women and “at first they’re like, ‘ehhh’ but then they embrace it,” Saavedra said.

Roddy said most women with a smaller, more feminine build are worried weightlifting will take that away but more often than not, she sees their newfound strength translate into confidence.

“When they start lifting and seeing that they’re getting strong and seeing what their body can look like, they actually gain confidence,” she said. “So even if, in the beginning, they’re not sure they want to look like that, when they do and their confidence is built up, they like it.”

Hartzell says if societal pressures are keeping women from lifting, it’s time to challenge the status quo.

“I did have a preconceived notion of what it was like to work out, but I really think it’s kind of like, our society and what they tell us we should do,” she said.

“Most of the time I feel like challenging that is a really good thing. To get out of the box and question why people thought not lifting was beneficial for so long, and who said this low weights and cardio are the only way we’re supposed to work out? It’s not for everyone, but I think people should be open-minded and try it.”

ActiveStyle, Pages 29 on 12/16/2013

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