The benefits of female weightlifting

Weight training exercises for women

The world of fitness and exercise is finally getting women to include weights in their training routines. And we're not talking about those vinyl, coloured weights designed for women like we were a few years ago. Women are capable of lifting heavy loads, with power and intensity, and that brings them a multitude of benefits.

For many years, women have been made to believe that they should not show their strength, they have even been made to believe that there were things that they should not or could not do, but times are changing, luckily.

Women in crossfit competitions

The increase in female presence in sports competitions , as well as the greater interest of the media in giving them visibility, added to the content generated on social networks, has enabled an explosion of female athletes in strength sports, such as weightlifting.

These new role models for girls and women around the world not only show their sporting successes, but also strong, muscular bodies that are still feminine, because they see themselves that way and that is what matters, and that is the message that is gradually getting through.

Weightlifting, CrossFit and powerlifting are gaining new followers exponentially every year. Women are starting to show interest and to stand out in strength sports, a field previously almost exclusively reserved for the male public.

Weightlifting has managed to sneak into the training routines of many people through CrossFit, and for most people the first time they came into contact with an Olympic bar was in a box.

And what does weightlifting bring to women?

Weightlifting, like strength sports in general, has physical, psychological, and also social benefits.

Lifting a barbell with plates that exceed your body weight makes you rethink a lot of things. When you are in “the hole”, feeling the weight of the bar on your collarbones, in a squat so deep that if you fell you would only land a few centimeters and the thought of letting go of the bar and the thought of giving up gains strength every second you are in that damn position.

But you resist, you grit your teeth and you order your legs to burn if they have to, but only go up from there. And you go up, and you succeed. That feeling of throwing the bar from the top, that's it. In that success.

On that rise are those who said why do weightlifting, what a sport. A sport that will improve your strength, power, stability, balance, endurance, stability, aerobic and anaerobic capacity. A sport that will train your muscle chains as a group, working as a perfect gear to achieve a goal. A sport that crushes under the weight plates every doubt of whether a woman can lift heavy weights. Of course she can.

On that climb are the women and girls of today who practice it and who are role models, paving a path with sweat, steel and rubber, day after day for future generations. These brave women who get up on stage to show that strength is a human capacity, which does not understand gender, because we are all strong.

That climb has meant hundreds of previous lifts, cleans, squats and failures that have forged a strong body and character. A capable body, a body with a musculature that provides the woman not only with what is necessary to lift that bar but also the ability to perform and move better in her day to day life.

This increase means that when a woman looks in the mirror she does not see “muscles”, she sees her body as feminine as before but changed, and still hers, she feels that belonging and pride. She does not hide that she is strong because, as we have said, her character has also been forged and she can and does express her way of being, feeling and living through her body as well.

This increase will lead to improvements in their core and pelvic floor to improve and work muscles that will make them more capable of taking care of themselves in any situation in their future maturity, and they will be able to move more safely thanks to their muscle mass.

That rise elevates phrases like “I’ll help you, you can’t do it” until they disappear. Yes, you can. So yes, weightlifting has many benefits. And if you don’t believe me, try it, you have nothing to lose except fear.