“STRONG is strong. Big isn’t strong”.
That’s powerlifter Tania George’s mantra for encouraging women to reconsider their pussyfoot approach to strength training in the gym.
Jodie MarshThe message itself is strong, but those recent photos of Jodie Marsh looking like she’s had her head superimposed onto the body of Fifty Cent certainly don’t make me want to crack egg into my mouth and head for the nearest squat rack.
The little known difference is that Jodie Marsh trained to be a bodybuilder, not specifically for strength. The sole focus of strength training is quite simply for strength, rather than a competitive physique.
“Jessica Ennis looks amazing. She will definitely have to weight train to get the power in her glutes and hamstrings. That doesn’t come from hours on the treadmill."
Strong Is The New Skinny is a new women’s strength training class at Olympic gym in Eccles, taught by Tania. Having set four new European records and four British records in the Welsh Open Powerlifting Championships this year, Tania’s aim is to inspire more women to hit the stop button on the treadmill, leap over our cultural barriers and misconceptions and land, unfazed, in the free weights area of any gym.
Tania said: "How many women have you seen on the treadmill, week after week, looking exactly the same? Dare I say it in spin classes too?
"There’s a lot of evidence to back up the fact that women run themselves fat. Excessive cardio in women can actually shut down their metabolic system.
Strong Is The New Skinny
"Chain gyms in particular, can be very patronising places with their dedicated ‘women only’ zones, often containing plenty of cardio equipment but very few free weights. It’s as though they’re saying to women ‘this is all you’re capable of’, when in fact we’re capable of so much more than they realise.”
The new classes have already had a surprisingly large turnout of women of a wide variety of ages, shapes and sizes - all keen to squat, bench press and dead lift their way toward their bodily goals.
“Women you’d never guess want to have a go,” said Tania. “One of the ladies has lost six stones in the last year by coming to our gym. This time last year she was a size 24. She came in really shy and now she’s lost weight and gained muscle and confidence.”
Part of the journey for that lady and many others, has included having the strength of mind to attend such a gutsy gym in the first place. Olympic is more spit-and-sawdust than sauna-and-steam-room and Tania knows most women are reluctant to train in a room with pumped up, shaven headed men in low cut XXXL vests and clown pants.
Olympic Gym, Eccles
“We could hold the women’s strength class in the back room but that doesn’t breed confident female trainers. These are areas of the gym that most women won’t go anywhere near such as the squat rack, power rack or a bench – God forbid women go anywhere near a bench and do some actual bench presses," Tania laughed.
“It’s not because women don’t want to though, it’s because they don’t know how to use the equipment and don’t want to look stupid. The power lifting community is actually quite magnanimous."
Having joined in a class, I can attest to everything Tania says. Unless it’s something as stimulating as Zumba, cardio in gyms can be a total bore without specific goals of marathons or long bike rides. The only part of me that ever gets a good workout on the treadmill is my sanity. Strong Is The New Skinny immediately struck a chord because strength training covers all bases of health and wellbeing without the long road to nowhere.
Tania picks a particular area of strength training each week in the class and really hones in on it, hard. We were faced with the dreaded dead lift on my visit – a move I’ve only ever associated with The World’s Strongest Man competition on the telly.
Getting ready to warm up, we must have looked like we were about to start a step aerobics class but there was a secret satisfaction in knowing the only step we’d be doing would be up onto the dead lift platform where the big guns train.
Tania demonstrates a deadlift
Easing us in gently, we began with a warm up of squats followed by demonstrations of the positioning and motion of a dead lift, first on our own, then with just the bar and finally up on the platform with weights.
Tania was there the whole time, guiding and correcting us to achieve the perfect stance and movement, avoiding injury and embarrassment. Lifting the weight was actually just a by-product of the whole process and I was astounded by what we were able to lift having perfected the technique and set our minds to it. Working in short sets of five, taking it in turns in the group, the time flew by and unlike other gym sessions I felt boosted, rather than completely drained of energy.
Tania said: “The sessions are quite intense. It doesn’t seem like we do much, but you feel it. It’s character building too. When you’re picking something up and it’s heavy, it only has to be heavy for you. The first thing your head tells you is ‘don’t do it’. You’ll fail a lift in your head before your body does. Then you start to think ‘if I can do that, I can do anything’.”
The following day, I could feel it in my quads, glutes, trapezius shoulder muscles (I’d finally discovered my ‘traps’, according to Tania) and my inner core – the biggest indicator that it really is a full body workout. More importantly my back was completely ache-free so the technique must have been spot on. Oh and I didn’t feel ‘hench’ either – a common worry of women toying with the idea of venturing into the free weights area.
“You’re not going to turn into a massive She-Ra from this,” Tania said. “Women always say ‘but I don’t want to be big’ and the response from me is ‘well you’re not going to be disappointed then’.
“You’ll never know your potential when you restrict yourself before you even start. What will happen in these sessions, is you’ll stimulate lean muscle mass and growth.”
Tania credits athletes such as Jessica Ennis as excellent role models for a healthy female body image, as opposed to the overdone Jodie Marsh or super skinny supermodels of this world. Strong is the new skinny and the new sexy, apparently.
Jessica Ennis - 'a brilliant ambassador for how a healthy woman should look'
“It’s the strength training that gives us shape,” she said. “Jessica Ennis looks amazing and some would say ‘yeah and she’s a runner’, but the difference is she sprints so she will definitely have to weight train to get the power in her glutes and hamstrings. That doesn’t come from hours on the treadmill.
“She has beautiful posture, her shoulders are back, everything is held in the right way. She goes in and out from the waist with a ski slope for a bum. When you look at marathon runners, they look nothing like that.”
She has a point. Certainly if running is your thing, then a running club is what you should join. But if you want to build strength of body and mind whilst aiming for an arse like Ennis, you’ll need to run in the opposite direction - preferably into a gym that truly gets it like Olympic. Those shaven headed folk don’t bite.
Strong Is The New Skinny takes place at Olympic Gym every Monday, 7-8pm. The class is free to gym members and £4.50 to guests. Please call 0161 707 7161 to reserve your place.
Click here for the Olympic Gym Facebook page.
Olympic Gym
Bridgewater Mill
Legh St
Eccles
M30 0UT
