For most of modern history, women were warned that lifting heavy weights was unladylike and possibly dangerous. Even as lifting became more culturally acceptable for women in the 1980s, weight rooms largely remained the domain of men.
But in recent years, women have begun to discover, en masse, that building muscle can be an essential part of their health and mental well-being. The percentage of women who regularly strength trained grew to nearly 27 percent in 2020, up from 17.5 percent in 2004. And in the last year, a handful of gym chains have replaced some cardio machines with weight lifting equipment to meet the growing demand.
This surge has been fueled, in part, by a growing body of research showing that women can benefit from lifting at nearly every age and life stage.
As more women discover how good lifting makes them feel, more of them have written about their experiences in the weight room. And while earlier generations of women’s fitness books mainly focused on weight loss, the new crop of books encourages women to pursue strength, in and out of the gym.
This spring and summer alone, three new books explore what happens when women strive to build muscle. If you’re looking for motivation, confidence or guidance on starting or sticking with strength training, here’s what you’ll find in each one.
‘A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting’ by Casey Johnston
Read this if: You’re interested in lifting as a way to feel more physically and emotionally resilient.
Casey Johnston, a powerlifter, has built a devoted online community over the last decade by sharing her passion with strength-curious followers. Her memoir, “A Physical Education,” tells her weight training origin story: In her late 20s, she started lifting at a grungy Brooklyn gym, desperate to move past an eating disorder and a compulsive cardio habit.
From this place of physical and emotional weakness, she discovered that lifting heavy things gave her an appreciation for her body that she had never felt before. It also helped her work through the lingering scars of a traumatic childhood and young adulthood. “I’d always been taught that progress was a matter of raw bravery and grit and willingness to suffer,” she writes. Through lifting, she learned the value of self-compassion and patience.
After a lifetime of trying to be skinny, one of her proudest moments on the path to becoming a competitive powerlifter came when her newly bulging muscles burst the seams of her favorite chambray work shirt, Hulk-style.
While this isn’t a guidebook, Ms. Johnston offers plenty of useful training advice, as well as sharp analysis of lifting culture.
‘On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters’ by Bonnie Tsui
Read this if: You’re looking to find more meaning in your workouts.
Bonnie Tsui, a swimmer and surfer, takes a more holistic view of muscle in her book, exploring not only its role in brute strength but also the way it animates our entire existence, from our hearts to physical affection to the goose bumps that appear on our skin.
“This book is an invitation to explore the many ways that muscle is the vivid engine of our lives,” often in ways that are overlooked, she writes in the book’s introduction.
From the time she was in diapers, Ms. Tsui’s father, a lifting enthusiast and amateur martial artist, encouraged her to flex (literally) and to push herself to her limits physically. She credits her muscles with allowing her to feel joyful, full of awe and connected to other people — especially her dad.
Along with telling her own story, Ms. Tsui profiles a series of exceptional athletes — including the powerlifting pioneer Dr. Jan Todd — whose muscles have not only given their lives meaning, but also offered them spiritual liberation.
‘Lift: How Women Can Reclaim Their Physical Power and Transform Their Lives’ by Anne Marie Chaker
Read this if: You’re intrigued by the discipline, mental benefits and aesthetics of bodybuilding.
In 2019, Anne Marie Chaker, then a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, was a newly separated mother with two young children. She drank alcohol to cope and saw exercise purely as punishment for eating too much. One day, she found herself envying the confidence of the mother of one of her daughter’s hockey teammates, who was a professional bodybuilder. So Ms. Chaker started training, and soon decided to compete onstage — spray tan, string bikini, clear plastic high heels and all.
She found that lifting gave her a new sense of self-determination. “I felt I was grabbing all of life’s crap and imagining it on a bar that I could hoist over my head,” she writes.
The book contextualizes the pressure Ms. Chaker had always felt to be skinny through the history of America’s cultural obsession with thinness, and shares stories of other women who, like her, have focused on becoming as physically strong as possible. “My goal is to show you that fitness and wellness can and should be a way to build — rather than shrink — yourself,” she writes.
At the same time, Ms. Chaker acknowledges that bodybuilding isn’t just about strength — it’s also about appearance, or what she and other bodybuilders call “sculpting a physique,” even if it’s in a way that bucks some conventional feminine ideals. In the weeks before a competition, for example, bodybuilders eat less to “strip away the fat” and make their musculature as visible as possible when posing onstage. Most of the book focuses on the value of building strength, but at times, this message can be in tension with the sport’s intense focus on aesthetics.
Of the three books, Ms. Chaker’s is the most prescriptive, offering practical advice for forming habits, building muscles and more.
Danielle Friedman is a journalist in New York and the author of “Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World.”
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