More and more women are beginning to occupy spaces in the gym that had been socially ‘men’s’, until now. The free weight rooms intimidate them and make them feel uncomfortable, but many have managed to find a way to dare to occupy these spaces: to be accompanied by their ‘gym sis’ (training partners). Weight rooms are no longer the exclusive territory of ‘gym bros’, since the rise of women who publish strength training videos on TikTok is encouraging many others to enter them, even if it is with the need to be accompanied of friends to give each other support and feel safer.
Gender stereotypes continue to dominate gyms: for women, Zumba, Pilates and running machines; for men, iron and, at most, some kind of cycling or body pump. The situation, however, is changing little by little, although with difficulties. Strength work does not have to be exclusive for men. There are more and more women who are interested in strength training, but they do not dare to enter the free weight rooms of gyms for fear of feeling watched and receiving sexist, condescending comments and even having their photographs taken.
Júlia Mayral, 23, joined the gym at 16. At first, she started with cardio exercises and guided activities such as Zumba or cycling: “It’s typical, almost all girls start like this.” She later began focusing her training on strength exercises and ventured into the free weight room. But her change was difficult for her: “At first I felt very insecure; “I was just starting out and I didn’t really know how the machines worked, so I felt watched and judged.”
Andrea Morillas (22) also started in the gym at age 16 with cardio exercises and guided classes. “At 18 I started strength training,” but she explains that entering the free weight room was also a challenge for her: “It’s a very masculine environment. I felt ashamed and I felt intimidated. In fact, I didn’t dare to take the step until I went with friends, because it was very difficult for me to enter that environment. It seems silly, but I needed to be accompanied so as not to feel so overwhelmed.”
Mayral was embarrassed and did not dare to enter the free weight room alone and explained that, being a girl, you get a lot of looks, “because there are still few of us.” He comments that it is an intimidating environment and, with the pressure of knowing that they are watching you, your insecurities are enhanced: “Before I thought they were looking at me because my cellulite was noticeable or my belly was visible, but now I have gained much more confidence in myself and, if they look at me, I think it’s because I’m lifting a lot of kilos,” she says.
Jordi Bertran, personal trainer, explains that “before, weight rooms were almost exclusively the territory of men and women did not feel integrated. Fortunately, this is changing. There are more and more women in the fitness room, although unfortunately there are still a lot of guys who make them uncomfortable with looks and comments.” According to this INEFC professor, the gym acts as a reflection of society: “the younger population has very sexist attitudes that are reflected in their attitude in the gym.”
For Bertran, “aesthetic pressure greatly affects when playing sports, especially for young people. “On TikTok, an aesthetic typical of Temptation Island is promoted.” He points out that this encourages stereotypes in sporting activities: “Men work their abs, pectorals and arms, and women tend to focus on their glutes.” Mayral adds that she has heard many people call men ‘gay’ for attending yoga classes.
The key, for Bertran, is that objectives are set by the management of sports clubs to integrate women into fitness rooms, due to the health benefits that this entails. She assures that strength work “is one of the best antidotes for the prevention of osteoporosis, improving posture, the functioning of internal organs, hormonal secretion and weight loss.”
One of the main reasons that stops women from entering free weight rooms is the looks and inappropriate comments they receive. “The men’s comments are horrifying,” says Júlia Mayral. “There are guys who take photos of your ass while you drink water or who come up to touch you when you do exercises like Romanian deadlifts or cut off the series you are doing to say something stupid, and the gym, in these situations, looks away and that It’s very angry,” Mayral laments.
There is a lack of gender perspective among the professional teams in many gyms, analyzes Jordi Bertran: “that the professional responsible for the fitness room does not act in these situations is a serious problem. The room coach has the responsibility of stopping it and making it clear that we come here to train.”
The ‘powerlifter’ assures that at the beginning she received many derogatory comments: “They told me that for training so much, I still had cellulite, that I was chubby.” Now, years later, she continues to receive offensive comments, but this time for being “too muscular.” “Muscled bodies in women are not well regarded,” Mayral deplores, “and many men, but also women, make comments like ‘how fucking disgusting.’”
Women feel like they have to mentally prepare to enter those rooms. In the case of Júlia Mayral, she explains that she now enters with an attitude that does not give rise to comments: “the worst of all is when they mansplain you” (when a man explains to a woman how she has to do something condescending or paternalistic way, even when that woman is a specialist on the subject); “We talk about it among all the girls at the gym, it’s what we hate most of all.”
Morillas has also received condescending comments disguised as advice: “You can tell that they say it from a position of superiority, like they know how to do it well because they are men and we don’t.” Another common behavior is that men get itchy when they put on more weight than them, as if their masculinity was damaged.
The key, for Júlia Mayral, “is to train with someone with whom you feel a little sheltered” and remembers that, when she first joined the gym, there were only three women in the free weight room: “We were ‘respected’ by being the only ones who stepped foot in that room. Now there are still many more boys in comparison, but there are more and more girls.” And she attributes this boom in women starting to train free weights to the growing popularity on social networks of videos of women who show their training routines, their progress and encourage others to do the same.
Many of these videos are accompanied by the tag ‘gym sis’ (sisters or gym mates). Although the ‘gym bro’ tag (the male version) continues to yield many more results on TikTok – there are currently almost two million videos compared to the 87,000 videos with the ‘gymsis’ tag – there are more and more women posting this type of content .
“A few years ago there was almost no information about how to train, and what there was was more focused on men,” observes Mayral. The ‘powerlifter’ explains that, if you looked for videos on strength, “you only found men teaching how to deadlift 200 kilos or women doing body pumps, but there was no content on free weights for women. On the other hand, now there is much more information about strength training for women and we can feel more identified with these videos.”
For Morillas, a biology graduate, the rise of ‘gym sis’ videos shows the importance of having female references who train strength. Thanks to them, she was encouraged to start too: “These videos guide you and take away that insecurity of entering the free weight room without knowing how the machines work. This makes you go to the gym with a different mentality, with more confidence.”
Bertran comments that “although networks exert aesthetic pressure, it is true that there are more and more professionals who use them to educate about sport and the benefits of strength training and that is a very positive trend that will hopefully dethrone the other. The problem is that there are no filters that allow us to distinguish between the recommendations of professionals and the bad advice of any user with followers, because there are many people who recommend atrocious things.”
