Training like a WOman

Ok so if you have seen the film "So I Married an Axe Murderer" with a very young Mike Myers, you will get that my title is from his poem. "Woman! WOman! WOOOOOAHman.... She stole my heart and my cat!"
And if you don't get that, then you are now thinking that I am a little bit random.... ok! Moving on to the real topic of training like a woman.

When I first took an interest in weight lifting I said "I want to train like a man, you know, in the man's section". Please forgive my naivety, as I had only ever seen men in the free weights area and hadn't yet begun to do my own research. Once I had done this and been shown the basics from my partner, I began to realise that a lot of these men that I had been staring at in awe previously, were actually doing it completely wrong!
I'm sure you have all seen that man with the massive arms and the hilariously little "chicken legs". My partner affectionately calls these men "Curl bros". Pretty apt if you ask me. They spend the entire time that I am doing my work out doing isolation exercises to make sure that their "guns" are as huge as possible. They forget to train their body as a whole and develop their muscle unevenly across their body. Surely they must realise that they are going to do their body an injury? It would seem not. There are few men that I see training their legs and back, but these are usual the ones that grunt and squeal like a pig in an attempt to attract the most attention as possible. My feelings of admiration have rapidly dissolved. Give me functional strength over massive muscles any day!

Nia Shanks wrote an article about "training like an athlete" not a man or a woman. Just simply someone that is focused on training to become faster and stronger. Aiming to improve your performance is a much more positive goal than aiming for fat loss or calories burnt. Instead of being unhappy with yourself and getting wrapped up in the way you look, you instead push yourself towards becoming a better you, but in a healthy way. There shouldn't be a difference in the way women and men train, but sadly that is the reality of it.

However I feel that when training as a woman you need to be a little bit more than just an athlete. I like to think there are plenty of women that have looked at the weights section and thought to themselves "I would like to try that" but that every time they have summoned the courage to edge over there, they have been scared away by the men that gawk at them or pressure them into cutting their sets short. Training as a woman in a male dominated section requires self esteem, confidence and a little bit of attitude. The strength that you acquire as you work out, can be applied to so many other areas of your life and you become a stronger person as a result. Some times it just comes down to having some backbone and  faking it, until you make it.