Women's Weight Lifting: The Media Trick that Broke the Barrier

In the early to mid 1980's, there was a sudden boom, almost an explosion, in popularity, when it came to the concept of women lifting weights.

Previous to then, the idea of women workout out with weights at the gym wasn't much talked about. In the late 1970's, there was a bodybuilder named Lisa Lyon. She was a pioneer in women's competitive bodybuilding. A pioneer -- yet, she was hardly muscled up. She was very cut, yes, with lots of definition. But she was on the thin side.

Yet people were awestruck at the sight of her. These days, if a woman looks the way Lisa Lyon did back then, she'd go very unnoticed at a bodybuilding or figure contest. That's because women's weight lifting has come so far over the past 30 years.

Years ago, if you simply mentioned, "lift weights," or "weight lifting" to women, it would turn them off. This was something that only men did. Women shouldn't lift weights. It was unfeminine. It would bulk them up. What kind of women picks up dumbbells or bench presses? Jeez. This was the general attitude before the mid 1980's when it came to pairing women with weights.

Fitness magazines that targeted women were leery of printing articles about women working out with weights. Would such articles go over well? Look at women's health and fitness magazines dating back more than 25 years ago. See how many articles you can find about weight workouts. You'll see plenty of articles about aerobics classes, running, jogging, stretching, yoga, golf, jump rope, trampolining, cycling and swimming...but very few will be about leg presses, barbell squats, dumbbell presses, lat pull-downs, muscle definition, lean mass, etc.

So what, then, turned the tide? Two words: WEIGHT TRAINING.

Somebody got really smart and coined the term "weight training" in reference to women's weight lifting. The terms of "weight lifting," "lifting weights," "bodybuilding" and "pumping iron" conjured up images of big burly men with bulging muscles. These terms didn't have a feminine ring to them. When an woman was told, "You should lift weights," this didn't go over well, because "lift weights" brought to mind big muscular arms and a broad torso.