Why Weightlifting Feels Like Rebellion For Woman Today

When Lindsay Quyle first started lifting weights, she felt super intimidated. “I didn’t fit in with that gym bro culture,” she says. At the time, she saw weight rooms as the domain of men, filled with dudes grunting while they tried to one-up each other with how many pounds they could deadlift or bench press.

Today, however, it’s a different story: More and more, women are loading up barbells — and using them with just as much expertise and confidence as the beefy guys next to them. “It’s a shift that’s been building for years,” says strength coach Kristie Larson, CSCS, who’s opening a women’s strength training gym in New York City. Over the past decade or so, more women have been rebelling against the diet culture messaging that’s historically encouraged us to exercise solely to look thinner (while prioritizing “feminine” only workouts like Pilates and barre). Instead, we’re leaning into the physical benefits of building a stronger, healthier body through strength training: more muscle mass, denser bones, improved balance, a reduced risk of injuries, and a better ability to manage chronic conditions like back pain and heart disease.

There’s also a mental and emotional release that comes from lifting major weights. And that’s something that can be particularly appealing for lots of women today.

“Strength training isn’t just about lifting heavy; it’s about reclaiming your body as your own and saying, ‘I belong to me.”

“As we’re living through some pretty heavy political moments, especially when it comes to women’s rights and body autonomy, strength training helps develop the resilience to keep showing up,” Larson tells PS. “Strength training isn’t just about lifting heavy; it’s about reclaiming your body as your own and saying, ‘I belong to me.'”

It’s a sentiment that many are embracing. This January, DC-based personal trainer Amanda Schmidt jokingly wrote on Threads: “We are no longer lifting for beach bods. We are training for the resistance. Ladies – get to the gym and lift something heavy. We’ve got Nazis to fight.” The post went viral.

Looking back, Schmidt thinks her message resonated so widely because it gave people both a laugh and an idea of something tangible they could do to regain a sense of empowerment. “I think, really, people are looking for anything to feel hope right now and anything to feel a sense of control or power,” she tells PS.

At the same time, resistance training also provides an outlet for the anxiety many are feeling. For instance, Dianna Kennedy started lifting again after a five-year hiatus right around the time President Trump was sworn into office. “There were a lot of things he rolled out that caused chaos [for] a large number of people, and I was facing a lot of anger,” she says. Lifting weights was a way to channel her frustration into something productive — and it’s worked. “I’m not wanting to punch a wall as often as I did before,” she says.

There’s actually a good deal of research to back up strength training’s ability to decrease anxiety and benefit our mental health overall. “Resistance training can boost mood-regulating neurotransmitters like dopamine or serotonin, which is the happiness neurotransmitter,” says Brook Choulet, MD, a sports and performance psychiatrist in Arizona. You not only get an immediate pick-me-up after a workout, but if you train consistently, you can sometimes see lasting changes, she says.

It’s not just the act of moving heavy things around that helps; the social connections you can make at the gym can also be a major factor. Whether or not you actually befriend other lifters, Dr. Choulet says that even “just seeing the same people and having that sense of community can really protect against depression and burnout, especially for those feeling isolated.”

Sure, there are many places to connect with other people. But the gym is an especially effective environment for this kind of casual but powerful bonding. “Fitness can be such a great place for community because everyone’s doing something hard,” says Jen Roit, a former ballet dancer in New York City who now strength trains regularly. “We’re all showing up together.”

Choosing to hit the bench press rather than the elliptical machine can be a way for women to affirm their own agency, too. “There’s this culture of becoming smaller, taking up less space physically that often is the goal women come to the gym with,” Schmidt says. This plays out in a couple of ways. First, she says she often sees women doing “shy girl workouts” that take up minimal room in an attempt to not draw any attention to themselves, while men will unapologetically use three large pieces of equipment at once. She also finds that plenty of women still feel pressured to workout as a means to lose weight — literally making their bodies smaller — rather than to build strength. “That can be really metaphorical for the fact of society wanting us to be small in a lot of ways,” Schmidt says. “Rebelling against that has a feminist tone. You’re choosing to say, ‘Well, I’m going to do the opposite and make myself stronger.'”

By conquering equipment that was designed for men in a space that is still usually dominated by men, you can’t help but build a certain kind of tenacity that translates to life outside the gym, Larson says. Not only can strength training help us feel more confident taking on more physical activities that we perhaps used to shy away from, but we build the kind of grit it takes to show up in other spaces traditionally monopolized by the opposite sex. And we learn how good it can feel to subvert expectations while we’re at it.

Larson adds that strength training also helps us get more comfortable with failure. “As women, we’re taught to aim for perfection all the time,” she says. “But lifting forces you to hit your limits, to mess up, and try again. You teach yourself how to deal with failure in a controlled environment so that you can take bigger risks in the outside world.”

Of course, it’s not just women feeling this way. People from all kinds of marginalized communities are finding a sense of comfort in building physical strength, too. Quyle, who has since become a fitness coach, has had a lot of people from the queer and trans community reach out, wanting to get strong as means of safety and self defense.

Whatever the exact circumstances or motivation, Dr. Choulet says that reaching for barbells as a way to deal with frustrations, political or otherwise, is generally a healthy coping mechanism. No, you might not be solving the problem itself. But at least you’re dealing with your emotions by investing in your personal fitness and pouring into something that will ultimately make you feel stronger.

As for Roit, she says that whenever she’s got weights in her hands, her mind starts to release its grip on the kinds of negative, self-critical messages that have become ingrained in her psyche (along with so many other women’s). “When I’m weightlifting, it’s the one time where I don’t mind looking in the mirror because the visual is strength — and I like what I’m seeing.”

Jennifer Heimlich is a writer and editor with more than 15 years of experience in fitness and wellness journalism. She previously worked as the senior fitness editor for Well+Good and the editor in chief of Dance Magazine. A UESCA-certified running coach, she’s written about running and fitness for publications like Shape, GQ, Runner’s World, and The Atlantic.