"Waste a Squat Rack"

A few weeks ago I did a seminar at one of Thomas Plummer's events, The Rockstar Personal Development event he put on in Chicago. I was speaking to a room full of gym owners and I spoke about what women will be looking for in a gym over the next year and how there will be a shift. I pointed out that over the last year I have been asked by magazine's such as Women's Health and Shape to provide information on how to help women to feel less intimidated in the gym. I was also offered two offers for my book on strength training for women and I recently contributed to a book that will be out next year with the Editor in Chief of Women's Health on how to Look Better Naked- all of these programs and what I get asked for have all been on a trend of women finally "getting" the benefits of lifting weights, "real" weights.

Most gyms still have a Women's Only Section of chrome dumbbells and a butt blaster or inner/outer thigh machine and do not have any area where women can lift "real" weights and not feel intimidated or uncomfortable. My suggestion to these gyms was to make a corner of their gym a "functional" weight training area where there is a rack, a pulley machine, dumbbells and a bench that women would feel comfortable using for many of these programs that are hitting newsstands and book shelves.

One of the male gym owners in the audience blurted out- "You want us to WASTE A SQUAT RACK...." I think I had fire come out of my ears and know that the look on my face probably wasn't too happy. I said, "Excuse me?" "Waste a Squat Rack on women?"

Pretty soon I had every woman in the room, whether they had ever even used a squat rack or not...passionately defending their squat rack and that WE WOMEN NEED A SQUAT RACK and It is not a waste!

Anyway, it was a pretty good exclamation point to my point that most gym owners don't give their female members what they need to change their bodies and as women are catching on that strength training is necessary for them we will be looking for gyms that give us more than chrome dumbbells and a pink butt blaster machine.