I was sitting in the office of the weight room at Syracuse University checking my email. It was a Thursday morning and it was fairly dead. I work with the majority of the women’s teams at the university under Veronica Dyer, one of the strength and conditioning coaches here at Syracuse. Last semester was all about getting up at 4:30 a.m. to get to the weight room so that we could get everything ready for the 6:00 a.m. lifts with the softball team. Two of the main women’s teams we work with, lacrosse and softball, are in pre-season, so the athletes come in sporadically to lift, meaning our schedule is a little easier. This gives me more time to write, work with clients, teach my class at SUNY Cortland, and study for the chemistry class I’m taking.

Two of the softball girls were in before practice to lift. After they finished, one of them popped her head in the office. I looked up to see what she had to say.

“Deadlifting again next Tuesday?” she asked.

This athlete was in two days before by herself to lift. I was watching her technique and realized something that is fairly common with many female athletes—she was just going through the motions and could lift more than what she was attempting to do. So I added more weight, leading to her lifting a weight that she had never tried before for more reps than she thought she could do.

“Putting blues on each side?” I asked her.

This would make the weight 135 pounds. For a short girl who couldn’t weigh much more than 100 pounds, I thought that would be pretty good, especially since it was for reps.

“Yup,” she agreed.

She shut the door and left with her workout partner to go to practice. This got me thinking about the dichotomy that exists among not just female athletes but females in general. I know female athletes, clients, and friends who love lifting just as much as your typical male meathead. But then again, I know others who are deathly afraid of picking up weights for fear of turning into a she hulk. Their mentality is the factor that is holding them back at the peril of their own performance in the weight room. This is why I see so many female athletes lifting weight that is far below what they can do. So, as coaches, how can we fix this mentality and get our female clients and athletes excited about lifting weights?

So where do we start...

Individual attention: We have eighteen girls on the softball team, and lacrosse has a whopping forty-one athletes. If they weren’t given any individual attention, they could fall into the crowd and slack off. People work harder when other people are paying attention.

Speaking from my limited but soon expanding experience at powerlifting meets, I know that when people are watching and encouraging me, the odds of me lifting a heavy weight increase drastically. It’s a bit easier to pay individual attention to the softball girls. Eighteen athletes are manageable. Much of what we’re looking at is technique versus effort. We see problems with the catch and with knees coming forward on the clean, we see rounded backs on deadlifts, and we have depth concerns and valgus collapses on the squat. That’s easy enough for us to identify and correct, but it’s more difficult to gauge if they’re giving 100 percent effort.

Photo courtesy of Kenneth Richardson

It’s easier to give the lacrosse girls individual attention when they come into the weight room in small groups. I can remember one occasion when I had one of the lacrosse girls come in alone. She deadlifted 135 pounds after she had initially only wanted to do 65 pounds for work sets. A week later, she came in and started to do her work sets with 65 pounds again. I saw this from inside the office and jumped out of my chair to make sure that she’d put on more weight. Reinforcement is crucial. If you put the weight on the bar for them for at least three consecutive times, they’ll get the picture.

Have them deadlift, and I say this for two reasons. Reason number one is that this is a great overall strength builder. It will develop the entire body and is great for injury prevention when done correctly. Knee injuries plague female athletes. If they don’t have good hip extensors, abduction, and external rotation strength, they’re in trouble. Deadlifts are awesome for glute and hamstring development, and because the glutes are extensors and external rotators, we’re getting a lot of bang for our buck. Quad dominance is also fairly common in female athletes, so strengthening the posterior chain should be a priority.

Aside from looking at injury prevention, I like deadlifts for my female athletes and clients because it’s a lift that they get excited about. With my clients, I have them start with hinge movements with dumbbells or kettlebells. Once they move up to the barbell, it’s like they’ve graduated from Weightlifting 101 and this gets them excited. It’s also a lift that they can see realistic progress on. They can remember how they were starting out with 10s on each side and now they’re doing 45s with ease. I have one female client who deadlifts around 250 pounds and has trap bar deadlifted 300 pounds. She gets so excited about deadlift days that she’s even bought herself a pair of pink straps that she loves to break out.

Positive reinforcement: If they have done well on a lift or worked really hard in a conditioning session, acknowledgement can go a long way. This isn’t gender specific. Everyone likes to get recognized for his or her good work. A little praise will keep them working hard.

Finally, a little bit of trickery never hurts. I’ll keep going back to the deadlift because examples always seem to pop up. One of the girls on the softball team wasn’t so sure that she would like to increase the weight from 115 pounds to 135 pounds on her last set. This involved switching from the comfortable yellow plates to the slightly dreaded blue plates.

“OK, OK, fine,” I said. “We don’t have to go to the blue plates, but let’s just put these 5-kg plates on over the yellows.”

She thought about it for a second before she agreed. She finished out her five reps with perfect form before I explained to her that she had just lifted the same amount as a blue weight.

My advice ends here, but we aren’t finished yet. I’d like to hand this over to a coach who has much more experience than I do. In the summer, I interned at the University of California at Riverside with Gary Heron. We’ve kept in touch, and I like to get his opinion when it comes to training athletes, so I thought I’d let him add his two cents:

Justin: Why don’t you tell us a little about your experience in strength and conditioning and what women’s teams you work with at Riverside?

Gary: Currently, I'm the assistant strength and conditioning coach at UC Riverside, but I previously coached at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as well as in the private sector. I graduated from Cal Poly with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and am CSCS, USAW, and functional movement screen certified. Here at Riverside, I work with women’s tennis, golf, cross-country, track and field, and softball.

Justin: What do you think is the biggest reason why female athletes are afraid of lifting weight, and what can we do to address that?

Gary: Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions about what the college level strength and conditioning programs are trying to achieve. Most female athletes imagine the overly muscular bodybuilder type of woman lifting weights when that isn't in any way the intention of our program. Also, depending on sport, there are body image issues that are very legitimate. Certainly in sports where weight is critical (e.g. cross-country runners), there are legitimate concerns about the amount of weight they're carrying and how weights fit into their training in a positive way. It’s our job as strength and conditioning professionals to educate and reinforce the training we're doing with our female athletes. The more we can educate and illustrate why we are doing what we are doing, the more buy in we can get from our athletes and clients.

Justin: Are there any female teams that you think work harder in the weight room? If yes, why do you think that is?

Gary: I’m fortunate at UC Riverside to work with female athletes in many different sports. Our shot putters and discus throwers are probably are most aggressive and determined in the weight room. Purely by the nature of their sport, they have to try to gain strength and power, and the weight room is the only avenue they have to achieve their goals. There are, of course, other highly motivated female athletes who take advantage of the strength and conditioning program. For some of the athletes, not just females, there are the less talented who need to work harder to do the same things as the more talented athletes. While we do have some wonderful athletes who are both extremely talented and highly intrinsically motivated, that isn't always the case. For the most part, the more you need strength in your sport, the more effort you’ll see in the weight room.

Justin: I see that at Syracuse with the female sprinters. Some of them clean some pretty decent weight. What’s the best way to get through to our female athletes in order to get them to work hard?

Gary: The best way to create some buy in with female athletes is really education. Most of the female athletes I’ve worked with have a number of misconceptions about the process, and it is our job to educate them about the process and the goals of the program. It is also important to create a positive environment for them to work in where you celebrate the small victories.

Photo courtesy of Kenneth Richardson

Just the other day, I had a softball player reach a new max in her hang clean. For our female athletes at UCR, you become a member of our clean club if you can clean your body weight. For this athlete, it had been a goal for a long time and she finally achieved it. The team stopped and watched the rep and everyone celebrated that victory with her. I know that this athlete has buy in for life because she’s done the work in our program and achieved something that she is extremely proud of. Little moments like that make all athletes see the rewards and want to work hard. There is also much to be said about the role that sport coaches play in the female athlete’s attitudes. I'm very fortunate to work with sport coaches who place a high emphasis on our student-athletes getting stronger and more powerful. I'm happy to say that all our women’s teams strength train with us and we are able to positively impact their programs.

Justin: Nothing like having the whole team watching to really get motivated. When one of the girls here tries lifting heavy, all the other female athletes are very encouraging, which certainly helps. Any other bits of advice that you’d like to give coaches or trainers who are working with female athletes or clients?

Gary: I've worked with a ton of female athletes, and I think the one mistake I see with many coaches is lowering expectations with their female athletes. At the end of the day, everyone who walks through my door is an athlete, and it is my job to coach them and help them reach their goals. Encourage them to add weight and make progress. Never underestimate a female athlete’s ability to gain strength. It is great to see athletes walk in the door not being able to get the bar out to set it up to being able to front squat their body weight a couple years later. The more you expect, the more women will rise up to meet you as long as they understand what you’re asking of them and why it will benefit them.

Justin: Thanks for the insight, Gary.

*Header photo courtesy of Kenneth Richardson