Getting Girls to Train

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Okay, so you’ve met a girl who is no longer skeptical and is willing to train, but now you need to give her quality advice as she starts a new program. Teaching and coaching are dependent on taking complex concepts and whittle them down to easy-to-implement points of emphasis. I have a few topics that we’ll cover in following “70’s Big Women” posts on Monday. Today’s focuses on setting up the new trainee on a quality program.

I’m not so egotistical that people need to do my exact program, nor am I even going to require that all girls primarily strength train. My only requests are:
– squat twice a week
– bench and press once a week each
– do a horizontal and vertical pulling movement once a week each
– do RDL’s twice a week OR RDL and deadlift once a week each
– cardio (low or high intensity) should be kept to training days or Saturday

I’m not really concerned with deadlifts, especially in the first few months of training. The RDL is a movement that works similar musculature as the deadlift, yet is easier to do and will really help develop the hamstrings. I see so many people doing deadlifts incorrectly — male or female — that having a few months of the lumbar holding its position while the hamstrings do work is going to set them up for success if/when they do start deadlifting. Not to mention the hamstrings will develop a wonderful back side on a girl who hasn’t trained before.

I’m also not concerned with what type of squat she does. Let’s face it, not every girl who is training has access to even a decent coach. Then, the low bar back squat is pretty technical compared to the high bar, so this means there are fewer coaches available to teach this movement well. If she’s shoving her knees out and going down all the way, this is a victory. Making it an easier movement (so she isn’t frustrated) is even better. Besides, the RDL’s compliment high bar squats very well.

Erin Stern lifts weights to win the "World Beach Frolic Championship"



The inclusion of benching and pressing is obvious — they help develop strength in the upper body. However, extra care should be taken to not allow the new female trainee to internally rotate and flair the elbows. An “elbows to boobs” cue works very well in both of these cases as it will help keep the elbows in, which is an externally rotated position in the shoulder. See this video for a more detailed discussion.


The vertical pulling movement implies pull-ups, chin-ups, or some variation of them. Getting girls, especially taller ones, to do a pull-up can be quite a process. Most girls reflect that ‘greasing the groove’ over time is what helps them best. Chicks who are adamant about developing a pull-up can get a doorway pull-up bar and work on it over time by doing partial reps or negatives (controlling from top to bottom). They can aim for a small amount each day, and increase the reps per day each week. The horizontal rowing movement would imply barbell, dumbbell or machine rows. Most girls — especially those who haven’t trained before — will not have developed musculature in their upper back. This lack of strength and musculature can make it difficult to externally rotate and maintain positioning on the presses, keep the chest up on the squat or deadlift, and become a long-term muscle imbalance over time if not addressed. The sooner the upper back musculature gets developed, the less of a limiting factor it will be.

If the girl is intimidated by or too weak for barbells, she could use machines for the two presses and two rowing movements. However, squatting needs to be done with a bar — hopefully her ‘sponsor’ can articulate how her ass won’t be sweet if she is leg pressing. RDL’s can be done easily enough with the fixed barbells located in most globo gyms, but they can also be picked up from the hooks on the outside of a rack. After a month or so of machine work, our new trainee could transition into using barbells.

This kind of set up could have her training two or three times a week, but preferably three. It’s best to have complete rest days to allow the body to recover and adapt to this new stress.This concept is lost on a lot of new trainees (and folks who come from a conditioning-only background), but hopefully the sponsor can explain how the structures and hormones need this day to undergo cellular change and adaptation. If nobody knows what the hell that means (sponsor or trainee), it at least sounds good and is true. This means that non-strength work (like cardio or any derivative of endurance work) should occur on existing training days so that it doesn’t interfere with recovery.

Next Monday we’ll talk about “cardio” and how it applies to the new trainee. For more information on progressions, templates, and programming, be sure to check out FIT.

105 thoughts on “Getting Girls to Train”

  3. achambone,

    You seem to be ignoring the patriarchal-worshipping undertones of the post. Justin’s main agenda is, in fact, NOT benefiting the training of women. He is pushing a BODY IMAGE onto females, and he has done so with quite literally every post involving females. There is focus on bodyfat, the size of their gluteal muscles, and HOW THEY SHOULD EAT. This is nothing short of yet another man fucking women over, women who want nothing more than to train as HUMAN BEINGS, not as SEX OBJECTS.

    If you want to convince women to do the barbell lifts, do it without being a slave to your disgusting erection.

    As a woman, I’d take the “shitty advice” which often comes from more than competent female trainers than the garbage that’s been posted here. That “shitty advice” may not be ideal but at least it came from someone who wasn’t just trying to mold women into sex dolls.

  4. I have coached my girlfriend from “too afraid to enter the man area” to an easy looking 275 pound deadlift. It took a couple of years and a bunch of talking to get her to the gym and convince her of the benefits. Now she loves it, swears by it, and thinks all women should use a barbell.

    Starting slow was mandatory to her success. There was no “Ok, today is day 1, time to start SS.” Getting her to WANT to do the lifts was the hard part.

  5. She shouldn’t have to be coaxed into WANTING something unless she wants it in the first place. Congratulations on forcing your girlfriend unwillingly into a mindset that you brainwashed into her.

  6. spar,

    I understand that you are irritated, but you may want to re-tract this statement …

    “women – who are genetically NO DIFFERENT from men”

    It doesn’t help your point to make such glaringly false statements (that pesky Y chromosome along with 78 different genes).

    The truth is men and women are different. Even your beloved Rip makes allowances for the differences between men and women and programs their training differently. While the training programs (progression of sets, reps, weights) can and should be different between a man and a women, I believe that nothing should be watered down in terms of expected effort or the basic tools used when training.

  9. zozz,

    Twisting my statements into a strawman argument does nothing to discredit me. Just because you take what I say too literally does not make your beliefs correct.

    Humans differ from chimps by a magnitude of 4%. There is no statistically significant difference between the genome of a male and female human.

  11. “Even your beloved Rip makes allowances for the differences between men and women and programs their training differently.”

    Um, no he doesn’t. He also doesn’t say women are a special population, he says they are 51% of the population. Imagine that. The only difference he comments on between men and women has to do with females’ lesser ability to express a 1RM and the concurrent greater ability to rep out with a weight that is very close to a 1RM. He also mentions that in linear programming anyone who is NOT male ages 18-35 might want to add less weight per training session than males aged 18-35.

    I’m sure that Rip, like everyone else, programs everyone’s training according to what works for them and doesn’t apply blanket gendered differences to anyone’s training program. Neither should you.

  12. spar,

    now you lost me. a dude just posted how he got his girlfriend to become strong over a couple years. he was patient with her but helped her get there. im willing to bet shes pretty grateful for the help he provided. but he’s a dick who forced her into something?

    and yes, the fitness ‘advice’ women read in the majority of women’s magazines is shitty, and that’s phrasing it nicely. I seriously don’t understand how you think a man wanting a woman, be it his GF, mother, or whoever, to be physically strong, and helping her get that way safely and effectively, makes him some brainwashing dickhead who forced his girlfriend into something. and whether its right or not, women do care about how they look in the mirror, and how they are perceived by the opposite sex (or whatever gender they are into). sorry, but its true, and it no doubt appeals to men as well. i think the post is more about dealing with that reality, and working within that reality so the woman can see positive, healthy results.

  14. achambone,

    You’re missing the point. The point is not that the girl is training. The girl training has no meaning. The POINT is that she is only training because she was PRESSURED into it by her husband, boyfriend, or father BECAUSE HE WANTED HER to do it, because he WASN’T HAPPY with the way she LOOKED.

    If a woman is to train she should do it because she CHOOSES to, like when she discusses it with another woman who understands, not when a MAN “gently” pushes her into it.

  16. Spar- That makes no sense. How did me doing what I did help foster these bad social problem? MOre importantly, what social problems are you even talking about? Probably not the same ones I was.

  18. oh ok, so only a woman should be able to train another woman?

    for the record, my girlfriend was the one who wasn’t happy with how she looked. i was always supportive, and when she said she wanted to get into lifting and wanted my help, i obliged, and she has thanked me many times for helping her. yes, she complained at one point about squats making her thighs bigger, so we switched to OHS, and she loves it.

  19. I personally never said that everyone needs to jump into SS and GOMAD from day one, so I’m not sure where that is coming from (side note: If you think that GOMAD is a required part of SS, you’re wrong, btw). I’ve clearly stated that not everyone training at my gym has the same goals.

    My point is that there doesn’t need to be a special program SOLELY BECAUSE SOMEONE IS A WOMAN. I don’t know how that isn’t obvious. Y’all want to think that all women are insecure and that all men are confident and unafraid of barbells. That simply isn’t true. Person A made need one thing in order to progress, and Person B may need something else. But, IT DOESN’T MATTER IF PERSON A IS MALE AND PERSON B IS FEMALE. That is irrelevant. You can’t make broad generalizations based on gender. Every trainee needs different cues . That’s what a coach DOES.

    As for my experience, when I first walked into the gym a few years ago, I had never touched a barbell. It’s the same with almost every single woman who trains with me AND for a lot of the men. So, I don’t know how my experience would be any different from that of any girlfriend or wife. I grew up reading Cosmo and SELF also, for fuck’s sake.

    My USAW club is ALL FEMALE right now. The members range in age from 23 to 55 years old. You want to tell me that they are all coming in with the same experience? That they all just happened to be confident and secure and unafraid of barbells on day one? Because that’s not true.

    But, I EXPECT the same thing from everyone. Everyone at my gym is taught the slow lifts using Rip’s progressions. Everyone is taught the basics of the snatch and clean and jerk in the same way. Everyone learns which bars are which and where things are and which cues to use and when to ask for help. The GOAL is to make everyone confident under the bar. They know that I expect that. Period. And, somehow, it magically happens. It may take one person a week and one person a few months, but it happens because it is expected.

  21. Should we really be trying to sell women on the idea that they should train with barbells because it will make them look better?

    I mean, consider this picture
    http://9gag.com/gag/137027

    Consider the girl in the picture. She doesn’t look like she’s capable of doing anything strenuous but she looks good. Yes, maybe she’d look better with some thicker legs if she found her way under a barbell but she’s hot enough to be professionally good-looking without that.

    It’s easy to sell guys on the idea that they need to lift weights to look good since, in this world of modern conveniences, the only way you can look masculine is to train hard.

    I’m not saying lifting weights can’t make women better looking, but it’s kind of a hard sell when you consider all the good-looking women out in the world who don’t lift weights, walking around as counter examples. So maybe, instead, strength should be pimped out more. I mean, there are many roads you can take to be more attractive but there’s only one way to gain the satisfaction of knowing you can squat or maybe even clean & jerk the weight of your ex-boyfriend.

  22. Sorry, I should correct my mis-statement above. The women in my club range in age from 6 to 55 years old. I have a 20 year old also. And, I bet my 6 year old is a lot more confident with a barbell than some grown ass men. EXPECTATIONS.

  23. Wow, it is sure angry in here today.

    I use the same progression for noob women as I do for noob men. For the most part people who are largely sedentary or, for whatever reason, are active but generally only exercise laterally at low intensity (LSD running, for example) need to be eased into squats because they have poor proprioception when moving their bodies up and down.

    For most folks, they aren’t afraid of squats because they are hard, but because their brain is telling them that falling over backwards (where they cannot see) is a bad thing.

    So, usually I get them to start by sitting in a small chair (a bistro chair – something hard and with no padding). Then I tell them to stand without using their hands. We do that a few times, and I move them to sitting onto lower and lower things, until they are breaking parallel. Then I work on proper stance, and setting the back. Then goblet squats, then barbell squats. For some people this is all in a session, while for others it can take weeks to build the strength and awareness of where their body is.

    Worked for my wife when she decided she wanted to get her back strong and learn to squat, and this past weekend it worked for a male co-worker of mine. Well, in the latter case, is working. He is pretty week and it will be a while before he can goblet squat 30 pounds or so.

    So, umm, yeah. In case anyone cares, that’s how I ease people into the squat.

  25. On a serious note, I thought this was a good post, Justin. I have trained a few women, and with all of them I had to “take baby steps” to get them onto the program I would have liked to start them on from the beginning. Some women are just more badass and confident than others.

  26. The only squat my wife does is down to pick up my dirty clothes. The only thing I let he press is my shirts, heavy starch. I keed, I keed……

  27. Yes, good post. I was one of those women who didn’t even enter the side of the gym with the barbells, for fear that dudes would look at me and know that I was doing it wrong. Today, I was the only woman in the gym and all of the men were indeed looking at me. But that’s because power snatching can make a lot of noise.

    I’m not sure when I stopped giving a shit about what dudes thought. I think it was when I realized that most of them don’t know what they’re doing either, as Justin pointed out in his response to SaraT. This was probably a turning point in getting me comfortable in that side of the gym. More newbie ladies need to know this.

  28. spar,

    I didn’t attempt to discredit you and I didn’t twist your statements. I took a direct quote. I stated up front that you should correct what you wrote because a false statement can not support your arguement. Also statististical significance in this case is bullshit. You said “no difference” If there is only one it makes your statement false. I am not too literal, you are too lazy to make a point without exageration.

    If you come to a site full of frat boy attitudes and get all butt-hurt when they say frat boy shit, that’s on you.

    You have provided loads of entertainment. Thanks for that and enjoy your evening.

  30. I think Justin is attempting to sway the unconverted to lifting in a certain way regardless of gender. The goal being to get people under the bar. Everyone who is complaining seems to be talking about people Justin is not talking about in this post. Just like a lot of the talk about food and 70s big body types is a way to convert a certain type of male into the training style he is making similar arguments for females who are not yet committed. The title clearly states the goal of coaching girls into the gym, the emphasis not being on coaching girls in the gym.

    Lettuce be real tea, anyone who is complaining doesn’t understand that the girls who need an alternate program are so against lifting in the first place that getting them to train in any kind of way is the first victory (of many).

    –Justin

  33. “My first day of training I squat 35lbs for three sets of five at 192lbs body weight. Thirty-eight years later I am now squatting 95lbs at 215lbs and I plan on hitting 100lbs for 3×5 in the next four months.”

  34. I think that unless you have lady bits you will never understand what a woman actually thinks, especially when it comes to training.

    I never played a sport as a kid. EVER. Even having no athletic background, if I had walked into a gym and someone told me I was going to do the “girl” program I would be so insulted that I would turn around and walk right back out never to return.

    Being a woman does not equate to being an idiot. I know squats will not turn me into a man and I didn’t need anyone to tell me that. To quote t-bone, I has 2 eyes. I also know how my body works and what it will and won’t look like given a certain stimulus.

    How about adjust the program to aim at skill level over chromosomes.

    Just the $.02 of a Lil Earl. Also, Penn… if you are “our” Penn… SHAME ON YOU FOR POSTING THAT LINK!!!

    When did I ever say this was based on anything but skill level? Seems like everyone else gets this post, so work on your reading comprehension.

    –Justin

  35. The line about women being too weak or intimidated by the barbell and having her try machines instead led me to believe you’d take another route with a female lifter instead of just getting her under the bar period.

    I’m sorry if my reading comprehension skillz are sub-par for you. I bet ladies panties just melt off around you when you are so kind all of the time.

  36. I think that Justin is just trying to get more women to train. Which is a good thing. I think its that women have a lot of preconceived notions of what barbell training will do and its hard to dispel those. Obviously, the women who post here train and think its stupid to take baby steps into barbell training. I agree but I think we are in the minority. But I dont think a women would train because her boyfriend brainwashes her. I think women DONT train because they has been brainwashed by society. Training is not for everyone, men or women. But alot of women will never know because they refuse to get under the bar.

  37. @Justin – “That’s funny, because I’m in the business of making people better, not fundamentally changing people’s minds.” You can disagree with some of what I said here today, but don’t be unfair. I was responding to SaraT’s post where she said “If you want to fundamentally change everything a lady thinks she knows about fitness, it may take a few steps to get there.” I was making the point that I’m trying to get everyone, male and female, to see that strength training is more than what you see at your average gym.

    I’m not going to argue about you being in this business to make people fundamentally better because I know that’s true. The fact that I disagree with the way you chose to word certain things doesn’t change that. You have personally gone out of your way to help me, and I think that what you do with this site is important. That doesn’t mean we have to see eye to eye on every topic.

    Are you still talking about this?
    –Justin

  38. This article started as an inspirational way to try to get female friends introduced to lifting heavy and the comments section made it into a campaign for why it’s sooo not worth the trouble. Men and women are definitely genetically different although I suppose they both posses the same ability to flare up arguments about nonsensical issues when they haven’t really been training for long. I’m personally happy with having less people take up the squat rack anyway.

  39. I don’t really even think it’s Justin’s article that has me foaming at the mouth. There has been a LOT of talk on the internet over the past few weeks about women and training. How to get them to embrace being strong, how awful being skinny is, etc.

    I rarely post on stuff and lately I’ve just had enough. I can’t tell you the key to making women want to lift. For me it was a very long path that took some odd turns and I still don’t think I’m at my final destination with training.

    My whole point with this is that women who want to train will find their way to it eventually. Kudos to 70*s Big for trying to help make it more visable.

  40. garret138 writes, “I know squats will not turn me into a man and I didn’t need anyone to tell me that.”

    Unfortunately, this is not universally so.

    For a while I was training a woman along with another trainer. I am quite busy and the other trainer isn’t, so I got her to do both sessions each week with the woman. The woman said to my colleague,

    “Kyle was getting me to lift REALLY HEAVY!”
    “Like what?”
    “Like that big black kettlebell.”
    “Which one?”
    “The 8kg one. I don’t want to bulk up.”

    I really wish I were kidding.

    I wouldn’t say people like this are the majority. But they do exist. I will say that far, far more women are interested in strength training than is commonly supposed.

    What they want their bodies to be like is a much more complex issue. But there are quite a few women out there who want to get really strong.

    Few trainers offer them the chance, though – because they assume goals, rather than asking them; nor do they try out a range of exercises with them to see what the person enjoys doing.

  41. Pingback: -August 15, 2011- | Warrior1 Training

  45. FYI, whoever is posting as “spar” is clearly trying to pose as me (“spar” on the startingstrength.com forums).

    It’s not me. I have a good idea who it might be. I don’t know whether the mods here have any kind of policy regarding this, since I clearly can’t lay claim to a perfectly normal word in the English language.

    But it IS pretty clear that the person is attempting to impersonate me with malicious intent. If you guys could please do something about that, it would be appreciated.

  48. You know, grubinski, I’m actually kind of surprised at the extent to which people can become obsessed with a chubby 40 year old lady with a mediocre squat. I suppose I should be flattered.

  49. Pingback: » Getting Girls to Train – 2

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