Woman. Tell Me One More Time Lifting Weights Makes You Big And Bulky, And I’ll Commit Autoerotic Asphyxiation.

Women are small, frail, helpless creatures incapable of performing even remotely challenging physical activities.

There.

I said it.

As much as you’re itching to barge into my room and rip my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles posters off the wall for being a chauvinistic asshole, consider that the above is the exact same message women are being fed non-stop everywhere.

Whether it’s a celebrity trainer declaring “No woman should lift weights heavier than 3 pounds!” or your Pilates instructor saying “There’s no better way to tone those mucles and shed bodyfat than the control, the grace, the elegance, the precision of the exercise. A bicep curl is a bicep curl – but a Pilates bicep curl starts by engaging your core first, creating stability in your Being before anything else moves. That’s the power of Pilates.”, women are being labeled as weak individuals who – for their own benefit – are best kept inside this invisible bubble consisting of cushy exercises, gently wrapped up with absurd nonsense.

You know, she might just get too strong and muscular if she deadlifted her weight for reps, so let’s put her on the treadmill instead. There ya go girl, have a granola bar and a Gatorade while you’re at it.

A female client once mentioned in passing how she’d “die to get Kate Moss’ body”. I immediately dropkicked her in the face and made her do push-up/burpees until she passed out.* That’ll teach her to never utter such bollocks in my presence ever again.

This is Kate Moss...

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the enhancement of female physiques. After all, summer’s around the corner and nothing fills me with more bliss than trim babes with big, round glutes in short skirts filling the city landscape. I know. I’m such a hopeless romantic.

Ever since getting tickets to a Taylor Swift concert, I haven’t flooded my apartment with tears of joy until bumping into this article written by food writer, former powerlifter and resident badass Dana McMahan on strength training and its effects on female physiology. Whether a guy or gal, I prompt you to check it out. FYI, here’s an interview I did with Dana last year when she was still competing.

I thought Dana’s article was brilliant. What I didn’t expect though, was the sheer number of women in the comments section crying about how they’ll get bigger if they even as much as look at a weight.

One comment in particular caught my attention (I’m paraphrasing here because I was too busy pouring battery acid into my eyes to remember the exact quote): “I bought a kettlebell, I think it was 8 lbs. I followed a routine in a women’s health mag for 2 weeks and I got BULKY. I had muscle definition and my jeans felt snug. I was supposed to get toned but I got more muscle instead.”

Okay, sista! Let’s cut the crap, pronto. Muscle doesn’t magically appear out of thin air. You need to be eating like it’s your fuckin’ job in order to put on muscle. And it’s not like you’re going to be gaining muscle like Arnold, especially if you’re in a calorie deficit (!), simply because there’s this little hormone called testosterone female bodies generally don’t produce in abundance – which is kind of a big deal in this whole “getting big & bulky” thing.

I remember reading somewhere that a pound of fat tissue takes up 25% more space than a pound of muscle tissue. You don’t need to be Miss Marple to conclude that gaining five pounds of muscle and losing the same amount of fat will, in fact, make your body appear LEANER even though bodyweight stays the same.

... and this is cleansing for the mind, body and soul.

I feel it’s extemely disrespectful towards people who are busting ass in the gym to be throwing out ignorant comments like that one above. I have a female client who wants to compete in figure. There’s nothing she wants more than to put on quality mass as fast as possible. But even if she’s constantly getting stronger and eating like a horse, those gains are excruciatingly slow to come by. If I can help her add 5 kilograms of lean body mass without an increase in waist circumference within a year, I’d consider that to be a tremendous success.

If you’re telling me you followed a shitty program in a women’s mag fooling around with an eight pound kettlebell for two weeks, and somehow managed to build any noticeable muscle, I call bullshit. Women are lugging more weight in their handbags all day long than they’re using when they “exercise”. Hell, moms lift their little kids up and down countless times every day, yet that doesn’t do anything for their appearance.

So I urge you to say weightlifting turns women into muscle-bound shemales once more and I swear I’ll hang myself in a Thai hotel room closet wearing nothing but bondage gear and women’s lingerie, David Carradine style.

Here’s Jen Comas Keck of Girls Gone Strong pulling 315 pounds (140+ kg) off the floor. Should I ever break up with Jessica Alba**, this would be the type of girl I’d let date me.

If anything, this should encourage you to put down that paperweight you’re “lifting” for 200 reps and move some serious iron around.

* Relax. I’m kidding. Or am I?

** And by “breaking up” I mean stop stalking her.