Doing the Heavy Lifting: Why Strength Sports Could Be Key for Women’s Mental Health

Author: Katie Masters

As we focus on SDG 3 ‘Good Health & Wellbeing’ for World Mental Health Day, it’s essential to explore the connection between physical and mental well-being. While exercise has long been hailed for its mental health benefits, resistance training holds untapped potential, particularly for women. From reducing anxiety to boosting mood and self-esteem, lifting weights can do more than build muscle; it can strengthen the mind and help break free from damaging beauty ideals and gender norms.

In this post, Katie Masters, author of Feminist and Anti-Psychiatry Perspectives on ‘Social Anxiety Disorder’: The Socially Anxious Woman, dives into the science behind how resistance training supports mental health and why it is an empowering tool, especially for women.

It’s no secret that exercise is good for health and resistance training in particular boasts many benefits¹—there’s even evidence that it improves mental health.² Now, given my background in researching and writing about women’s mental health and my own involvement in powerlifting—competing, refereeing, and coaching—I had a hunch that lifting weights might be especially valuable for women. So, as well as delving into the literature, I reached out to other women lifters to see if they would weigh in.

Strength training and mental health

Karen Precious was new to strength training until earlier this year and I’ve had the privilege of coaching her. She told me that ‘[s]trength training [has] fed into my mental health in a positive way’. Karen’s perspective is somewhat unique in that she has fibromyalgia, and her experience draws links with the findings of a systematic review which found resistance training to reduce depression and anxiety symptoms in women with this diagnosis.³

Like Karen, Maria Garreffa—marathoner and former competitive powerlifter—told me that ‘strength training has had a profound impact on my mental health’. Maria added that the ‘the increase in dopamine from a good strength session noticeably improves my executive function, which has a direct impact on [...] stress levels’. This calls to mind a pilot study which suggests that resistance training reduced perceived stress in women aged over 30 years.⁴

Building confidence

Another study, this time in ‘untrained adolescent female volunteers’, found that participants undergoing a 12-week strength training programme experienced ‘positive changes in [...] general effectiveness in life’ compared to controls’.⁵ This evokes Karen’s deployment of her lifting mindset to other situations: ‘[W]hen I didn't succeed in a lift the first time I tried again until I did. This means that in life if I fail at something I have faith that when I try again I will succeed.’

Karen also cites lifting as having ‘made me much more [...] confident’. This is echoed by retired Oxford University Professor Catherine Walter, a fellow BDFPA lifter (holding multiple world records) who runs a women's powerlifting club for university students and staff. Catherine reflected, ‘The confidence that comes from being strong is a great boost to self-esteem.’ Catherine’s remark is borne out in a study on college women which found an increase in the self-esteem of groups engaging in running and weight training.⁶

It would therefore seem that strength training is incredibly positive for women’s mental health. Yet, the words of powerlifter Katharine H. MacShane arguably still ring true: women’s ‘acquisition of physical strength is not valued by most contemporary cultures’; it ‘is often characterized as deviant’.⁷ MacShane however posits that herein lies the very reason why lifting is good for women’s mental wellbeing: ‘The subversive, empowering effect of women participating in an activity that has been historically linked with masculinity’ gives rise to increased feelings of power, confidence, and agency (p. 21).

Societal expectations

For my part, forging my own path—which is at odds with societal expectations—creates a sense of autonomy. Catherine spoke to this in telling me how ‘in our women's powerlifting club, it's always a pleasure when a fellow lifter arrives with a story of how they surprised a friend or a delivery driver with the weight they can pick up’. 

But does lifting have a dark side for women? Coach, writer, and former competitive powerlifter Emily Troscianko seems to think so:

"One of the things that makes me saddest in gyms is seeing […] women [...] turn [lifting] into [...] just one more context for self-objectification [...] When you choose your lifts based on which body parts you want to make bigger or smaller".

Emily’s perspective leads us to a distinction which has been outlined by Jan Brace-Govan:

"Weightlifting’s difference to body building rests crucially on the orientation that this physical activity makes its purpose and to the body that performs it. While all bodies are gazed upon at some stage, the instrumental approach of weightlifters to the task of lifting as much weight as possible potentially resists the recuperative effect of being gazed upon."⁸

Catherine encapsulated this distinction in telling me how ‘some young women join our club with the aim of “getting toned”, but they nearly always quickly change focus from what their bodies look like to what their bodies can do’. Catherine’s anecdote is germane to a study on body-image-disturbed undergraduate women. One group were assigned to a resistance training programme; the control to a general education programme. The resistance training group experienced a statistically significant increase in strength and an increase in body satisfaction scores.⁹ Catherine spoke to this finding in that she had ‘noticed how powerlifting can affect women's image of themselves’.

Healthy body image perceptions & health improvement

Following on from this, Richardson et al. investigated the body image of competitive female powerlifters compared to active controls and controls participating in other sports. One finding was that ‘female powerlifters present healthy body image perceptions compared to [controls...]. This may be due to the objective outcomes of the sport not relying on socially subjective assessment for validation’.¹⁰ Perhaps this is to what Maria was alluding when she characterised powerlifting as being ‘absolutely beneficial for women's mental health in a way I don't think other sports are’.

Another point of interest from this study is that ‘active subjects presented the most fixation on their bodyweight and appearance’, but female powerlifters ‘showed a focus on performance and health improvements’. Perhaps exercising alone, even when this includes lifting, is not enough to resist the damaging effects of Western society’s preoccupation with women’s appearance. One might therefore say that objective measures of success in powerlifting, namely hard numbers, are from what we can draw strength to resist our culture’s mandate about how we should look.

On appearance, Joan Chrisler and Ingrid Johnston-Robledo write on women’s hypervisibility in Women’s Embodied Self, telling us that ‘girls’ and women’s bodies are nearly always [...] subject to the judgments of others’ (p. 8). As an unfortunate corollary, as Susie Obrach notes in Hunger Strike, women come to watch themselves ‘almost as one removed’ (p. 16). Emily noted that this has seeped into gym culture: ‘When you inspect yourself in the mirror as you lift or in between sets.’ As such, I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that women’s bodies often don’t feel like our own. In striving to measure up to beauty ideals—which is inevitably, in the words of Chrisler and Johnston-Robledo, a ‘doomed project’ (p. 12)—women come to view their bodies from the outside, as ‘an “it” rather than their home’.¹¹

Reintegrating body and mind

So what has this to do with lifting? Well, I propose that lifting restores our sense of ownership over our bodies. Emily touched on this in remembering ‘getting under a barbell for the first time to try a squat and having a weird little moment of revelation when I realized that one can give muscles commands and they'll actually obey’. Lifting might then facilitate reintegrating the mind and body, for Emily noted that ‘lifting has opened up kinds of mind/body connection that I never dreamt were possible’. Karen’s words resonated with this in that she told me, ‘The stronger I got physically the stronger I got mentally.’ Perhaps in lifting lies an antidote to Western culture’s fostering what I term in my book, ‘a specifically feminine Cartesian [d]ualism’ (p. 196).

Emily’s account further aligns with my tenet that lifting is conducive to women truly being in our bodies. For Emily, lifting has ‘generate[d] forms of bodily awareness’ and ‘give[n] moments of intense presence’. This draws links with Csíkszentmihályi’s notion of a ‘flow state’, where one becomes so engrossed in what they are doing that little else appears to matter. This can of course be achieved by other means and is not particular to women. But I do wonder if we might garner especial value from it. Simply put, there’s no room to worry about what you look like when doing a maximal single on deadlift; you can’t be anywhere else but here when you have more than your bodyweight locked out over your face after unracking a heavy bench press; and the being-in-the-moment that’s born of the sweet agony of set of 10 on 3-0-3 tempo squats is unparalleled. Powerlifting is aptly named because, for women, it can provide a path towards undoing our estrangement from our bodies; striving for health and performance over arbitrary and damaging beauty ideals; and undermining harmful gender norms through mastery. To borrow Emily’s turn of phrase, lifting can be ‘a powerful act of feminism, and of self-discovery’.

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_{¹ UK Chief Medical Officers’ Physical Activity Guidelines (7 September 2019) <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/physical-activity-guidelines-uk-chief-medical-officers-report> [accessed 9 April 2024]; e.g. bone density and helping to attenuate the reduction of muscle mass that often comes with age.}

_{² Brett R., Gordon, Cillian P. McDowell, Mark Lyons, and Matthew P. Herring, ‘The Effects of Resistance Exercise Training on Anxiety: A Meta-analysis and Meta-regression Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials’, Sports Medicine, 47 (2017), 2521–2532 doi: 10.1007/s10067-021-05738-z [accessed 11 September 2024] p. 2521.
Brett R. Gordon, Cillian P. McDowell, Mats Hallgren, Jacob D. Meyer, Mark Lyons, and Matthew P. Herring, ‘Association of Efficacy of Resistance Exercise Training with Depressive Symptoms: Meta-analysis and Meta-regression Analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials’, JAMA Psychiatry, 75.6 (2018), 566–576 doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.0572 [accessed 11 September 2024]}

_{³ Guilherme Torres Vilarino , Leonardo Vidal Andreato, Loiane Cristina de Souza, Joaquim Henrique Lorenzetti Branco, and Alexandro Andrade, ‘Effects of Resistance Training on the Mental Health of Patients with Fibromyalgia: A Systematic Review’, Clinical Rheumatology (2021), 1–9  doi: 10.1007/s10067-021-05738-z [accessed 11 September 2024]}

_{⁴ Patricia A. Koplas, Ashley E. Shilling, Melinda S. Harper, ‘Reduction in Perceived Stress in Healthy Women Older Than 30 Years Following a 24-Week Resistance Training Program: A Pilot Study’, Journal of Women's Health Physical Therapy, 36.2 (2012), 90–101 doi: 10.1097/JWH.0b013e3182615d1f}

_{⁵ Jean Barrett Holloway, Anne Beuter, and Joan L. Duda, ‘Self‐efficacy and Training for Strength in Adolescent Girls’, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18. 8 (1988), 699–719 doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1988.tb00046.x p. 62.}

_{⁶ C. M. Trujillo, ‘The Effect of Weight Training and Running Exercise Intervention Programs on the Self-esteem of College women’, International Journal of Sport Psychology, 14.3 (1983), 162–173 <https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1984-30789-001> p. 162}

_{⁷  Katharine H. MacShane ‘“Do you even lift bro?” A Psychodynamic Feminist Analysis of the Mental Health Benefits of Weight Lifting for Women’, (Masters’ dissertation, Smith College, 2014) <https://scholarworks.smith.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1864&context=theses> p. 6.}

_{⁸  Jan Brace-Govan, ‘Weighty Matters: Control of Women’s Access to Physical Strength’, The Sociological Review, 2.4 (2004), 503–531 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2004.0049 p. 504}

_{⁹ E. Depcik and L. Williams ‘Weight Training and Body Satisfaction of Body-image-disturbed College Women’, Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 16.3 (2004), 287–299 doi: 10.1080/10413200490498375}

_{¹⁰ Andrew Richardson, Mark Chen, and D. M. Chen, ‘Female Competitive Powerlifters’ Relationship with Body Image: Utilising the Multidimensional Body Image Self Relations Questionnaire (MBSRQ)’, The Sport Journal, 24 (2022), 1–24 <https://thesportjournal.org/article/female-competitive-powerlifters-relationship-with-body-image-utilising-the-multidimensional-body-image-self-relations-questionnaire-mbsrq/> p. 1.}

_{¹¹ Susie Orbach, Bodies (New York: Picador, 2009), p. 151.}