When third-year biomedical engineering student Alexa Cash walks into a weight room, she is sometimes the only girl there. At first, Cash said she was afraid of being watched in the gym. But after continued perseverance, she said her confidence grew.
Cash is not alone in her experience. Powerlifter and 1994 USC alumna Toinette Reed, owner of Brickhouse Gym in Columbia , said some women are just beginning to feel like they belong in the weight section of the gym.
When Reed opened Brickhouse in 2000, she said that 90% of the clientele she saw were men . Now, Reed estimates Brickhouse has a 60% to 40% ratio of men to women.
In the 25 years since Reed opened Brickhouse, she has seen more and more women step onto the weight floor.
"Women that want to come in here, they want to train, and they want to train hard,” Reed said. “And they’re not intimidated by the guy next to them.”
Fitness beginnings
Reed said she noticed during COVID-19 that many women sought out health and fitness as a way to maintain sanity. With so much being shut down, training was accessible to people both in their home and outside, Reed said.
Fourth-year neuroscience student Eden Wellons began doing workouts to youtube videos posted during Covid, she said.
“I felt like I was doing nothing with my life ” Wellons said. “I started getting into (fitness), and it became my coping mechanism. And it still is to this day.”
A strategy Cash said worked to maintain her well-being was spending hours on her mom’s Peloton, a stationary bike that streams cycling classes.
The second her gym opened back up, Cash's dad, who used to be a bodybuilder, taught her how to llift, she said. Six years of gym experience have increased Cash's confindence at the gym, she said.
Cash is the event coordinator for USC’s chapter of women’s fitness club Changing Health, Attitudes, and Actions to Recreate Girls. The group's mission is to help girls feel more comfortable working out, Cash said.
They take CrossFit, yoga and pilates classes, Cash said.
Girl Gains is a club for female lifters of any skill level, said fourth-year visual communications student Sidra Blackwelder. The club creates a community for girls seeking friends with similar interests, Blackwelder said.
“I think the biggest thing that Girl Gains wants to do is just make sure that girls feel comfortable in a male-dominated space,” Blackwelder said. “So just having a supportive community of women around you.”
Blackwelder is the secretary of Girl Gains. In her two years in the club, she said she found there was a larger population of female weightlifters than she thought.
“Female weightlifting is a relatively new thing, and we tend to shy back from being as loud and … taking up as much space as we could,” Blackwelder said. “And so we just sometimes shrink ourselves down.”
Second-year exercise science student Jessica Dianda poses in the mirror on Oct. 1, 2024. Dianda acts as the event coordinator for the Girl Gains Club.
Breaking stereotypes
Reed said that historically lifting heavy weights was something that people thought only men enjoyed. She found that women were looked down upon for wanting to get into heavy lifting, she said.
“It goes for anything in society,” Reed said. “If you look all the way back that females have had to work harder at whatever they wanted to get to close that gap (and) prove themselves.”
Cash said some women may be afraid to gain muscle mass because society will think of them differently.
“Girls aren’t pushed to be these big, muscular people,” Cash said. “There definitely is a connotation that you have to be a big, strong guy, not a big, strong woman.”
Reed picked a male partner to lift with when she trained for a 2001 South Carolina State Bodybuilding show, she said. He was stronger than her at the start of their training, but by the time they stopped working together, Reed said she was stronger than him .
"The first thought when a female walks into anything competition wise, (is) that they're not on the same level as the male," Reed said. "I figured, 'Okay if he thinks he's going to work at that level, I'm going to work at that level.'"
Reed won the heavyweight division of the competition, and then she went back to powerlifting training. While powerlifting and bodybuilding are similar in their training regimens, Reed said the dieting necessary for bodybuilding was one of the most unhealthy things she’d ever done.
By the time she’d finished her bodybuilding training, Reed’s body fat went from 18% to 6%. She had striations on her chest, and she lost her menstrual cycle.
Wellons said it’s easier for men to look more “fit” than women since they have a lower level of body fat. According to Healthline, a healthy woman has between 10% to 13% essential body fat while a healthy man has 2% to 5% percent essential body fat.
“For women, it’s a lot healthier to hold on to some of that body fat because if you restrict yourself too much, that’s dangerous,” she said. “You can have all kinds of health problems that men aren’t going to have.”
Wellons said that 20 years ago, the beauty standard was for women to look extremely thin. Now, Wellons said she hopes women feel more comfortable appearing more muscular or strong.
At the gym, Cash said that some girls could still be afraid of lifting because it could make them look bulky.
“I’ve never been like a tiny little skinny girl,” Cash said. “And you sometimes feel like well yes I am lifting more than them, but is it worth looking more muscular?”
Blackwelder said people shouldn’t be afraid to exercise for fear of how it’s going to make them look.
“I feel like it’s just better to be fit and be healthy,” she said. “How you look should kind of come second, so do what makes your body feel good.”
Fourth-year criminal justice student Sam Schneider flexes in the mirror on Oct. 1, 2024. Schneider acts as the president of Girl Gains.
A need for representation
Everyone's body is different, so women shouldn't compare their bodies to other women or men, Wellons said.
Clinical Assistant Professor Amy Fraley, who works USC's exercise science department, said it is a common misconception to assume women are just smaller versions of their male counterparts.
Fraley said injury prevention protocols, rehabilitation protocols, muscle strengthening practices and flexibility are specifically drawn from male studies and that physical trainers often generalize this research and hope it works the same for women. If physical trainers obtained more female studies, they could do better work, Fraley said.
A 2021 study that found that while 31% of sports and exercise scientific studies were performed on only males, just 6% of studies were performed on only females.
Ashley Lamb, the owner of Pvolve gym in Columbia, said the lack of female representation in these exercise studies could be dangerous and lead to women working out in a way that injures them.
”When I was younger, I thought I had to push myself so so hard in order to get a good workout ,” Lamb said. “I was doing so many things that I thought I needed to do because those workouts were built for men, but there was nothing specific for women.”
The lack of research and attention to female bodies in the fitness world is something that Lamb said Pvolve is working to change, Lamb said.
“Pvolve is changing the name and changing the game on a male-dominated fitness industry,” Lamb said. “We are focusing right now on females, which I think is amazing.”
The forward momentum of women showing up in the world of fitness is not going to stop, Reed said. Health is not a fad.
”You might have different gyms ,” Reed said. “Those kinds of things could change … but you will always have people who want to train now and stay healthy.”
Reed said, especially with female athletes, women’s drive and passion are getting more and more attention from society. Muscle on women is beautiful, and they shouldn't be ashamed to show it off, she said.
“These females train hard to get where they are,” Reed said. “So (in) that male-driven society, there’s not that gap that there used to be."
Second-year psychology student Lexi Bennett works out at Blatt PEC on Oct. 1, 2024. Bennett and others in the organization meet often to work out together.