I had arrived late and was scrambling. Where were the weights, and how many did I need? Was I feeling confident enough to grab the 10-pounders or should I risk silent ridicule from my fellow Body Sculpt attendees and retrieve a 4-pound set? “That’s my spot,” another student—short, impressive muscles—snapped. It was my first class, and I needed help. After more than three decades, I wanted my body to do something new and hard, but my anxious mind was not cooperating.
I had started to see it everywhere, the message that women need to be stronger. In May, the writer Casey Johnston released a memoir called A Physical Education, about trading constant diets for weight lifting and discovering herself in the process, a real-life counterpart to Miranda July’s fictional narrator in All Fours, whose journey of self-actualization includes extramarital affairs and kettlebells. This summer, longtime Wall Street Journal reporter turned professional bodybuilder Anne Marie Chaker published Lift: How Women Can Reclaim Their Physical Power and Transform Their Lives, chronicling how a weight training habit pulled her out of a punishing rut. “Psychologists who study sports behavior,” she writes, “say that the intensity of lifting weights actually fuels a rewiring of the brain”—apparently, my mind was going to reap the benefits as well. (Working out with weights has been linked to an improved nervous system in one study and a slowdown in cognitive decline in another.)
Widely different parts of the cultural conversation—from chatter on the morning shows to techy brain-science podcasts—are homing in on the benefits. I saw one amusing video where a male bystander’s smirk turned to bewilderment as a woman picked up dumbbells and started shadowboxing. There are legions of viral videos of this variety. Almost three quarters of adults are trying to eat more protein—many seemingly upping their egg consumption in order to build muscle. Khloé Kardashian just released protein-dusted popcorn. (Protein supports muscle repair and growth after workouts.)
And yet, like every other millennial woman whose preferred mode of exercise is Pilates and a walk through the park, I had only just begun to wonder about those intimidating objects—hand weights, dumbbells, barbells, all the bells—in the corners of the rooms where my low-impact exercise classes took place. I had long thought weight training had nothing to do with me—my goal was to become lean and flexible, not muscular and strong. And for years I had been a runner, a pastime that only felt good after I had finished, filled with endorphins and superiority. But not long ago, I gave it up, facing an awareness of my body’s weak spots. Perhaps I did need to face the bells. New York is my home, but I began training in London, where I was temporarily living—it seemed I didn’t have a moment to lose.
We have long known that, as we age, we lose muscle mass, contributing to frailty—and this is especially true for women. The risk of osteoporosis increases as women go through menopause, and strength training is one of the most effective ways to prevent it. But these considerations are increasingly prevalent: “Midlife and menopause are having a moment,” says Maria Luque, a fitness expert and health science professor at Trident University International. “Suddenly we’re talking about it.” Recent research—most notably a 2024 study of 400,000 people—has shown that women can also exercise differently from men. Namely, they can do less of it and gain many of the same benefits. What we now additionally understand is that women should start strength training much earlier in life. “There should be more focus on what we teach women from a young age,” says Martha Gulati, MD, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute and the lead researcher of the 400,000-subject study. “Often girls will play soccer, but nobody tells them that resistance training will potentially help their running,” Gulati notes. The idea of starting something new can be “intimidating as you get older,” she adds, telling me that she wants to measure the effects of informal weight lifting: lifting children and elderly relatives or carrying groceries, for example.
“There’s no part of mental and physical health that isn’t touched by strength training,” says Luque. Not many realize that it has the potential to increase metabolic efficiency: More muscle can lead to more weight loss over the long term because your body can in turn burn more calories at rest. (Metabolic rate, it’s important to note, is affected by many factors: genetics, fitness level, and so on.) “It’s like the gift that keeps on giving because it works when you’re not working it,” Luque says.
I wanted that gift, so I didn’t sneak out the back door of my Body Sculpt class. Energized by the territorial spat, I made the novice mistake of powering through the initial moves: hip bridges, planks, and downward-facing dogs. By the time we started with the weights—a series of repetitions intended to exhaust the muscles—I was nervous that I was going to have to quit. Surely this was impossible for everyone? Apparently not: A 60-something woman in hot pink leggings was hoisting weights twice as heavy as mine. “Women are the toughest teachers in this business,” said my instructor, Natalie Hope, when we talked after class.
As it turns out, getting serious about strength didn’t have to mean abandoning my beloved low-impact exercises. “Pilates and strength training go hand in hand,” says instructor Sophie-Rose Harper, a former singer-songwriter who is now one of West London’s most beloved Pilates teachers. In her serene space, she led me through core work on the reformer before moving me to the Cadillac—a more elaborate table resembling a circus-trapeze setup—to work on activating my posterior chain (the muscles on the backside of the body), hamstrings, and calves (important for deadlifting). Between Pilates sessions and classes, I started training at home, a routine that is increasingly common amid the social-media-fueled mantra of “strong is the new hot.” I found the gear encouraging: I have a mat from Stakt that folds up like an accordion, and a collection of weights from Jennifer Aniston’s favorite resistance-based fitness regime, Pvolve. I settled on a Pvolve streaming class from an instructor with a punchy but not overly grating disposition. “Squeeze that mid-back,” she chirped as I was about to hit pause. “We want to be able to walk upright for the rest of our lives!” I raised the weights again with a renewed fear of a hunched future. “My job is to get you to that place where your arms feel like they can barely move,” she added ominously.
Is that the goal? I wondered a few days later, my arms still jelly. Maybe I needed more regular, less intense efforts. To that end, I picked up some wrist bands from Bala, a company that is recalibrating the weight training palette with its bars and bangles in shades of dusty pink and muted teal. I logged on for their classes that incorporated the rings and bars in short but sufficiently tiring reps. On my park excursions, I wore their one-pound bangles for my own version of a retirement-age power walk. As the weeks progressed, I felt my endurance increasing. I was carrying groceries, packages, and suitcases with greater ease.
Near the end of my monthlong mission, I took a class at fitness guru Tracy Anderson’s studio. It was part of her MyMode program, which incorporates heavier resistance into her traditional routines. Or as Leigh Moss, the studio manager, told me as I bounced on a floor loaded with springs to protect the joints, “It’s moving your body in ways you never have before.” And we did—a lot of high-intensity sequences, often emphasizing the obliques. But I surprised myself by mostly keeping up. I felt stronger than I had ever felt, and as if I might be on my own journey of self-discovery.
In this story: hair, Akki using Dyson; makeup, Kabuki for Dior Beauty; manicurist, Honey. Produced by Ted Jane Productions. Set Design: Stefan Beckman.