Written by Jonathan

Jonathan Goodman CSCS is the author of Ignite the Fire: The Secrets to Building a Successful Personal Trainer Career and Race to the Top: How to Take Over the Social Media Feed. He'd love it if you added him on Facebook and/or followed him on Twitter. He also runs a wildly popular web branding and internet marketing coaching program. You can find out more at http://www.viralnomics.com/coaching/.

• Kyle Schuant

  In terms of rows, I like to coach people to pull the bell to the hip, this usually ensures they keep their elbow in and we get good work on the rhomboids which are often quite weak in Westerners. Just saying “keep your elbow in” doesn’t seem to work as well.

  For single arm bench presses and the like, I sometimes but not always coach them to bring the bell to just below the breast. This is useful for people who are round-shouldered in posture and/or have a history of supraspinatus impingements, it’s a bit kinder on their shoulders.

  Both these have the side effect of getting the bell out of the way of large breasts.

  I’m sure you’ll cover these sorts of things in part II, but other things to bear in mind are that women have the funky ability to do 10 reps with 50kg and then only 1 rep with 52.5kg. Their strength drops off more quickly than with men. So they can work closer to their one-rep max than can a man. As well, it’s more difficult to find out just what their one-rep max is! 92.5kg might look smooth and easy, and 95kg won’t move at all.

  The idea of failing at some weight brings us to the psychology of it. Because most women are brought up to be dainty and weak, if they do choose to take up strength training, they’re more sensitive to failure than a man would be. Women are also taught to turn anger and disappointment inwards, while men are taught to turn it outwards and get angry.

  This means that while with a man you can usually try things and if he fails you both just shrug and say, “oh well, next time!” with a woman you usually have to be more careful. This doesn’t mean never challenge them, but try to avoid exercises and weights where they risk complete failure. Getting 3 reps instead of 5 reps is okay, getting 0 reps instead of 1, not so much.

  In strength training, women are just as vulnerable during success as during failure. If she just got a personal best lift, this is NOT the time to say, “a little more knees out during that squat,” or whatever. “Well done!” is enough, offer the coaching cues during warmups in her next workout. This is because of what I mentioned before, women being taught to be weak. You the trainer might be the one and only person in her whole life who actively supports her getting stronger. Your opinion of her success is thus a big deal for her.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506036404 Elsbeth Vaino

    Good thoughts Kyle. Although I don’t quite follow on the one arm bench press. How does a large breasted woman get just below the breast? Or are you using a bottom up KB? If the latter, then yes, that’s a good option, although very much a different exercise – more about stabilizers than absolute strength. I use them as a “you have to earn the right to bench press” exercise for all of my clients. Or are you suggesting a shorter ROM? For shorter and large breasted women, this can become very short!

    I find what you’ve said about strength drop off to be true in upper body work but not for lower body.

    And completely agree about the psychology (that’s in part 2 today). On the don’t go to 0 reps part – for some exercises I count half or even tenth of a rep. Particularly with pullups: they are awesome, but so hard for most women. And there is a big difference between 1/3 of a pullup and 2/3 of a pullup – that can be a few weeks effort to do that. Without allowing for modification of what we call success, I think unassisted pullups become out of reach for most women. But give legitimacy to building from 0.1 rep to 1.0 reps and it is a goal to achieve vs a failure to deal with.

    • Kyle Schuant

      For the DB BP, I meant that the fist would come to about the level of the xyphoid process, and the disc of the dumbbell will come to the side of their rib cage. This will be enough for most unaugmented women to avoid their breasts, obviously if you’re talking about someone 300+lbs it might be different.

      Certainly counting fractions of a rep will be a measure of progress. However, I usually prefer to focus on exercises where they can achieve a full range of motion, using them to build up the strength to accomplish the next most technically difficult exercise. For example, from pushups on knees to pushups on toes, from leg press to goblet squat, etc. This creates a little “you’ve graduated! no more of that old exercise!” moment every couple of weeks. Which is of course good for any client whatever their gender.

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506036404 Elsbeth Vaino

        Great stuff, Kyle.

• Kylara7

  I highly recommend basic Pilates training for strengthening the pelvic floor as well as learning how to effectively activate the core…and by that I mean certified Pilates trainers, not “let’s do 25 variations on crunches and call it ‘Pilates’ cuz it sounds cool”. And it’s not just for women/older women…those pelvic floor muscles contribute greatly to many pleasurable activities in both genders, and pelvic floor exercises are often prescribed to men with prostate issues. Word to the little muscles with a big bang

  • Kylara7

    P.S. I’m not a Pilates trainer, just a dancer and biomedical scientist with a workout habit

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506036404 Elsbeth Vaino

      Love the ps! I will be honest that I’m not a huge fan of Pilates for core stuff. But maybe that’s because the people I have seen with Pilates “experience” have had poor teachers. I actually have been contemplating a blog post talking about how the clients I have had with Pilates and/or yoga experience tend to have core weakness as their biggest dysfunction. This is of course a limited population. I had a client yesterday doing a “pilates version” of the glut bridge I wanted her to do, which apparently involves coming up and down one vertebra at a time. I was like, “no!” Again, I will reiterate that I don’t know if my issue is with Pilates, or how my clients have beentaught Pilates. I guess this is similar to all fitness realms though: the good is probably very good; the rest is…

      • Kylara7

        Yes, the Pilates version is more accurately known as the shoulder bridge and focuses on a different motion/prioritises muscle activation differently than the glute bridge (I’m familiar with both…the former is an exercise for the deep abdominals with assistance from the glutes and hamstrings, and the latter is the reverse ). People tend to erroneously equate them because they “look similar” at the top position.

        I’m most familiar with classic Pilates (mat and reformer) as dancers train with it to develop the deep abdominal stabilisers that enable other movement. We tend to use our core to keep the pelvis still/spine stabilised while the rest of the body does some really unnatural things (e.g., ballet, where everything is done in a turned out position and arms/legs are usually doing two different things instead of working together) and very rarely do anything that “isolates” the core the way fitness people do. The generic term “Pilates” can be very misleading as it has sort of become a term for “ab stuff” to many people.

        Then again, as you are probably very familiar with, there is also the difference between what trainers/coaches are teaching and what people are picking up/translating it into…sometimes like the game of “telephone” where the message gets garbled somewhere in the transmission

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506036404 Elsbeth Vaino

          The telephone game is a great analogy! Ps – I think I accidentally rated your reply a -1. That is a reflection of ipad use, and not the content of your reply.