On a Tuesday evening, people are gathering in a renovated railway arch turned muscle gym in Peckham, south London, for a class called “Weights, Weights, Weights”. Not your sweaty singlet bros, though — 10 of the 12 participants are women. One keeps her Gen Z bandana on throughout the programme of squats, deadlifts, rows and — ugh — raising dumbbells while maintaining a plank.
Some have tattoos and piercings, others sleek ponytails. They are chatty, smiley. The female instructor has a sheet of black hair down to a bottom that looks as if it was carved by Michelangelo and then inflated. At 40, I am the oldest there, and also the weediest.
Deliberate bulking is not my scene — quite the opposite. I was a teenager during the Nineties, when a celebrity vogue for size zero went even further than heroin chic in glamorising skin and bones. I have been on a diet since the age of 12 and long saw exercise as a sort of Dantean punishment for earthly pleasures. Last year, however, I tried weight-loss jabs for six weeks (prescribed privately and legally), lost a stone and am healthier and more active. I thought my kitchen kettlebell routine was building muscle nicely, but at this class I am very much the runt of the litter.
Influencer Jessica Bickling, who has 1.4 million followers on Instagram
@JESSICABICKLING/INSTAGRAM
It is clear that none of these young women are here to get thin — not that they are at all fat. They are just… built. Their shoulders and backs ripple like horseflesh. Their powerful flanks assume Marvel superhero stances almost instinctively. Gym-going generations below me prize thighs the way mine did protruding hip bones; they show them off in selfies, cycling shorts and thong bikinis.
The instructor spends the session moving to each station before me to adjust loads that the others have lifted with ease but which I can barely move. I think of the various personal trainers over the years I told squeamishly not to make me “bulky” and realise what hard work that would actually have required.
Forget old stereotypes
“This isn’t going to the gym to be skinnier or get a ‘summer body’,” 27-year-old Flo tells me afterwards. “I do it for how it feels — the mental health benefits. I like feeling stronger. It’s been a real boost.”
“It helps with your posture too,” says Abby, 33. “I feel empowered. I hate running and cardio. I needed something that didn’t leave me breathless.”
Boutique studios used to mean sinew-stretching reformer Pilates and ballerina-style barre, or high-intensity spinning and circuits with matching high-octane price tags for ladies in Lycra who wanted to feel the burn. Yet the latest crop offers the age-old pursuit of pumping iron, now rebranded as “strength training” — and not to roidy Rambo types. Lift Studio. Strength House. Even more tellingly, the Girls Spot in Wandsworth, south London, founded this year by the 26-year-old fitness influencer Natalee Barnett.
Ilona Maher — 5.2 million followers — walking the runway at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit show in Miami in May
GETTY IMAGES
“There’s been a huge shift in how women think about ‘losing weight’,” she says. “Now they want to ‘tone up’ or ‘build strength’. They think, why would I want to be skinny when I can be strong as well?”
A study from 2000 found that fewer than 10 per cent of women were doing any regular strength training; in 2023, a global survey of almost 400,000 women showed that had increased to 40 per cent. At the Olympics last year, there were more women lifting weights for Team GB than men.
It’s the same in high street gyms: women-only rooms, yoga studios converted to make space for more weights. Natalee Barnett has only two treadmills and two StairMasters; this isn’t what women are coming for. The hip Los Angeles fitness chain Barry’s, famous for gruelling high-intensity interval training classes, reports a “surge” in women doing weights instead. The Club Company has added 40 per cent more strength stations at its branches since Covid; female attendance at its weights classes is up 7 per cent since last year. Peloton, which made its name streaming spinning classes to at-home bikes, last year launched a Strength+ app for gym-lifters.
‘Ladies who lift’ and ‘swole girls’
“Anything we publish on lifting goals or achieving a personal best does really well. Strength training is a huge part of women’s social identities now; they go to the gym to make friends, spot each other and trade tips,” says Bridie Wilkins, fitness director at Women’s Health magazine.
Across social media, the tags “ladies who lift” and “swole girls” (meaning muscly) proliferate across Instagram and “GymTok”, as do influencers such as Jessica Bickling (1.4 million followers on Insta), the Olympic rugby medallist Ilona Maher (5.2 million) and 30-year-old Krissy Cela (3.3 million followers), who came to Britain from Albania aged eight as an asylum seeker and has since built an £80 million fitness empire out of her passion for strength training.
“I had my heart broken at 18,” she tells me. “I thought if I was skinnier, I’d be happier. The first time I went to the gym I walked straight out, but I became obsessed with why men went to the weights but women went to the cardio machines.”
That kicked off a research spree that led to a personal trainer (PT) qualification and a focus on weights a decade ago when little of the information out there was either aimed at or about women — or even beyond professional bodybuilders.
“I was like, ‘Why is no one else doing this?’ There was this sense that muscles made women look manly, so they felt insecure about having muscles. But they’re like armour: they make you feel powerful. Every woman should be lifting weights.”
Even the kit wasn’t right. So, in 2020, after developing an audience through Instagram and YouTube (where Cela’s tutorials have had more than 10 million views), she launched a fitness brand, Oner Active (“Oner” is pronounced “honour”).
“Most brands used to put seams across the bum or up your private parts, which worked on slimmer women but made the rest of us feel self-conscious,” Cela says.
Krissy Cela, the founder of Oner Active. “Muscles are like armour: they make you feel powerful. Every woman should be lifting weights”
@KRISSYCELA/INSTAGRAM
Instead, the waistband on Oner leggings acts as a lifting belt, with three tiers that go from stronger to weaker, while a “scrunch bum” stretch stitch enhances the glutes to make cheeks — according to the lingo — present as “peach” rather than “pancake”.
There is a whole vernacular around strength training: “leg day”, Amrap (as many reps as possible), Doms (delayed onset muscle soreness); ripped, stacked, shredded and yolked (see swole); and, my favourite, “ego lifting”, which is when you attempt heavier than you’re ready for, with terrible form.
It is changing how women feel about their bodies
Several of the women I speak to, in their late twenties to late thirties, tell me they started ten years ago, around the time Instagram and YouTube began to take off. They reel off female trainers, athletes and influencers, such as Cela, whose routines they follow. Yet few name an A-lister whose body inspires them.
In that decade, scientific studies discovered the many benefits weights have for women of all ages, from metabolism-boosting to menopause-easing and life-prolonging bone health. In 2019, NHS guidelines were updated to include “muscle-strengthening activities” for all adults at least twice a week. Then, in 2020, government advice encouraged it for pandemic home workouts. In 2023, a review showed weights helped with polycystic ovary syndrome and reduced hot flushes. As a 40-year-old woman, it is hard to open Instagram now without someone telling you to start lifting before you lose 10 per cent of your muscle mass along with all your oestrogen.
Gen Z and younger millennials have already made strength training a habit, many with an eye on future health. Yet it is also changing how the next generation of women feel about their bodies now.
‘I’d rather focus on strength than skinny’
“I got fed up of trying to be thin,” says Hannah, 31, who started lifting at university ten years ago. “Eating as little as possible takes up all your headspace. Having more muscle mass requires you to eat more — you can’t train if you’re empty.”
A friend who uses a university gym tells me that Gen Zers come in wearing their Crocs and Birkies because none of them are using the cardio machines, and the only skinny girls are “the ones on the treadmill with eating disorders”.
“I’ve lost 3st [lifting at the gym] in two years,” says Olivia, 27. “But I’d rather focus on strength than skinny. I will always be a curvy girl, but I’d like more definition.”
None of the women I speak to want to be thin: the words they use are “toned”, “defined” and “lean”.
“What that means is they want to build some muscle and drop fat,” says Sarah Spence, 31, a personal trainer. “But they soon realise this isn’t a vanity project. It’s an investment in themselves — more confidence, more energy, more resilience.
“It’s hard to look in the mirror after lifting heavy weights and say you don’t appreciate your body for what it just did.”
This is transformational for female self-image. I felt something similar after I gave birth — then went back to pinching and prodding and cursing myself for not being able to fasten my pre-baby jeans. Friends my age and older admit to still feeling trapped in a mindset they know is problematic: glad of the body positivity movement of the past ten years, but unable to apply it to themselves. Still pursuing thinness but not talking about it, with the added guilt around being unsisterly for doing so.
As anyone who has tried weight-loss jabs will tell you, resistance and strength training are key to success both during and after. Now many are realising that strength training in and of itself is a means of channelling issues around food into something that rewards consistency with visible progress — and fast.
Cathy, 49, started a weights programme a few years ago. “I ran for 20 years and began to feel I was doing damage. Now I’m stronger and not in pain — haven’t had a bad back for ages and don’t have sciatica any more. I can’t believe it took me until I was 45 to understand that the more muscle mass you have, the higher your metabolism is.”
An end to dieting
In her book A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting, Casey Johnston talks about her journey from cardio and counting calories (1,200 per day during her twenties) to “eating like a big beautiful horse” to power her new love of lifting.
“Once I started eating properly, the cravings I’d fought vanished,” she writes.
“I don’t have to fling myself around doing burpees any more,” Hannah says. “I don’t even go to classes any more. I basically do the same exercise now that my brother did as a teenager, back when I was desperately not eating.”
Amy, 39, who recently lifted her own body weight of 62kg, agrees. “At school, the boys had the weight room and we were in our netball knickers. We’ve come such a long way, but I’m acutely aware of the pink tax. You can spend £35 per month, go to your local leisure centre, and with the money you save not going to a bougie gym, have a PT session once a week to check your form.”
The women I speak to are intelligent and above averagely health-literate, yet all of them feel the same: how can we not have realised something so fundamental about our bodies? That if you train your muscles, you don’t need to diet.
Krissy Cela tells me she feels “like a superhero” when lifting. “I feel totally in control, doing it for myself.”
“Men in the gym don’t mansplain [any more],” Sarah Spence says. “But they often assume I’m not going to use certain equipment. So I smile at the other women there and make sure I take up space.”
Taking up space, bulking, “thick” thighs — all a world away from Kate Moss’s “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Swole girls have no interest in Ozempic culture or waif-like bodies.
“My boyfriend would break up with me if I got really thin,” Hannah says. “We go to the gym together, but I’m more into fitness. I like that power balance.”
“You’re never going to be skinny when you’re weight-lifting,” Amy says. “But you see how fantastic your body looks with a bit of muscle on it instead. I really hope skinny jeans don’t return — they’d never go over my thighs now.”
Start at home
“Keep it simple and consistent,” says Sarah Spence, a London-based and online PT (@sarahspence_pt).
You will need
• A pair of dumbbells (anywhere from 2-5kg is good).
• A 5-minute warm-up to ease out any stiffness. You don’t need to break a sweat here, just wake the body up.
Then you’re ready for a beginner strength circuit (resting for 60 seconds between sets)
• Squats: 3 sets of 10 reps.
• Seated overhead press: 3 sets of 12 reps. (Try to brace your core here too.)
• Glute bridges: 4 sets of 8 reps. (Pop your heels on a chair to make it harder.)
• Bent-over row: 3 sets of 10 reps.
• Reverse lunges: 3 sets of 8 reps each side.
• Incline push-ups: 3 sets of 6 reps. (Put your hands on a chair or the edge of your sofa.)
Aim to repeat twice a week for 6 to 8 weeks, trying to increase the weights or reps each week. For more information, go to sarahspence-pt.co.uk
Opening images: EasyLift sports bra, £38. Unified high-waisted leggings, £56. Go To seamless top, £35. Effortless seamless shorts. £44. All oneractive.com