Former competitive athlete Kaitlyn Altwasser stepped into a community gym for the first time when she began her studies at Carleton University in 2019. Immediately, she felt intimidated by the male-dominated environment.
Since then, she’s been going to the gym regularly for more than two years. But the occasional bout of anxiety never fully disappeared from her workouts.
“I still get gym anxiety,” Altwasser said. “I think it really comes down to thinking that other people are going to judge you.”
Last January, Altwasser, who’s now in her fourth-year of the neuroscience and mental health program at Carleton, decided to do something about it.
While scrolling through TikTok, Altwasser saw a video of Elisabeth Bradley, a student at San Diego State University, encouraging women at other universities to start their own Girl Gains chapters. Girl Gains is a network of clubs at post-secondary institutions across North America that provide a comprehensive community for women who weightlift.
Founded by Altwasser, Carleton’s Girl Gains chapter is currently the only one in Canada.
According to a 2020 study by Pennsylvania State University, college-aged women are less likely to engage in muscle-strengthening activities, use weight areas in campus recreation facilities, and less likely to feel comfortable accessing these facilities. The study cited reasons such as lack of knowledge or confidence, crowded spaces or women receiving unsolicited advice from male peers.
The results of this study reflect Altwasser’s experience of intimidation. Evidently, she’s not alone. Since its launch, Carleton’s Girl Gains chapter has grown to over 250 members and around 650 followers on Instagram.
Over the summer, the club became recognized by the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) and received funding from the association for the 2022-2023 academic year.
“I took the opportunity to start something because I know that in my first year of school, this would’ve been a club that I would’ve liked to see at Carleton,” she said.
Women’s only hours a source of tension and relief
Another opportunity that wasn’t available to Altwasser in her first year was regular Carleton Athletics’ women’s only fitness hours. Implemented this academic year, these hours have become a daily fixture, held from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in the fitness centre.
“I know there are a lot of women, for either mental, emotional or religious reasons, who don’t feel comfortable working out [in the fitness centre],” she said.
Carleton Fitness Centre staff member Layla Kairouz said employees often have to manage inappropriate behaviour from patrons during regular, co-ed hours.
Kairouz said numerous women have come up to her and her co-workers to tell them they feel uncomfortable in the gym due to men filming them, staring at them, talking to them or attempting to ask them out.
“We’ve had to kick out a lot of patrons,” she said.
Walker also says that there has been significant pushback against women’s only hours from male patrons.
“We’ve constantly had men come up to the front desk trying to work out, and we let them know, ‘Hey, sorry, 10 to 11:30 every day, women’s only hours,’” Walker said. “And they’ll throw a fit or be upset. We’ve had guys try to sneak into women’s only hours.”
As a woman, athlete and gym user, Walker said she thinks it’s disheartening when others are unwilling to give up the hour and a half of time carved out for women.
A shared experience
Daniella Tredre, a first-year communication and media studies student and active member of Girl Gains, said she started working out while bored at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recently, she’s gotten into weightlifting, but not without experiencing the same intimidation Altwasser and woman’s only hours are striving to diminish.
“I’ve noticed a lack of other women in the gym, so then you kind of start to feel self-conscious. That’s why I like the women’s only hours,” Tredre said.
Francine Darroch, assistant professor of gender and health at Carleton, said generally, fewer women than men engage in the type of resistance training that Girl Gains promotes, leading them to miss out on its benefits.
“Resistance training is crucial to overall health and well-being,” Darroch said.
Not only does activity aid physical health, but it also offers a number of equally important mental health benefits and social opportunities, Darroch said.
Darroch researches achieving equity for marginalized populations in physical activity and elite female athletes in sport. She said groups such as Girl Gains are essential for ensuring equitable access to physical activity.
“Sport and physical activity are really powerful platforms where we can promote gender equity,” she said.
Personal trainers in the United States have begun to take a trauma-informed approach to their business to better support their clients. Trauma Informed Weight Lifting, a non-profit program run out of the Center for Trauma and Embodiment at JRI, provides certificate programs for trauma-informed training and educational tools about the practice to personal trainers.
According to a 2021 survey by Statistics Canada, 64 per cent of Canadians reported being exposed to at least one potentially traumatic event during their lifetime. Sexual assault, life-threatening insult or injury, situations involving sudden accidental death and physical assault were the most commonly reported traumatic events.
Together, the team of social workers, fitness coaches and harm reduction educators at the Trauma Informed Weight Lifting program, are currently working in partnership with the University of Minnesota, Harvard University and Barry University to determine how weightlifting can be used as a method for helping treat trauma-related symptoms from these traumatic events.
Darroch said it’s very important that physical activity spaces feel safe, accessible and trauma-informed.
“Not everyone is coming to the room as a former high school athlete,” Darroch said. “Some people are trying this for the first time, or some people are coming with a whole bunch of stress and anxiety.”
To build community, not stress, moving collectively and learning to perform skills together during physical activity can be valuable, Darroch said.
“This person has become one of my closest friends. We met at the first meeting,” she said.
Sweat through the small stuff, and be proud
Alicia Gal, biomechanics, strength and conditioning coach, P.h.D candidate and the creator of Carleton Athletics’ women’s only strength training program, said her work as a strength training instructor is centred around supporting gender equity.
But unrealistic expectations built upon what people see online can often hinder her clients’ progress, she said.
“They want to see the peach bum, they want the nice abs, they want the perfect picture on Instagram, but they don’t realize that it takes eight months, six months, three months to get those things,” she said.
“They want instant results. Hard work has become uncool.”
To help her clients develop more reasonable expectations for themselves, Gal said she encourages them to track their strength training progress through small achievements.
“Carleton’s cool because it’s built on a hill. So you can actually start showing people their results just by them walking around campus,” she said.
Walking up the steep ramp in Carleton’s tunnels or the stairs in the University Centre, Gal said, are easy ways to gauge increased strength.
During the women’s only strength program—which has expanded to include multiple levels over the last five years—Gal teaches women how to strength train by starting with basics such as warm-up techniques and training principles.
She said by reframing the way people think about strength training, she hopes to have a positive impact on the accessibility of the sport.
“The best squatters in the world are toddlers. Toddlers sit down in a perfect squat for hours and play, and they’re not in pain, so we all could do that at one point,” she said. “We’ve just learned how to undo it.”
Altwasser said tracking her progress and achievements in strength training has been very rewarding and keeps her motivated to continue training.
“It’s [about] building up that confidence in yourself and proving to yourself that you’re actually capable of reaching your goals,” she said.
Featured image by Olivia Grandy.
