My Women’s Strength and Conditioning Clients only do 2 sessions a week.

And in these two sessions, I incorporate heavy weights, some kind of 3D multi-dimensional movement and play, impact or plyometric exercise, grip training, and meditation…

So it’s a lot. And squished into two sessions because I want to optimise time. Women are busy, and if I can’t be efficient then they’ll be overwhelmed and won’t come at all.

Furthermore, the greatest strength gains for women are made with two exposures a week¹. More, for women anyway, isn’t better^{2 3}, unless it brings them joy. If they’re flogging themselves to get there, then twice a week is more than enough and the rest of the week they can walk the dog or play netball or whatever makes them happy.

In these two sessions, we are aggressively pursuing muscle mass and bone density, hence why there’s 3D movement, impact, and grip training included. Women are twice as likely as men to develop dementia, sarcopenia, and osteoporosis; the processes that lead to each begin prior to menopause and accelerate quickly after menopause.

So while more isn’t better, in terms of strength training, those two sessions are very specific in their purpose and will have life-long, positive impacts on these women’s health outcomes.

When My Women’s Strength and Conditioning Sessions are on, We Clear the Gym of Other Members or Train When There’s No-one Else There.

Obviously, this won’t be practical, popular, or possible at all gyms, but when my Women’s Strength and Conditioning sessions are on, we are the only people in the space. There are a number of reasons for this, primarily addressing the barriers to training in a gym for women, or some of the issues with a gym space that affect mainly women, which are:

• Pelvic floor dysfunctions⁴: If we have the gym to ourselves, then our participants can share deeply personal and intimate details about their health and experiences. Since so many women experience PFD in some shape or form, only one has to bring it up and the rest will open up, which is not always possible when there are men in the room.
• Feeling like they don’t belong⁵: Again, the media and social expectations have had a role in building the myth that women shouldn’t be in the weights room. We’ve all heard women express fear about getting bulky, and women generally are under social pressure to be smaller and lighter. 20Yrs ago, the only women you saw in the weights room were bodybuilders. Now, with women at the forefront of staggering rates of osteoporosis and sarcopenia, weights is becoming increasingly important for women of all ages. If the class is specifically for women, their health concerns, their needs, their bodies, then it makes it very easy to feel like they belong there.
• Harassment and Bullying, including filming them without permission⁶: Most of the numbers I have for harassment and bullying between men and women are from the workplace, however a gym is a workplace for the reception and admin staff, the personal trainers and group fitness instructors, so the numbers are still relevant. Just over half of all working women in Australia have experienced sexual discrimination and harassment in their workplaces⁷, and there’s a growing problem of women being filmed and photographed without their permission or knowledge, in gyms by men. This doesn’t make women comfortable when entering a male-dominated environment, and many just won’t bother.
• Shaming – inadvertent or overt: sometimes a women feels judged because of her appearance, size, or ability⁸. You can see this on social media in a variety of forms when looking at the comments on plus-sized athlete’s posts. There’s benevolent sexism or able-ism like “you go girl, you’ve got to be so brave to go to a gym when you’re overweight”, or the plain old “you shouldn’t be posting fitness content when you’re fat, you’re setting a bad example to everyone”. In the gym environment, there are people who will say this kind of thing to your face, however this online behaviour works more often to stop women from attempting it in the first place. If it’s just us, then we protect her from some of that vitriol and we have the opportunity to educate them on why they do belong in the gym!
  
• Believing that the weights room isn’t for girls, and being uncomfortable with taking up space in the weights room⁹: this theme, alongside the points before is interwoven, but if we can create a space where women can speak, can have difficulty, can be “unco”, can share their stories, and can honour their bodies and feelings then we’ve done a good job. For this reason, we take up ALL the space. We laugh loudly. We be silly, and unco, and sometimes unresponsive (in the case of a mum of two young children on the back end of an illness). All the things are ok.
  

If We Do Cardio At All in our Women’s Strength and Conditioning Sessions, It’s Short!

We do this for two reasons:

1. Long periods of cardio, in excess of 20 mins or thereabouts, can contribute to the cortisol load on any body. Where a body’s hormones are balanced, this doesn’t matter, however the majority of my female clients are in a state of constant, low level stress, and I want to avoid contributing to their cortisol loads. You can read more about how I use movement to balance hormones, particularly cortisol, in our mini course Stress Management Through Movement for Women’s Hormonal Health https://clarehozack.au/product/stress-cortisol/
2. To get the reactions I want from their bones and muscles, I need intervals so hard they cannot repeat them more than 2-4 times, multi-directional, plyometric or weight bearing movements. I can’t get this from 30min on the treadmill.

For women of any age, dementia, osteoporosis, and sarcopenea are in their futures at twice the rate that they’re in men’s futures. So as early as possible I am loading their bones and muscles in a very specific way. Hard and short. Exceedingly hard and especially short. Rarely are we performing cardio over 10 minutes long, although I have to say some formats are more effective than others at getting to that exceedingly hard range!

For most people, getting to that intensity is tough, and this is where the brain games come in. More often than not, we’re playing a game like piggy in the middle (ever played that with a 9kg medicine ball?), noughts and crosses (with tyres and dumbells of course!), or making up an obstacle course like a group of 9 year olds.

Obviously, for many women I will have to modify for those with pelvic floor dysfunction, however because every single one of them has progressed through our Restore Your Core and Pelvic Floor program, I am well across who can do what, as well as every client is educated on what is “good sore” and what is not! You can learn these skills here: https://clarehozack.au/product/restore-your-core-bundle/

Encourage Her to Walk in Between Strength and Conditioning Sessions

Because my sessions are so specific to the issues and circumstances that affect the modern woman, all I ever ask between sessions is that she walks, preferably in nature, for 30min per day. I know that I am generalising, but for most women that I train, walking is achievable on a regular basis; whereas getting in to the gym or performing sprint intervals may not be. Furthermore, walking offers massive bang for buck when it comes to health benefits, including:

• Reducing risk of dementia, and the onset of dementia. Women are twice as likely to develop dementia so this is vital to get on to early in life¹⁰! Learn more about optimising brain health in women here: https://clarehozack.au/product/brain-health/
• Lower cardiovascular disease risk, preventing heart disease, and slowing the onset of heart disease, including lowering the risk of heart attack¹¹. Walking has been shown to be equally as effective as vigorous intensity exercise, whereas sitting for long periods can increase risk¹². Learn more about women’s specific risks and experiences of heart disease here: https://clarehozack.au/product/heart-disease-women/
• Reduce the impact of weight-gain influence of specific genes. You read right, walking briskly for an hour a day will negate your genetic predisposition to gain weight¹³!
• Just 15 minutes of walking will curb sugar cravings and reduce the amount you eat even when you give into them¹⁴. This is especially important in a woman’s luteal phase, when she’s less sensitive to insulin, and during the menopause transition for the same reason. More on menopause here: https://clarehozack.au/product/menopause/ and the menstrual cycle here: https://clarehozack.au/product/the-menstrual-cycle/
• Any kind of physical activity reduces the risk of developing breast cancer, but walking especially reduces risk when the woman is overweight or using hormone therapies¹⁵. Learn more about Breast Cancer and Exercise here: https://clarehozack.au/product/breast-cancer-and-exercise/
• Reduces arthritis related joint pain¹⁶. Learn more about what kinds of exercise reduce arthritis pain here: https://clarehozack.au/product/arthritis-and-exercise/
• Boosts the immune system¹⁷.
• Walking is also one of the most accessible forms of exercise for women. When we look at barriers to exercise and organised sport, walking comes head and shoulders above other sporting modalities. There are more opportunities for a woman to walk versus a woman to join a sports team (only 4% of women participate in a team sport for this reason, versus 64% of women walking regularly)¹⁸.
• Is as effective as an anti-depressant for mental health^{19 20}. Yes, equally as effective as pharmaceuticals. Learn more about how to weild exercise as a depression prevention tool here: https://clarehozack.au/product/depression/

So, for these reasons, but mostly because of the sheer accessibility of walking, that is the only homework I ever give my female clients… that and whatever brings them joy (the rules go out the window if it’s fun while moving!)

For my Last Tip of the Year, When Training Just Women – Clean up their social media, create a social space OFF social media

Social media does not influence the way my client’s think about their health or their bodies in a positive way. When I am training just women in my women’s S&C, I want a certain response of their bodies, and it’s not achieving a super lean, super cut physique – mostly because that’s not normal, healthy, or even true of many of the “influencers” sharing those pictures.

For me, and my sessions it’s about:

• Lowering risk of disease. You name the disease, I can demonstrate how strength training can lower the risk. So if these diseases are in my client’s families or futures, I can actively demonstrate how we are working to prevent things like dementia, heart disease, autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, chronic inflammatory conditions, diabetes, and heaps more.
• Feeling powerful. Because this feeling carries over into everyday life. Women are classic for being over competent and lacking confidence, what happens when competence is met with confidence is beautiful, and I want to foster it.
• Anti ageing. In a physical, not aesthetic sense. Anti ageing in the sense that getting old is inevitable, but becoming incontinent, frail, and feeble is not.

These goals aren’t as achievable when my clients’ feeds are saturated with miracle weight loss programs and magical diet pills. Instead, we will them with whole food nutritionists, medical and evidenced based professionals, and the unconventional – think 90 year old gymnasts and 120kg cross fit athletes. The messaging in these accounts is so much healthier than the mum of 7 with 5% bodyfat selling her “how I did it” program.

Social media algorithms can work for us as well as against us! It just takes a few minutes to curate what you’re looking for!

So that’s it from me for 2024! Thank you so much for reading my stuff, and listening to my stuff, and watching my other stuff! Keep sending your questions through and I will answer them, same place, same time from 21st January 2025 (1pm Tuesdays Australian Eastern Time).

PS. It’s 2025 and i forgot one thing… The fact that we don’t do a lot of stretching!

Why? Because Oestrogen.

Oestrogen acts on your soft tissues, like your ligaments and tendons, in a way that makes them more mobile and less stable. As such, time spend towards balance and stability is more worthwhile, generally speaking, than a formal stretch component in our sessions. That’s not the same as saying we never stretch, by the way, but i’m more likely to hand pick one or two stretches for each client to complete between sets than i am to sit everyone down and spend 10min stretching together.

If you missed part one of this series, you can catch up here: https://clarehozack.au/2024/11/tweaks-for-women/ and use the form below to send me your questions in our Women’s Health Q&A in 2025! Listen to the questions we’ve already answered in my podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeRAiXlvYPb73sDZtC1YP8LGEOB9EtNXh 

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