Words carry a tremendous amount of power. Your own dialogue, or how something is phrased, can set you up to succeed, or can make your path to your goals incredibly daunting. One of my absolute pet peeves, and something that is an unfortunately common occurrence, is when people refer to a modified form of an exercise as a ”girl exercise.” I won’t lie, this makes my blood boil. You see this in magazines, on social media, and you even hear fitness professionals uttering these severely limiting words. I’m sorry, but no good coach from the present day uses this terminology.Let me be painfully clear. There is no such thing as a ”girl” version of an exercise, end of story. This sexist and insulting term continues to perpetuate the notion that women are weak and physically inferior to males, prevents so many women from becoming as fit and strong as they could be, and robs them of the feelings of empowerment and confidence they could achieve.
Many people refer to anything modified as a ”girl” exercise. For instance, push-ups from the knees might be called ”girl push-ups.” First of all, it is actually far more effective to perform push-ups from the toes, and with the hands elevated on a bench, box, or bar. This will help the individual progress to performing proper push-ups from their hands and feet.
Secondly, unless you are living in the middle ages, or in a dark cave, there is no such thing as a ”male” or ”female” exercise. It is either the regular variation of an exercise, or a modified variation.
Women are very physically capable and have endless potential, so anything that discounts this notion, or feeds into some of the sexist mentalities that unfortunately still exist, need to be eliminated once and for all. And for the record, in the 12 + years that I have been a strength coach, I have worked with numerous male clients who had to start out performing the modified variation of certain exercises, at least until they achieved the requisite levels of strength, stability, and mobility so they could perform the regular variation. Words matter, so choose them wisely.
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