I've been getting more into strength training and I'm honestly confused about the way women's fitness is marketed.
Women are constantly told to focus on "toning," high-rep circuits, light weights, and avoiding getting "bulky," even though physiologically our muscles contract and grow the same way men's do.
Where did the idea of "toning muscle" even come from? And why are circuit-style workouts pushed so hard for women compared to progressive overload and basic strength training?
Is this mostly marketing, fear of muscular women, lack of education, or something else?
95% of the fitness industry is lies and marketing
You’re being generous lol. 99.9% of legit fitness advice could be learned in 5 minutes but these MFers gonna get paid!
Yeah my gf asks what's best for lifting and she kinda sees this and that on tiktok or whatever. I literally just tell her to lift hard, increase weight, eat okay, and sleep okay (and don't fuck yourself up with bad form). You are too new to worry about the nuances some of these people are talking about, which a lot of is straight up not important no matter how far into lifting you are.
No doubt. And even something like creatine they spend so much time "debating" it. It's like, hey man, try it. It's safe. If it works for you keep taking it. If it doesn't work, stop taking it. There's no need to debate these tiny details to your fitness routine. Creatine is like 0.1% of the result.
Eat steak, lift heavy things until it becomes unbearable. Do 30 minutes of low intensity cardio a day. Repeat until you die. Not great marketing.
This is probably gonna get me downvoted but I think the whole concept of bulking/cutting doesn’t make sense for naturals, only for drug users. I spent so much time doing those bulk/cut cycles and I have grown but I probably could have just stayed lean and grown the same
Agree and disagree. The way that people take it, and go hard to one side makes no sense to me. And I agree with you for the most part, it’s entirely possible to build a good look while leaning out and staying there.
What cycling does for me.(mild 300-500 surplus/deficet) is show results. Mental game is hard to play when I’m not seeing it.
I’ve done some stupid stupid cuts for, at the time reasons, that were like 1000 calories low. That’s stupid. You’re throw out real muscle because fat….that shit makes no sense.
I’ve had low body fat, like the type with ripped abs. It SUCKS. The constant food worries. Screw up a meal and you’re weak af the next day? No thanks too old for that shit.
"bulking" is just cope for having a hall pass to get fat. I mean it works, you can get fat and build muscle too. I did that for like 30 years lol. But I didn't need to get THAT fat.
Yall are gaining fat on a bulk? Never tried a lean bulk?
Bro I’m 50 and have been lifting weights since I was 16. Were you even born yet? We didn’t talk about bulking and cutting and lean bulking and maingaining and all this Gen Z bullshit terminology. We just lifted weights and you grew muscle.
Exactly lol just eat protein and lift heavy shit. Play some sports, get some cardiovascular exercise. Body will get in shape.
It’s funny, i think playing a sport - even just for fun a couple times per week - makes a massive impact on your physique. You move better, feel better, lean out a bit, and you’re hungry after so you can slam some food
I'd like to know what in the world makes your reply relevant? You said bulking causes too much weight gain, and I pointed out that is clearly because you're not doing it right. No one, not a soul, said you can't make progress without it. Not to mention, that just because you dont track your diet doesn't mean no one else should. Diet is incredibly important to muscle growth and if you ignore it you'll just be another lifelong intermediate. Why does your training years make a difference, you just come on here to bag on people for being younger than you? I dont know man, thats kind of pathetic. You know nothing about me, my age, or training time, yet you dogpile because I said a word you don't like, in a conversation that specifically mentioned that topic.
You yourself literally distinguished between “bulk” and “lean bulk” lol. You told on yourself bro.
Nobody is capable of fine tuning their calories to gain 0.1-0.3 lbs of lean mass a week, that's basically impossible to differentiate from maintaining. I take a fart before weighing myself and I lose 0.1 lbs of lean mass.
You can stay lean, but you won't get from 150 pounds skinny fat to 170 with muscle without increasing your calories. A small surplus like gaining 1 to 2 pounds a month would probably be optimal. Very little fat gained. You won't gain all muscle, but there's no way to get bigger than you are if you eat at maintenance, by definition.
The other 5% is Lyle.
Marketing on a lack of knowledge
And a surplus of warped self-image.
It's very despondent because women stand to gain quite a lot from the health and wellness advantages of hypertrophy training if only to stave off osteoporosis and sarcopenia, but also benefit massively from the single best way to sustainably achieve perfectly valid physique goals as well.
And insecurities. The whole existence of "pump covers" is just weaponised body dysmorphia.
Marketing is just weird. The verbiage directed at men is pretty weird too if it's any consolation.
"Get 3d gorilla-fucked with our proprietary bcaa power matrix!" Is pretty weird.
Hang on do you have a link for the gorilla fuck powder? My current one of “get anaconda ass-flexed with our nootropics and itchy drink!” is getting too much of a tolerance by my body
Dang do you have to upgrade to that from "Squat-powering firehose diarrhea with an artisanal proprietary blend of expired creatine and mollusk protein powder"
Nothing fuels muscle growth quite like some blended periwinkles
Man wtf mollusk protein powder? How did your mind come up with that?
Clearly you're unfamiliar with the hitherto untapped hydraulic force of projectile feces and its veritable role in increasing your explosive power at full squat depth.
Haven't you heard about the chocolate milk and oyster post-diaper pre-workout that all the champions are secretly employing? For the low, low price of $420, you too can join the elite ranks of the staunchly propelled.
Buy now, and get 6.9% off the ultra-pressurized lactation inducement compound your favorite professional lifter uses to break their deadlift PRs.
I just took that course - did funny things to my balls
They started selling gorilla-fuck-powder again? Here I've been stuck using donkey-bang-syrup for months already.
But is it blue or purple?
Getting bulky is akin to getting fat. When their bodies get larger, that’s a very difficult mindset to work past that it’s not fat - it’s muscle. But to some women, getting larger in any way goes against everything that’s been ingrained to them since birth.
Those traditional ideals are hard to break. Especially when you don't have a partner yet. A lot of men cant handle a woman with even a lil bit of muscle. It’s pathetic
I think there's a lot more guys who like athletic or even "muscle mommy" types than those who don't want any muscle. The combativeness of your comment is odd.
She’s also assuming that everyone is waiting for a partner lol
A male partner too
exploiting the average woman’s lack of physiology knowledge to sell them a vision of beauty based on early 2000s eating disorder-heavy body goals
hit the nail on the head
My hunch is that yeah there's a sort of fear in being too bulky amongst women. Realistically tho, thats never going to happen accidentally. Not even amongst men will that just happen accidentally.
But people don't really know how much of a pain in the ass fitness is. Look at that bulky ass mthefke over there, yeah no, they've been at it deliberately for 9 years now. You're not gonna be like them soon doing a basic bastard workout.
I heard somebody on here say once, “Not lifting because you’re afraid of getting too bulky is like not learning to ice skate because you don’t want to play in the nhl.” Truth.
I always liked “I don’t want to read a book, what if I accidentally get a PhD”.
I’ve heard multiple women say this. It’s frustrating, because you won’t accidentally become Arnold Schwarzenegger. And it’s insulting to people who do work hard for it.
One does not need to be involved in any weight training to be fit or into fitness.
9 years is hard work and devotion is required, but so to is running marathons. Most people don’t know about fast twitch vs slow twitch muscles.
You may be fit but it sounds like it’s not just the women’s fitness industry using words in a way that favours their beliefs.
What on earth is this reply even about lol
“Toning” has been a buzzword in women’s fitness since….I think forever.
i think the most annoying part of this is that women now get this idea that getting bulky just… happens😭 as you said you can apply the same physiological concepts to your training as men but it is also way harder to naturally put on lean mass as a woman. i hear girls say the whole “ i want to get toned but i dont want to be bulky”…
like i put every ounce of effort through diet and training to naturally build lots of muscle and have for years and still dont look “bulky”. if anything i look closer to their version of “toned” which i achieved doing the things they have been fear mongered into avoiding😂
If only men could gain muscle as fast as women think they will gain muscle - that would be nice :D
as a woman, i would like to gain muscle as fast as other women think they will gain muscle😅
Seriously I’ve been trying so hard to get “bulky” and it doesn’t happen by accident… it rarely even happens with a ton of effort lol
Have you looked at any other women focused industry? Marketing to women, oddly done by women, is fucked.
Women are sometimes the worst enemies in comparison to men just being men.
I think the most malicious things come from men, but most of the pressure on women is from other women. We were talking about holidays at work recently and the women were all saying how holidays are just so much work "for women" and "men don't appreciate all we do for them". She is right that if the woman is doing most of the cooking for a big holiday dinner, of course that's a ton of work and it should be appreciated and acknowledged because everyone eats. But she won't on to list a bunch of things that "men" are insufficiently grateful for and it was stuff like putting out the fancy bath towels, or lighting scented candles, or having special salt shakers, buying a new dress, setting out holiday themed Nick naks, etc. one of the guys asked her why she does ask that stuff that she doesn't like to do and her husband obviously doesn't care about as he has no role in it, doesn't ask for it, and doesn't seem to care when it's done. Her answer was "it's a woman's job to do this stuff." He asked "why?" She said "it's expected of us" and he asked "by who?" And she didn't settled on "women judge and gossip about women who don't do this stuff." He confused with "so you do a bunch of stuff as a response to social pressure from women, and you get mad at your husband that he doesn't thank you for doing it when neither one of you wants it done?" She kinda admitted that women cause most of women's frustrations.
Short answer is marketing and scams.
Longer answer is that weightlifting culture was established as a "manly" thing early on in the modern fitness world, and women who want to feel womanly automatically don't want to get too involved with the grunty "manly" activities that men do to get masculine physiques, and that's easier to exploit by promising other stuff that doesn't quite get them where they want to be (keeping them on the hook while the fitness trainers quietly also weightlift to get the physiques their clients envy) than it is to actually help break down the widespread notion that "weights = manly"
I used to work as a PT down at my local gym and it was primarily middle aged women who i’d help and the amount of BS fitness advice i’ve heard them say they’ve seen was extraordinary.
the most annoying one is the whole “low weights to tone the muscle” bullshit they all believe with all that circuit style training
It’s sort of a vicious cycle where the “toning” myth is prominent, so marketers appeal to believers in the myth, reinforcing the belief!
It just so happens that the physique that a lot of women want to have can be achieved with very suboptimal training. That invites a lot of bullshit into the mix. With male physique aspirations, you'd better hammer down the basics if you want a shot at looking how you want.
Suboptimal training and a BBL lol
Can you elaborate on the suboptimal training? I’m curious as to what that entails. Please go into details.
He means women typically don’t want to be jacked, so a bit of suboptimal training will get them the newbie gains just fine, making a big enough difference that their muscular goal is achieved.
Suboptimal being junk volume, 30+ rep ranges, poor programming, supersets, and ineffective but flashy exercises
Edit: not shitting on supersets, i meant poorly programmed supersets
Suboptimal to getting jacked or suboptimal to getting fit?
Suboptimal for achieving the goal of building muscle, whatever you wanna call that
Oh that’s interesting. I do suboptimal training 4-5 days a week and I’m jacked and 100% natural. Thanks for clarifying.
Aha i knew you were asking so sensitively for a personal reason. Congrats on being jacked, but i hope you know there’s levels of suboptimal. This conversation is about deliberately over complicated and inefficient workout plan scams.
You’re doing more right than wrong, clearly.
No no… I’m just tired of reading how EVERYONE needs to workout in a specific way or you simply can’t build muscle. You must go to absolute failure where you are on the brink of injury or you won’t build muscle. You HAVE TO do a bro split or you won’t build muscle. So many blanket statements and narratives that lay down the law of exercise and bodybuilding.
Most people don’t want to acknowledge that some people respond differently to different types of routines, programming, rep ranges, supersets, tri-sets, giant sets… etc…
I’m not jacked, been called jacked by non-lifters, though, and every ounce of gains I’ve made have been sub optimal. You’re preaching to the choir, we’re just talking about different things
I knew from your 'I'm just super curious, pls be specific' post that you were on some bullshit. This just confirms it.
What’s bullshit is you still didn’t explain what your view of suboptimal training is.
Anyone telling you you HAVE to workout in a specific way is a snake oil scientist.
Not OP but so much of the “ideal” body type for women (when millennials came of age) was just thin/low body fat. Cosmo wasn’t featuring covers with female biceps, deltoids, etc. Women were intentionally told not to build muscle.
Cycling, running, exercise classes of all kinds, free weights—it likely didn’t matter as long as you were running a caloric deficit. If you were getting smaller then it was “fitness.”
If you were chasing the male ideal at that time (the “inverted triangle”) then it was unlikely that you would succeed with a similar plan.
Two days treadmill, two days of free weights, along with a caloric deficit, might get you some abs but you weren’t going to look like Hugh Jackman or Brad Pitt without years of a serious plan.
That’s not to say that this was in any way a healthier time for women: not dieting, not exercise, and certainly not plastic surgery.
The ugly truth was (and often still is) that we praise disordered eating in women and that exercise may not even be necessary to get a “beach body.” Going to the gym and just wandering around was fine as long as you stayed hungry when you got home.
Some women don't want to "lift" for fear of looking like one of the women on the cover of a muscle mag. So instead, they are sold on the idea of just tightening up a little underarm sag and suck in the gut a bit. Time in the gym is better than time on the couch, though, so whatever gets you in there is good.
They're marketing their solution or product based on a common women's insecurities.
"hey I don't want to get big and muscular, I should use their thing"
Someone else put it well: they’re trying to use a beauty ideal based on eating disorders. My mom’s been lifting for about a year or so, but will occasionally mention how she doesn’t want to look muscular like a family friend of ours, as she considers that kind of physique un-feminine.
More generally, my impression is that a lot of fitness advice is based on the idea that people are interested in feeling like they’re doing work, and less interested in putting in the effort. I think “fitness” is one of those ideas people use to explain why they’re exercising, but not in a way that would actually do something. At least, I think my dad invokes it that way to justify when he works out in the way you described (high, submaximal reps).
Every time i read a post from men in a similar fashion, I'm baffled even though i am aware men are ignorant.
Dude, the whole beauty industry and society is obsessed with women looking skinny and forever young (ideally barely of age).
Why are you surprised? Have you noticed how women are treated and what's expected from them socially? That's the very normal experience for every woman since being a child. This shit is showed at us in anything including period pad ads.
you aren’t in the real circle of women who lift. no one in that sphere would ever spout that bs
THIS. and most of us this circle started there once too lol. you quickly realize to get “toned”… you gotta lift…. like heavy… for a long time….
AND you WONT get bulky. if you are a girl who wants to get bulky, prepare to workout harder than a man does, harder than most women do, with more to eat than will ever be fully enjoyable day to day
i would add that to ACTUALLY look bulky, there are PEDs involved. i have been training for bodybuilding doing exactly everything im supposed to diet and lifting wise… i have decent amount of natural muscularity and still dont stand out like a sore thumb in public or look bulky and manly.
Because they have done lots of market testing and see a higher participation rate when they do it that way.
So maybe the next question is: why do women respond better to this type of messaging than the sort that men respond to?
I’ll let you speculate about that.
Yep. I was never into the circuit idea and focused on weights when I started my journey a few years back. I'm strong and happy with the result, but for all the fear mongering I grew up with about 'building bulk' I should be she hulk by now. I am not.
Probably speaking to the lowest common denominator. I don’t know which came first, the marketing or the typical female gym behavior, but most the women I see at the gym all use the same machines and spend like 30 minutes doing 4 sets that aren’t really taken anywhere close to failure. Or if they do go hard, it’s usually on some machine for glutes.
Which means I’m all alone with the dudes by the squat racks and heavy weights 😭
Looks that way.
I think the fitness industry in general is weird, not just womens. Lots of charlatans out there that prey on people who don't know any better
Its hard to sell the basics over and over again so flashy hype nonsense enters the mix. It sells because its ”the secret nobody wants to tell you”
A vast majority of women don't want to look super muscular. They don't understand that naturally 99.9 % of women cannot look like that and it certainly won't happen by accident. Many men can't, let alone women.
They also promise great results with a little effort. Most women (a lot of men too) don't want to push themselves super hard in the gym. Fundamentally, it comes down to the fact that they don't understand just how hard it is to build muscle and what's required.
.
Let’s also highlight that there are no sexy answers.
Strength training is not easy or fun. It’s hard work and it’s repetitive. It’s boring. I lean into the hard work part the most. Most people just don’t wanna work hard.
Flashy words like tone, cut, skinny, are designed to be cute and easy.
As soon as you find the joy in training or joy in meal prepping or joy in routine - then the game is changed. But for most people outside of the gym they just see hard work for flexing in front of a mirror or competition kind of dumb.
I believe everyone here knows gym culture is much deeper that.
Strength training absolutely is fun though, you said it yourself
Respectfully
Go to (a non niche ) gym and look around. How many women you gonna find doing something thats isn't: cardio/legs/circuit?
The (non niche) industry just put the horses at races that they gonna win....
Yeah but are you describing a cause or an effect?
When it comes to the major brunt of marketing in most fields, it's almost always a response.
If a company was capable of directly manipulating demographics to such a degree, they wouldn't bother faffing about with such relatively facile, passive advertising.
Effective advertising preys upon already existent vulnerabilities.
Well, we are in 2025, info is far as one touch on your phone, so honestly no excuses.
If people used their time to actually learn something, they wouldn't be fooled at that matter.
For millions of reasons the average Jane hasn't any interest in being too muscular or to lift heavy, a guge number don't even touch an traditional gym. That's the majority, and the industry (seeking profits) just land their market there, because is were the big chunck of clients are.
Since the day 1, the image of a men is someone muscular, that can hold a fight, can hunt, can this and that
The image of women is someone caring, nurturing, feminine, curves, this and that.
This is engraved globally, since forever, since before supplements industry or any other industry existed.
And generations gonna die without seeing any (sensible) change in this mindset.
Resume: the industry may contribute a bit, but isn't the "creator" of this idea.
Dude, the "fitness industry" has a lifespan shorter than plenty of elderly people alive today. The very idea of having a dedicated time and space in which one "exercises" is not very old, at all. I'm not inclined to believe in any universal explanation about the whole of human history, that's freshman sociology essay thinking.
Any beliefs we have about what fit bodies should be like are inflected by advertising more than evolution.
You're free and on your right to disagree mate.
But that doesn't change the fact that a fit body, by the pov of enthusiasts and athletes is a complete diferent standard than the average Joe and Jane think.
The main public don't cater for macros, solid plan, bla bla bla, if is a man they wanna big arms and chest and if is a woman they wanna nice inferiors.
When we talk about the whole lot of clients, we need to remeber that not only enthusiasts and athletes are part of, and they are the minority here, by the sales point wise.
I born in Brazil, and the solid majority of women there dress with gym gear (aka leggings, tops and why not) just to do casual things and often they didn't even workout, but yet they are part of the patrons that buy these products and brands, now spread it worldwide and for any "gym related stuff" and you gonna get my point.
Why I as a industry would be bothered to cater for a small number when I can make buckloads of profit with the majority? Thats is exactly were the industry make money.
Thats is the reason for my first answer about look at the gym's. For any 1 woman that you see bothering having a solid superior workout you gonna find 100 catering just to get a big ass. Because for the Jane thats is whats matter.
Omg in Brazil everyone works out and women lift heavy as fuck. Rio de Janeiro has a ridiculous number of gyms per capita, one of the highest in the world. Everyone is outside playing all kinds of sports no matter how hot it is, it actually ridiculous.
In Finland, a lot actually but i think our gym culture is different
Women’s fitness has been subject to marketing scams all the way back when Suzanne Sommers hawked the Thighmaster. Promising results with quick, “low effort” products and exercise routines.
Omg the tight master ☠️☠️☠️
Author Schopenhauer enters the chat. Lol
Look, if they just gave you the roadmap to being fit then you'd just follow it and they'd only have you as a one time customer. If they can get you to do a bunch of bullshit out of fear of suddenly achieving every gymbro's dream and becoming "too bulky" overnight, then they can peddle you more bullshit. Not achieving your goals doing circuit training? Have you considered our food delivery service? Can't stick to your diet? These thermogenic metabolism booster pills are for you! The fitness industry can't sell you strength training and a diet geared towards your goals, but they're happy to sell you every supplement and training program that won't help you reach your goals. You reaching your goal drives them out of business. The incentives are cursed in the fitness industry.
Women don't want to look bulky but they obviously like muscle because "toned" is always code for. Small with visible muscle. Nevermind that not all women are shaped like that or CAN even get to that shape. I have always had broad shoulders. I will never get to dainty and I struggled with it for a bit.
I personally decided that now I like looking like I could fight a bear if I locked in. But a lot of women's fitness advice is three eating disorders in a trench coat.
Same, I have belly fat that never goes away, even my boobs will disappear but my love handles are for life! Because I’ve been underweight I know this so I don’t try to chase that
I think it goes back very far with gender roles. Women are not supposed to be big and strong and muscular. Toxic diet culture didn’t start in the 2000s- our boomer mothers were marketed speed to stay slim. I’m not sure even how far back this goes
For some reason those things sound like they would make sense, and it’s just more profitable to go along with it than to correct the false assumption.
“Isn’t it less profitable because the women will eventually realize they’re being grifted?” You would think so, but the human mind is remarkably stubborn in holding on to its beliefs.
Recently I got my friend to start working out with me. He’d taken a break from the gym but he’d already worked out for years, even longer than me. So imagine my surprise when his idea of training abs on leg days was an ab circuit of 4 different ab exercises, no rest between sets, and 4 sets each for a total of 16 sets.
I told him “you realize abs are a muscle like any other and you train them like any other, right…?” And he goes “yeah, but… like… it’s just so efficient, you should see the way I can just transition from one exercise to the next instantly, I can get the whole thing done so fast, it’s insanely efficient!”
I told him that’s called supersetting, and it is very time efficient, and it’s great if he wants to incorporate it into his program to save time. But you superset shit like biceps with triceps, not abs with abs with abs with abs. I reminded him that the abs are a muscle like any other and if he really wanted to do that much ab work, he could just do 2-4 sets of abs at the end of end of every workout, rather than 16 sets of abs every 3-4 days.
And even though that’s common sense and shit he already knew, he didn’t stop, at least not at first. It took weeks of convincing him to treat abs like any other muscle group, and him watching videos that encouraged him to do the same thing. Even though he already knew they were just a regular muscle, he just couldn’t stop gaslighting himself into running an ab circuit. No one had told him to do it, it’s just what intuitively felt right to him.
It would have been far easier to just sell him an “optimal ab circuit program” than to convince him to train abs normally. And that’s the same phenomenon at play with the women’s fitness industry.
Women have this irrational fear that defies common sense, and there’s more money to be made in playing along with it than there is in breaking them out of it, an effort that would be wasted on some of them anyway. For some women, the reality is that they’ll either follow these bullshit “toning the muscle” circuit programs or they won’t work out at all, because they intuitively feel that traditional training will make them bulky and as much as you try to convince them that it doesn’t work like that, they don’t want to risk it waking up one day looking like Arnold.
It’s not really that weird. What does “shredded,” “yoked,” or for that matter “dry” or “crispy” mean? It’s shorthand for a look that otherwise takes more words to describe. Toned = visible muscle tone without excessively round muscle bellies (except in the glutes nowadays), obvious mass, striations…not too lean.
Women don’t get bulky by bodybuilding standards by accident, but it is pretty easy for many women to get “normie bulky” by accident - IOW, to grow muscles they associate with bulkiness like traps and quads.
The average woman who wants svelte shoulders but doesn’t use proper form and has weak supporting muscles can find her traps growing way more than she wants from shoulder work. No heavy weights or peds needed.
A good trainer or fitness enthusiast is not mystified by any of this.
It's just marketing. Toning isn't a thing; you get toned by getting bigger muscles and getting leaner. A lot of women who aren't into fitness think it's 1) easier to gain muscle than it is and 2) don't realize that woman are basically never going to accidentally look "manly". Women can get big muscles that might not be their preferred aesthetic. But it won't take a long time and a lot of work combined with nutrition, and most women probably can't get that big anyway without steroids (again, not gonna happen by accident). Makes do not grow that easily or fast if you are natural, and doubly so for women
This is an example of the saying " The customer is always right." Women, as a demo, have said they don't want to get bulky and look like a man. It's a fear. Unfounded but still very real. And since they're afraid of bulking, if you want to sell women's fitness goods and services then you must address that fear. "My program won't make you bulky. It'll tone." And now bullshit is created by advertising. This is not new.
Capitalism and patriarchy. It’s harder to sell stuff to people who feel good about themselves and the patriarchy wants to keep women weak.
Wow
marketing works too easily
The 'Fitness Industry' thrives on differentiation.
Do what you want
They're throwing spaghetti on the wall. A lot of women like the idea they sell, so they sell it.
As everyone else said. Lies and marketing.
People don’t want the truth - obtaining a top tier body requires you to count macros / track weight, sticking to a strict exercise regimen, and TIME. Lots of time.
You can’t market this because there’s no money to be made from it.
What you can market - BUY MY SUPPS TO GET 6 PACK ABS AND LOSE 10 POUNDS OF FAT IN TWO WEEKS.
That sells because people want to buy shortcuts and feel like they’re paying for the “secret sauce” every other idiot has yet to find.
They use those words because many women are afraid to do any sort of resistance training because they fear they’ll wake up looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger after one workout. It’s the inverse of the BS they sell guys, promising they’ll get huge overnight.
The whole point of internet marketing is to get you as a human to feel an emotion intense enough to prime you to make a purchase to cope with the dopamine spike and response cycle. That’s it. They psychologically penetrate us all and then expect us to be grateful and show that gratitude with money.
it's all bs
sleep well, eat real food, lift weights with progressive load, do some cardio and some HIIT sessions
that's it
Something I haven’t seen mentioned yet is body weight perception. Any trainer can confirm this.
It is really hard to get women to disconnect from the scale. If I’m training a women and over the year her weight is up 3 pounds but her body fat is down 10% and she looked more “toned” she would still be unhappy because her weight is up.
A lot of work goes into retraining clients, progress pictures, articles, building trust and in alot of cases making concessions and putting a couple fake exercises or sets in just to check the mental box for the client.
Sure we can do 2 lb walking lunges to build that booty……
The "toning" thing has been around since at least the late 1980s with the aerobics craze and then became huge with the VHS fitness fads of the 90s... I'm shocked its still being used considering how much good info is out there these days.
It's so funny that any woman would think they could grow muscles larger and faster than they wanted. I'm a male that does everything possible to gain, at best, a couple few of lean muscle in a year, by training 5-6x/week, tracking all my macros every day, prioritizing sleep, avoiding bad habits, etc. and some of these women think they're going to pack on 20lbs of muscle by accident.
It seems a lot of the fitness industry is clueless. It's not like you're going to start building huge muscles after lifting weights . My wife,was wanting to tone up so I started her on a mild resistance program. She was worried about getting " too bulky". It's not that easy hon. You need to do a whole host of things the right way.
Its marketing. You give what most people want. Women want to look fit and feminine. The idea that to look feminine you have to huff and puff and grunt while lifting a heavy ass chunk of iron is not appealing to the uneducated on the subject because it feels manly. They want to look feminine by feeling feminine in their workouts. Also the definition of fit most woman would give is thin. They want to loose weight, hence aerobic training looks appealing even if strenght is the true way. It just doesn’t feel like it if you dont know already. While for most men being thin is basically the same as being overweight. Even worse, because you can be overweight and strong af. You cant be skinny and strong.
The toning lie came from women. They don’t want to hear muscle building and losing fat. It sounds like they’ll turn into men(if only it was so easy).
Circuit style workouts still exist as great exercise. Good exercise doesn’t mean bodybuilding though. People confuse any workout as building muscle. Sure you might gain 1/10th of the muscle in comparison, so it’s technically right.
I’m the other spectrum though, women do these crazy insane 10+ sets of glutes in one workout.
The fitness industry is just ass when you’re trying to get real information. The real information is boring and simple. With the advanced stuff just being a nuanced difference attempt at the boring and simple stuff.
IKR, it doesn't need to be gendered. Do what feels good to you. Good luck!
Bs marketing. Most advice that applies to men also applies to women (for women tho a little more emphasis on the lower body) but yes its mostly the same.
You're looking in the wrong places, any decent guidance for women dropped that bullshit twenty years ago. You can literally do the same shit men do and it'll work great.
not sure what media you're consuming - did you time travel and get stuck in 1979 ?
Average female does not want to go hard and the idea of low weight high rep circuit training fits the ”toning” agenda.
Lies as usual
Female marketing psychology is clearly different than make psychology.
That's the answer.
The actual truth is almost irrelevant. That would be "logical" which is (generalized) not how women receive nor process information and make decisions.
A woman doesn't want to be a man. Men are big. Men who lift are bigger and still have a dad bob unless they're also cutting. Women want to be small and dainty. They don't want to get fat. That is what they're saying. So they see someone dainty moving small weights and that's what they want.... Less fat and a little bit of arm, shoulder, leg definition. And it's an easy sell.
And I'm general, women are not hormonally driven to work out, complete in sports, etc like men are.
The women who want to 'tone' would like to look like a high school track participant, but they don't want that workload or diet.
No, I don't have a study to cite, but this is evident to any observer.
"Tone" sounds easier.
The women's fitness industry is like a bizarre circus where marketing tricks overshadow real knowledge, leaving many confused and frustrated.
Lol, I've had to tell my wife this a million times. They all think they're going to look like Arnold if they strength train instead of some stupid booty blast circuit.
Toned bodies are real, look at those of women who do aerobics or pilates. Women don't want to look like men.
Women are prone to being manipulated.