Home › Health & Wellbeing

Misleading fitness advice regarding women and weight training

💚 healthsocial problemSingle report ●●●●● severity 2/5

A woman reports that a retail employee discouraged her from purchasing heavier dumbbells, claiming that heavier weights make women 'buff' while lighter weights with high repetitions lead to a leaner physique, leaving her unsure about the efficacy of her planned strength training routine.

Who's affected: A woman seeking to build muscle through home strength training.

⚠️ Single report. This is one person's account. We mark it so until more voices confirm it.

What people do today

🔧 Fix this

Ideas a builder, maker or community group could start on:

  1. A mobile app that generates evidence-based strength training plans for women based on specific goals like fat loss or muscle toning.
  2. A verified directory of fitness professionals who provide science-backed, non-gendered training advice.
  3. An educational infographic series for sporting goods retailers to display, debunking common myths about women's strength training.
I want to build this

Real voices

“The guy was adamant I should go for lighter cause most women ask him up to 3 so they won't get too buffy”

Source: Stack Exchange (fitness) · CC BY-SA 4.0, user-contributed content from Stack Exchange; summarized and modified

Related problems

💚 healthproduct10 reports

Talkspace app technical instability and poor support

●●●●● · A Talkspace app user
💚 healthproduct9 reports

Inefficient calorie logging workflow and poor meal scanning

●●●●● · A MyFitnessPal user who tracks meals multiple times per day and possibly others who rely on the meal scanner feature.
💚 healthproduct8 reports

Lack of shuffle feature in meditation app

●●●●● · A Headspace app user who prefers guided meditation routines over manual selection.

FixHumanityDaily

The most important new problems, and ideas to fix them, in your inbox.

Placeholder: no data is collected yet.