Fitness Programs For Women aka That Time Vee Joined A Cult
Disclaimer: I am in no way getting paid to spruik these programs (but if they want to throw some money my way, I wouldn’t object) and I am definitely not a qualified health professional. This is all based off my own experiences with these programs and my very poor level of fitness.
Over the last few years, one thing that I’ve learned about myself and had to come to terms with, is that I am shockingly susceptible to a fitness cult. There’s no use denying it, the evidence speaks for itself. Like most people, when I started my “fitness journey” (God, I really am a pod person), I had absolutely no idea about what I should be doing for exercise or eating to fuel my body. My knowledge of nutrition and overall health was basically “go for a run and eat salads”, so it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that when I first lost a large(ish) amount of weight (in 2006), it was just by running on the treadmill and restricting calories in an extreme way – I was also going through a lot of personal issues at the time, so stress played a part as well. So I may have lost weight, but I was in no way healthy, and once I’d stopped running, my weight fluctuated once more.
Cut to September 2015, and I’d decided it may be time to change my life a little. I still ate the way I did when I was a teenager, and unsurprisingly, I constantly felt bloated and sick, and I was drastically unhappy with how I looked and felt. Mind you, this was all personal, I’m not saying I looked bad, but my clothes weren’t fitting properly anymore, and I was tired of it (and too cheap to replace anything). I’d been seeing ads on social media, and hearing from people I knew, about an online program called The Bikini Body Guide (hereafter known as BBG) by Kayla Itsines, that people (mostly women) were getting great results from. So, after obtaining a copy through dubious means (as in, I never paid for it, but received it from someone who did), I decided to give it a go – despite my doubts and reservations that the results from the #bbgtransformation / #bbgprogress tags could be real and/or achieved at home, like the guides claimed. I was very wrong.
For some background, BBG was founded by Kayla Itsines and her partner, Tobi Pearce, in 2013, based off the training regimes Itsines (a personal trainer) had been using with her clients. The first two guides (BBG1 & BBG2) were made available for purchase online as ebooks in January 2014, and the program is relatively simple in theory. It’s a 12 week program that consists of three 28 minute high intensity circuit work outs a week, and for the first month, on your “off” days (the days you don’t complete the circuit training), you have three days of LISS training (Low Intensity Steady State – as in a 35-45 minute walk), and one day of stretching. It then ramps up, and for weeks 5-8, you do the 2-3 days of circuit training, 4-5 days of LISS, and one stretch session. Come weeks 9-12 (the home stretch), you then up your game with 3-4 days of circuit training, 2-3 sessions of LISS, 1-2 days of HIIT training (my least favourite cardio activity – sprints!) and 1-2 stretch sessions. The idea of the resistance circuit work outs, are also pretty simple. It’s broken down two 7 minute circuits with 4 exercises in each, and you repeat both circuits twice – but you do the four exercise sets in each circuit as many times as you can in the seven minute timer. That sounds a little confusing when written down, but basically it means if you get through all your repetitions of the four exercises, you start again at the beginning of that set, and keep going until that blessed 7 minute timer goes off. Then you rest for (a year) 30-90 seconds, and restart the timer for the next set. So it’s easy, you can mostly do it at home with some improvisations (I bought a few hand weights, but when I started, I was literally using bottles of water as my weights, and I used a chair from my kitchen to step up onto).
Example of the way the guides are set up
There are some pros and cons to doing exercise this way, for example, on one hand, you can do everything in the comfort of your own home. I used to put a TV show on and watch that while I did it. Plus, it’s only 28 minutes out of your day, and I found that made it hard to make excuses as to why I couldn’t do it. It also means you don’t have to join a gym if you don’t want to, as long as you can either buy some weights yourself, or substitute with various heavy objects in your house. The biggest thing I took away from doing BBG was that it taught me about habits and routines. Working out stopped being “a chore” for me, and it just became part of my daily routine, something that’s held up to this day. There are some definite cons, however, and I think the biggest one is because it’s an online program, you actually can’t tell if you’re doing the exercises correctly (or in exercise speak, “if your form is correct”). It also gets a little boring after a while, because there’s no variation (this has changed now, since Itsines launched the Sweat With Kayla app where there are at least 3-4 different programs) – I did BBG1 and BBG2 twice over, so I completed 48 weeks all up, and by the end of it, I was bored and ready for a challenge.
Photo of me at 4 weeks, then 24 weeks, and finally, 48 weeks (apologies for the terrible quality).
So for the first time in my life, I set foot in and joined a gym. I started slow, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be strict about going, so I joined one of the cheaper 24 hour gyms, just to get a feel for it. After all, my workouts at this point had only been at home, DIY sort of jobs, and now I was venturing into the scary world of weights and men taking up way too much space. Knowing what I know now, this wouldn’t be an issue, but looking back, I probably should’ve joined a gym just for women. I used to feel intimidated walking into the weights section, where too many buff dude-bros were busy “do you even lift?”-ing, and (it felt like) staring at me. So, I did what I do best in these situations, and in busy hours, I stuck to the cardio section (a treadmill, stair master and cross trainer, I can work with), only daring to venture into the weights section when I worked out at odd hours (the benefit of a 24 hour gym is that I could do a 10pm weight workout – though, unstaffed and only with a panic switch around my neck, luckily I never got into any trouble). But it was the best way for me to learn and gain confidence. After a few weeks of working out late at night to avoid people (mostly men), I finally felt confident enough to start working with weights at normal hours. And I soon learned that no one was looking at me, everyone is too busy doing their own thing to worry about the five foot Korean girl squatting a measly 10kg (total).
Now it’s 2018 and here I am, flirting with F45, the latest cult. F45 (functional training for 45 minutes) started in 2011, and it’s whole schtick is that it’s a fast paced HIIT circuit that goes for 45 minutes, for classes of up to 30 people. Men do attend, but it was initially targeted at women, as the classes are set up like group personal training sessions (and all the people I know who have signed up, are women – not to mention at all the classes I’ve been to are 99% women). I’d seen F45 around for a while, and I’d heard various things about it; how it “changed your whole life” on the positive, and “how I threw up during a session” as a negative. I’d always been tempted to give it a go, but the price tag always stopped me (and the thought of throwing up mid workout, to be honest). But then, just two weeks ago, a brand new studio opened up in my suburb, a 5 minute walk from my house. They were offering a free class on their open day, so I bit the bullet and signed up for it, anxious about whether or not I’d be able to keep up. I was sceptical going in, after all, it’s literally a HIIT class, and I’d done those before, so I didn’t think it would, in the words of Shania Twain, impress me much. Well, as I’ve probably proved by now… you introduce me to a fitness cult, and I’ll want to join. The class I did was Hollywood, a torturous hour mix of cardio and weights training, and though I kept my eye on that timer the whole time, I had an absolute blast (by the way, the me from 2015 cannot believe I’m saying this). The atmosphere is great, you’re in there with a team of 20+ people (all drowning in sweat together), and the trainers are encouraging and really do push you as hard as you can go (one trainer asked if I could do push ups on my toes, and I said that could was a strong word, but sure enough, with her encouragement, I managed to complete my 40 second round on my toes with proper form). There are the standard cringey high fives and supportive cheering (I feel high fiving strangers while covered in sweat is not a pleasant experience for either party involved), but after the class, I felt elated (I also nearly threw up while walking home, but managed to swallow my pride… and vomit, I guess), high on those exercise endorphins, and I really started to understand why people swore by it. So now I’m signed up for the free ten day trial, and I’ve even dragged myself to a few 6am classes (it’s a different class each day, so you can pick and choose which you want to do, and they alternate cardio and resistance days) – I’m at the point where I have to choose what I’m going to do, and I think I’m going to stick with it, at least for the summer, to see if I can push myself a little harder and add some variety to my workouts.
Kayla Itsines, the cult leader of BBG
For me though, it all comes back down to that original program, if I hadn’t started BBG, I never would’ve gained any confidence to join a gym, or even to know what to do in a gym. I’ve heard people look down on the BBG program, or say that the results aren’t real, that the people doing it were already fit when they started (definitely not true, especially in my case), but I think a lot of flack seems to come from the fact that it’s specifically targeted at women and as a result, it’s seen as a waste or time, or something to not take seriously – that’s the real heart of the problem, like most things in society. Things for women are deemed frivolous, not as good, or something to look down on. But the reason Itsines has built this multimillion-dollar empire is because it’s for women. It’s a program designed by a woman, for women, and that goes a long way to proving its worth, in my opinion. Women all over the world swear by this program (I’m one of them), because if you follow it properly, it works. Itsines understands what her target market are looking for in terms of fitness goals, and she gives a very easy guide to achieve them (note: I don’t mean easy as in it’s way too simple to do, honestly I pushed myself so hard in these I threw up in my mouth several times while completing her workouts).
There are many programs out there like BBG, ones targeted for women, off the top of my head, there’s FitazFk and Toned by Ashy Bines, all designed to help women achieve some relatively easy fitness goals. It’s definitely a good way to start, if you’re new to working out and intimidated (like I was) at the idea of joining a gym and jumping right into it. The worst thing that happens with at home programs is you just feel like an idiot squatting while holding a 1L water bottle to simulate weights.
I honestly think fitness programs for women (and especially by women) are essential; they give you routine and structure, they know their target market and teach you to build muscle and strength in a way that’s easy to understand; and most importantly, they create a supportive community online –during my time using BBG, I had my own little #fitfam, with whom I would share progress and exchange tips and tricks. I think that’s probably the best thing about programs like BBG, the community that grows behind it and the support you get from random strangers on the internet, there’s no room for negativity, it’s a safe space that’s all about supporting one another and cheering on successes, but encouraging each other when things are tough. So yes, I may have joined a cult back in 2015, but it changed my life for the better.
https://twitter.com/kayla_itsines/status/758793723270627328
