5 non-feminine sports every girl should consider

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The widespread belief that girls should do jogging and fitness, yoga and dancing prevents many women from finding their sport and truly falling in love with it. Lifehacker suggests learning more about sports that are unfairly considered exclusively male.

Weightlifting

What is this sport

Weightlifting is an Olympic sport that requires good coordination of movement, strength and speed. In weightlifting, there are two competitive movements - the snatch and the clean and jerk. These challenging exercises are performed with the greatest possible weight.

Women's weightlifting only became an Olympic sport in 2000. Every year more and more women and girls weightlifters appear in the world and in Russia. Russian athletes go to international championships and win prizes.

Why you should do weightlifting

1. Increases physical capabilities

Successful jerk and jerk requires not only sufficient strength, but also flexibility, joint mobility, explosive strength, and good coordination of movements. Therefore, training includes many exercises that help develop all of these skills and abilities.

2. Helps maintain a beautiful figure

Professional female athletes in heavy weight can lose a slim fit figure due to a large amount of fat. However, many lighter weight athletes, not to mention amateurs, have a beautiful athletic figure: strength sports burns more calories than moderate aerobic exercise and provides beautiful muscle definition.

3. Good for health

Many have heard this myth about women's strength training that weight lifting is harmful to women's health. Strength sports can really ruin health, and not only for women, if you do it stupidly - without a coach and with a sharp increase in loads. In the case of well-structured workouts, weightlifting helps to get stronger, correct posture problems and strengthen muscles, which is beneficial for the whole body in general and for women's health in particular.

Powerlifting

What is this sport

Powerlifting is a strength sport in which there are three competitive movements: back squats, barbell rows, and bench press. The one who lifts the most weight wins. Despite many championships and a strong athlete community, powerlifting is not yet an Olympic sport.

In the United States, women have participated in powerlifting competitions since 1978, and in Russia, along with men, since 1992.

Why you should go for powerlifting

Powerlifting has all the same benefits as weightlifting: increased strength, a beautiful figure, health maintenance (with moderate exertion and a competent program).

However, basic powerlifting exercises do not take a long time to master the correct technique. They require less flexibility and coordination of movements. Therefore, if you just like to pull iron and do not want to spend time on long training, choose powerlifting.

Crossfit

What is this sport

CrossFit is a physical fitness system and a sport that includes different types of functional movements performed with high intensity. There are exercises from gymnastics, weightlifting, athletics, kettlebell lifting.

CrossFit was originally designed for both men and women. However, the hard workout of the day, or WOD (workout of the day), as well as the impressive muscles of the Crossfit Games champions, give the impression that CrossFit is not a woman's business.

Why you should do CrossFit

1. Provides impressive physical fitness

Due to the huge variety of exercises, CrossFit develops not just one quality like strength or endurance, but everything at once: pumps the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, muscle endurance, strength, flexibility and power, speed, coordination of movements, agility and a sense of balance. As a result, your body becomes harmoniously developed and ready for any unexpected loads, both in the gym and in life.

When you do the first pull-up or pull-up by force - this is a victory over yourself and there is no limit to joy. Over time, you get involved, you want to learn new skills. Crossfit gives not only strength, but also endurance, develops coordination, agility.

Oksana Polovova is a crossfit trainer and athlete.

2. CrossFit is suitable for all fitness levels

Looking at the terrible complexes of seasoned CrossFitters, it becomes scary: an ordinary girl is definitely not able to do this. However, no one will make you die in training. Crossfit trainer and athlete Oksana Polovova says that in the classroom, the load is selected for a specific person, his capabilities. For example, if a person does not know how to pull up, the exercise is replaced with pull-ups with an elastic band or rings.

3. Communication and competition in training

CrossFit is practiced in groups to add a competitive element to the workout. This allows you to quickly improve your results and find like-minded people and friends.

4. Perfect figure and self-confidence

If you are afraid of a pumped figure, then in vain. To do this, you will need really heavy loads, nutritional revisions and chemicals. Without this, you simply cannot swing to the level of powerful CrossFit athletes. So the maximum you get is a slimmer and toned figure with raised arms and abs.

Boxing

What is this sport

Boxing is a single combat, in which blows are delivered exclusively with fists and in special gloves. In professional boxing, the fight lasts 10-12 rounds, in amateur - three. Victory is awarded after knockout (the opponent does not stand up for 10 seconds), technical knockout (the opponent cannot continue the fight) or after the end of the fight, according to the judges' estimates.

Women's boxing was included in the number of Olympic sports only in 2009, but female boxers existed before that. American Caroline Svendsen received her first boxing license in 1975, and more than twenty years later, women's boxing competitions were allowed to be held in Sweden and England.

Why you should choose boxing

1. Excellent physical fitness

In boxing training, you not only practice strikes on a punching bag, but also perform many other exercises to develop various physical qualities: exercises with a rope and a medicine ball, training with weights and a barbell, on a horizontal bar, parallel bars. Training also includes sparring, hitting techniques and combinations. A versatile load harmoniously develops the body, pumps strength, dexterity, coordination of movements and all muscle groups.

2. Self-confidence

Boxing helps you gain self-confidence, overcome the “weak being” complex and believe in yourself.

3. Beautiful figure

Boxing burns a lot of calories, provides an embossed abs and arms, strong legs.

4. Relief of tension

Like any sport, boxing allows you to relax mentally, as well as throw out the negative emotions accumulated during the day. After an intense workout for an hour and a half, you will be assured of a rush of endorphins.

5. Self-expression

Boxing is not just a sport, but also a means of self-expression, an opportunity to assert yourself in this life, to feel your significance. This is what Svetlana Soluyanova, a multiple prize-winner of the Russian championships, the winner of the 2012 European Championship, writes about this.

I get tremendous pleasure in those moments when, after a hard fight, it is me who is raised. In these victories, in the way I go to them, and in what they mean to me, I see the meaning of my life today.

Svetlana Soluyanova is a member of the Russian national team and an international master of sports in boxing.

Karate

This Japanese martial art has existed for over a century, is ubiquitous, has many styles and schools and will be included in the Olympic Games in 2020.

There are no throws or grabs in karate, the fight involves only powerful kicks and punches. Competitions are held in two programs: directly sparring (kumite) and kata - a chain of exercises in which blows and blocks alternate.

Now there are no gender restrictions and prohibitions on karate, however, if a woman is engaged in martial arts, it is still considered unusual. Moreover, adult women do not try karate, because they believe that this must be done from childhood.

Why you should try karate

1. Karate teaches you to control your body

Karate training will increase muscle strength, reaction speed, improve coordination of movements and flexibility, teach you to perfectly control your body. Of course, you should not rely on relief muscles, but the body will become more slim and fit due to the increased expenditure of calories.

2. Karate is beautiful

Karate can be compared to dancing without music. You learn to control your body, use it as efficiently as possible, remove all unnecessary things. The clear, perfected movements of the kata resemble a dance, and sparring can be compared to contact improvisation, where there is not a single superfluous movement, everything is subordinated to a single goal.

3. Karate boosts self-confidence

You can often hear that karate will not protect you in a street fight and will not help you in extreme circumstances, such as against a man with a knife. But if your body is accustomed to martial arts, in times of danger it will work automatically and, possibly, save your life. In addition, karate practice will keep you self-confident so that you no longer feel weak and helpless, and sometimes it is more important than the ability to knock someone out with a kick.

4. Karate improves self-discipline

In Russian schools, they rarely pay attention to the spiritual component of karate, implying that the student must work in this direction on his own. However, even without specific prescriptions, the system of physical exercises itself tunes a person in the right mood, develops discipline, makes him calmer and more confident.

For me, karate is discipline, confidence, physical activity and eternal self-improvement. At competitions and training camps, I get a lot of positive emotions from communication, a close-knit team. And also karate is not just a martial art, it is high moral standards and incredible fortitude.

Leila Ganeeva is a karate coach, holder of a second dan black belt.

I tried karate and I can say that this is a really beautiful martial art that helps you become better, adds inner rigor and self-organization. If you've always dreamed of giving it a try, do it. It doesn't matter how old you are, the main thing is the desire to develop, desire and perseverance.

Do not listen to other people who claim that you will lose femininity, beauty and health. If you have a favorite thing, you do not lose anything, only find: great health, a fit figure, a feeling of cheerfulness, self-respect and new goals.

Write in the comments which non-female sports you prefer, why you like them and what they give.