Today in: What Grinds my Gears- Barbell Edition!

I used to really enjoy ladies' health & fitness magazines, and CW-oriented fitness websites; consequently, I "liked" many of their pages on Facebook so their updates would show up on my feed.  My beliefs on health have really evolved a lot over the past year, so I generally don't find these updates useful any more, but it's become a bit of a guilty pleasure to engage in some light trolling (or "playing devil's advocate?") in the comments on their posts.  Really silly, I know.  I'm not snarky or rude, but I like to throw in my .02 when I see meat being demonized, oatmeal being lauded, chronic cardio encouraged, stuff like that. 

WELL, one popular fitness website posted a link on their Facebook page last week that pissed me off a little.  The idea of the article is that women should take up barbell training, which is great!  I've fallen in love with the barbell over the recent months, and I'd love to see more women do the same.  I, like so many others, felt limited to machines, little stretchy tubes with handles, and dainty pastel dumbbells for many years, and we can do better.  Here's the thing; the title of the article is "5 Exercises That Aren't Just for Men."  Okay...  They go on to describe some barbell exercises that I recognize, but they have been re-labeled with cutesy names such as the "Booty Toner" and "Sexy Back."  I have a couple problems with this:

1. If these exercises "aren't just for men," how about we refer to them by their proper names?  It ain't a Booty Toner, it's a back squat.
2. The descriptions of the lifts... how do I put this delicately?  Frankly my dear, they suck.  There are no pictures and the instructions are really vague.  If I were reading this article as someone who had very limited or no experience with barbells, these instructions would not give me warm fuzzies.  Cautious folks like myself probably wouldn't want to get out there and make an attempt, and more adeventurous types will probably give it a try and end up injuring themselves.

It's usually not easy to offend me, and I cringe at overly-politically-correctness, really I do; I pondered the possibility that maybe I was being a little oversensitive, but after seeing the all the other comments on the Facebook link, it became apparent that I was not alone!  On the plus side, the article will probably get a few more ladies curious about weightlifting, so maybe it isn't a total fail; I just hope those ladies find a better source of information to get started.

Maybe we should just stick with Body Fuzion...

Image courtesy of http://www.emagascene.com/