Women shouldn't go in for Power Lifting (Essay Sample)

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Women shouldn’t go in for Power Lifting
Power lifting is an intense, explosive strength training sport that entails three lifts; bench press, squat, and dead lift. The lifts involve the effort from the whole body, emphasizing more on biggest muscle groups, the legs and back. They are performed with a barbell and weight plates. Power lifters make use of other exercises such as pull-ups and dips to help them in training, but the exercises are not applicable in the competition. However, power lifting is not recommended for women as it leads to negative consequences in women, some of which are irreversible; hence, women should opt for other fitness exercises for their own good.
Power lifting, especially competitive, can bring about negative effects to women as they try to push too much in an attempt to increase the point score for one or all of three exercises. It is easy for a woman to incur serious injuries including: muscle tears, joint dislocations, and broken bones due to inability to control effectively the weight during lift or control phase of a given exercise. Caine, Peter and Mellisa, in their book Epidemiology of injury in Olympic sports, notes that muscles exposed to more risk of musculoskeletal tears are pectorals, biceps, triceps and quadriceps. The dead lift and squat exercises are especially laden with risk when too much weight is used. This can result to chronic injury, or worse still, potential long-term weakness (117).
Overtraining in power lifting, also, brings about injuries such as diminishing of muscle mass, straining of muscles, joint pain and fatigue. This results from going to the gym many times per week, a woman foregoing her rest days or working out too frequently in the week. Adrian says that some of the problems may live with the woman forever as they lack adequate testosterone which may aid in muscle build up and recovery (390). An effective power lifting for a woman should comprise three workouts only per week.
Another reason why women should not go in for power lifting is due to the impact years of power lifting exercises may have on muscles and disks in the back. This may prove troublesome during bending, walking and twisting due to difficulty and pain. Sex turns from a pleasurable moment to an awful one. According to livestrong.com, affected bad disks may not augur well for a woman during childbearing because, if due diligence is not observed, the child or mother may lose their life or become paralyzed ("Women Health”). To ward off all this, it would be wise if women avoided power lifting and go for other exercises.
Hypertension, that is, an increase in blood pressure level, is also not unusual among women power lifters. Blood pressure spikes are common among women during resistance training. This results due to exhaling during muscle relaxation and inhaling during contraction of the movements. Power lifters, especially women, are unable to prevent this physiological response. The American College of Sports Medicine discourages women exercisers with a history of high blood pressure exceeding 140/90 at rest to stay away from power lifting routines. Failure to this, permanent injury to the heart and kidneys is unavoidable (Griffiths 44).
Power lifting brings about bulkiness resulting in man-like physique in women, which is detestable to many a man and women alike. Majority of women cringe at the thought of having a rough appearance. Men never entertain the idea of dating women without a feminine appearance because they feel intimidated. They get a less man feeling in the relationship as bulky women tend to be overconfident. Women power lifters are often accused of testosterone use, which may not be the case always. Protzman, in his journal The American Journal of Sports Medicine, says that women, who use testosterone, gain muscle mass as a man will, get a deepened voice, increased hair growth, and suffer from acne. Women, save for some lesbians, dread such features (265). This also gives rises to the aspect of women power lifters being looked down upon as power lifting is not a mainstream activity for women. Also, it is a daunting prospect being the first woman to engage in picking a heavy barbell in the gym. Keogh says that women aspiring to be models ...