THE IRON
LADY
/// BY MARK LAWS /// PHOTOGR APHS BY PETE WILLIAMSON
If I had £1 every time a female gym member
had avoided lifting weights because they ‘didn’t
want to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger’
I could have retired by now.
G and it is becoming far more
YM CULTURE IS CHANGING
common to find females who are
shifting plenty of iron. To find out
more about this breed of ladies who
lift I caught up with Sheli McCoy
who is a competitive CrossFit
athlete, could Jerk me over her head
and has all the right curves in all the
right places...
ML: Sheli, thank you for joining us, how
are you?
SM: I’m great thanks. I’m so excited to talk
about weightlifting for women because the
scepticism surrounding resistance training
and excessive muscle growth has gone
on for long enough. So many women are
missing out on the amazing health benefits
of weight training for fear of becoming too
‘buff ’. Well I wish I was TOO buff haha, but
it doesn’t work like that.
ML: How did you get into weightlifting in
the first place, and why?
SM: I actually began weight training for
many reasons. One reason being that I had
gained about 3 stone in my early 20’s, the
other reasons being that before piling on
the weight I had been a horse riding athlete
and I wanted to regain the shape and
curves from my riding days that had been
hidden. Mostly I really wanted my body to