"It’s good to do things that scare you a little bit"
This weightlifting class for women in Sydney is mending bodies and minds.
On Saturday mornings in an immense warehouse on the outskirts of Sydney, Matt Meddows runs an Olympic Weightlifting class, just for women.
When I walk into the gym there are four women standing around waiting for their class to start. They’re discussing their cycle and how it affects their lifting. Not in a researched or “academic” way, but in a way that involves a lot of swearing and grimaced smiles. Some were laughing as they told of their relief to have hit menopause.
Obviously, this is not your usual gym. As a woman of a certain age, I immediately felt at home.
Meddows has been running these classes for several years, after starting in a park during COVID, weightlifting in cricket nets, then progressing to his garage. The classes are small, but the attendees are regular and committed. Weightlifting is not something that lends itself to large classes, it requires close attention and thrives in supportive, intimate environments.
The women warm up with red PVC pipes, rolling them above their heads casually, squatting to wake up knees and ankles. Then it’s down to business: working their way through the program of lifts and variations written on the blackboard.
The lifting area is a riot of colour: weight plates of different solid colours, pink shoes and bright tights.
“It's really not about aesthetics,” says Michelle, “it's about your lifting. No one cares what you wear”.
Michelle has been coming to these classes for 18 months. She found her way here via CrossFit, as many Olympic lifters do.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F680770b8-f824-4dca-aeff-d610901a12e4_1126x1501.jpeg)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4ca77fa-5504-4d87-b07b-158790c3ba28_1794x1501.jpeg)
“I think for so long you kind of fight your body type, don't you? And then you find something that you're actually meant to do. I was like that. I wasn't very sporty as a kid, I think because I've always been a bit chubby. I didn't want to try. It wasn't until I was older that I started getting into more sporty things,” she said.
“Weightlifting is all about what your body can do, not what it looks like. There's people competing at all sizes.”
Most of the women who attend these classes have competed. There is a growing number of weightlifting competitions - particularly Masters competitions - across Australia each year. Just before I visited the gym, many of the women had competed in the NSW Masters Championships.
Samantha was one of these lifters. Like Michelle, she found her way here through CrossFit and was, in her words, “bought” by Meddows.
“Matt messaged and said ‘Right, I've signed you up (to a competition)’. And I thought: shit. He gave me a few weeks to think about it. If you don't want to do it, he said, it's fine. I thought, no, let's just do it. And then that was it. I never looked back.”
Samantha admits, one of the things that holds women back is the suit.
Weightlifting competitions call for a particular suit that is tight and looks like swimwear. It has singlet-style straps at the top and short legs. It is worn so the judges can adjudicate lifts without interference from loose clothing. One of the requirements of a successful lift is that the arms are locked out in one movement, not “pressed” in multiple steps. Long, loose sleeves would get in the way.
“When I bought the suit, I wore it in Matt’s garage (to train) and I thought, right, if I'm going to have to do it, I'm going to have to get in it and just disassociate. And now, I wonder: what was I worrying so much about?” she says.
Michelle agrees.
“It is a real block for some people. You feel like people are looking at you when you're on the (competition) platform in it, but if you're part of the audience, you're not thinking about what people look like and you're not thinking about it they miss a lift. You just want them to succeed.”
“The community of weightlifting is different to any other community,” Samantha believes. “It’s just you up there on the platform, and your coach. I don’t care what other people lift, I don’t think about beating them or making the podium, it’s about wanting to do better than I did last time.”
“I’m always a bit scared”, said Michelle, “but I think it’s good to do things that scare you a little bit”.
Gab knows what it’s like to do something that perhaps you don’t want to do.
She no longer works as a paramedic due to the effects of PTSD.
“I've been off road for about two years and I just let myself go”, she says.
Avoidance became a protective shield. She didn’t want to leave the house, would not answer her phone and became more and more removed from the world.
“When you get self-conscious and hypervigilant, you just lose motivation and you don't want to put yourself in new scenarios.”
Matt coaxed her, over time, to come down to the gym and lift some weights. She approaches it gently, at her own pace, but it’s helping.
“It's been good because it is so technical. When I am here, I'm not thinking about anything else”, she said.
It’s the support of Matt and the other lifters which is also helping Gab move towards recovery.
“I can come in here and I can stand in that back corner and just chip away. Matt’s like: are you alright? I'm like, yeah, I’ll take a couple of minutes. He goes away, comes back. So that's where the classes are good. And Sammy, she offers to help me. I've not known her long, but it’s that environment, that's really the community that you lose when you come out of the workforce.”
For Gab, getting out of the house has been difficult and she appreciates that those in this class have worked to make getting to the gym and learning to lift easy for her, even while they focus on their own progress with the barbell. They’ve met her where she is, rather than expecting that she fit into the environment.
“It feels safe. When I do get a (technical) movement right, I feel like I'm winning. I feel like I'm achieving something. When you're low, everything's bad. Whereas if you come here and you lift more or you get a movement you've been practising right, that's an achievement and that makes you feel good.”
Like this?
I don’t charge a subscription fee for this newsletter. If you ever feel like showing your appreciation, feel free to ‘buy me a coffee’ (make a small, one-off contribution) instead.
The one consistent comment I have heard from women for the last 40 years or so, is that they will not go to a gym where they feel judged for looks and outfits or effort and skill. And who can blame them? Matt has instinctively solved this problem by building a caring enterprise which concentrates on learning skills which naturally encourage self belief and pride in achievement. And yes, that usually involves doing something scary.