This closes the episode, after narration on progressive overload and on how recently women have been invited to lift. Todd, a powerlifting record-setter turned strength historian, is answering what the limit of women's strength might be.
…thing, like no matter where you are, where you begin, like to lift something that's heavy for you, and it doesn't mean that it's a bajillion pounds, it means that it's hard for you to do it. And when you do it, it means something. It means that you have done something that you could not do before.
…then you add weight and it's hard again. You get strong by repeatedly asking your body to do something that it can't quite do yet. Building muscle is about discovering a limit and then surpassing it. And it's only recently, in the grand scheme of things, that women have even been invited to try.
Because if you think about the history of all this, men have been given the right to be strong from the beginning, from time immemorial. Whereas women have only really in about the last 50 years or so, have we actually said to women, it's okay to try to run fast. It's okay to try to be strong. Sometimes people ask me, like, well, how strong can women be? And my standard answer for that is, we don't know.
99% of Visible was reported and produced this week by Delaney Hall and edited by Meg Kramer, with additional production by Jacob Medina Gleason. Mix by Martine Gonzalez, music by Swan Real, fact-checking by Graham Haysha. Special thanks this week to Bonnie Tsui. Her book on muscle is excellent. It…
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