Weightlifting for women.... a tailormade all female course launched by Burnley Leisure helps to boost physical and mental strength

Burnley Leisure organised the free educational programme to bring together female members on the gym floor, educating and building on confidence around strength training in a bid to combat the insecurities it can often bring.

A four week plan was created at St Peters and Padiham Leisure centres. Both of the instructors running the course taught identically so that members could feel confident in utilising both sites when it came to training alone.

Operations manager Sarah Drinkwater said: “Common questions we get asked here at Burnley Leisure are ‘should I do more reps and lighter weights as all of the magazines and articles have told us online or should we ditch the pretty pink 2kg dumbbells, kettlebells and lift heavy but for fewer reps?’

"All women are completely different so there is no specific answer for everyone.

"At Burnley Leisure we wanted to help our customers understand that it can be totally dependent on your goal, if you’re looking to drop body fat, wanting to gain muscle mass, want to run a marathon, compete in a triathlon or looking to be UK’s strongest woman competitions, the categorisations can be endless.

“Watching these ladies progress over the last few weeks, gaining confidence both physically and mentally, has been really inspiring.

" The excitement each week from the ladies when they come to tell us what workout they’ve been doing during the week, off of the back of the course and

seeing how proud of themselves they are is invigorating.

"We are already planning our next courses.”