In 14 years of training 1,000+ female athletes, here is what I’ve found:
“Breaking News:
In Year 14 of training athletes, we’ve crossed the threshold of training 1,000 MS/HS Female Athletes.
I can report that 0.0% of them have gotten ‘bulky’ or ‘manly’.
I have seen strength, body composition, sport performance, and confidence sky rocket, though.”
-Ray Zingler on X
When I first started training athletes, I worked predominantly with football players.
It’s because that was my background.
4-month seasons, 8-month off-season’s, no “travel” or “club” to destroy the game or burn the kids out on. It was a good model for me starting out (but boy has this changed in a few short years!)
And then one day at, you’d guess it, a local HS football game, one of my former teachers approached me on the sidelines, regarding her daughter who was coming off an ACL tear and she asked me to train her.
It was the middle of football season so my schedule did have some availability in it due to the football guys regressed training volume, so I gladly took Mallory on as a client.
Mallory was cleared for just about everything, but knowing she was fresh out of PT, I assessed her, and we started to take things very slow.
And not a week later, I found out this sweet, kind, 15-year-old girl was a stone-cold killer.
She didn’t want to do all the cute band and physio ball bullshit, this girl wanted to train, and she wanted to train HARD.
Squats, Deadlifts, Glute Ham Raises, Loaded Carries, all of it.
It didn’t take long for her to get strong, and I mean strong, strong, but what was more important to me was seeing her confidence blossom.
It was early in my time training Mallory that I’d fallen in love with the idea of training female athletes.
It’s because the middle school and high school female athlete are the most under and improperly served demographic in all of S&C.
We treat these girls like they are weak and fragile and the “training” they receive often reflects it.
It’s why you see “trainers” have them tip toe around cones far more often than you see them put bars on their backs.
In Year 14 at Zingler Strength, since that first session with Mallory in my early days, who changed my entire perception on training female athletes, we have trained over 1,000 girls at Zingler Strength from bare bones beginner to professional athletes and guess what..
NONE of them have gotten “bulky”, “manly”, or “slow”.
I have, however, seen strength, body composition, sport performance, and confidence skyrocket
.
