Building strength at home
This week we said a tearful goodbye to our Strong for Life students. Well actually it wasn’t a full goodbye as you’ll read shortly - but a goodbye to weekly calls.
When we launched our first ever online guided strength course, we weren’t sure what to expect. WildStrong has always thrived outdoors, in the woods, in fields, in green spaces, with people learning real-world movement together. Translating that into a Zoom room felt like a gamble.
Over the last year, we’ve been researching and reading consensus guidelines from the Royal Osteoporosis Society, Osteoporosis Canada, and the major Australian programmes that led the way in rethinking bone health. Then going back and reading papers that informed those guidelines - the studies on strength, progressive loading, impact training, and what it takes to stimulate bone growth.
We knew from our audience that there are so many people who know they need strength and impact… but don’t know where to start and they don’t want to go to the gym.
So we asked ourselves:
If I didn’t like gyms…
If I wasn’t sure which movements were right for my body…
How and what would I need to start?
And more importantly, who or what would help me stick with it?
That’s how this course was born, a way to give people a gentle, evidence-informed entry point into strength training that would work for them.
Over ten weeks, a group of women, all with different bodies, histories, ages, fears and hopes, showed up for each other. They learned how to hinge, squat, push, pull, carry, and carry out impact safely. They experimented with what felt good, what felt strong, and what felt possible. Some have started adding weight, others are still building confidence and everyone has found their own progression.
But the magic wasn’t just in the movement, it was in the community, they were fantastic.
By the final call, no one wanted it to end. So now, this same group is continuing through community-led online workouts - which is music to our ears!
The three lessons we left everyone with are:
It’s better done than perfect.
Something is always better than nothing.
And if you don’t feel at home in a gym, find people to learn with. It becomes meaningful, doable, and surprisingly joyful.
To everyone who joined us, a huge thank you!
And if you’re thinking, this might be my way in, our next cohort begins in February. We can’t wait.
