A former personal trainer who said she and her clients felt uncomfortable when working out has set up an accessible, female-focused gym at the age of 21.
Lucy Agate, from Garston, was a personal trainer for six months and constantly experienced inappropriate behaviour from others, such as being watched, disturbing comments and negativity surrounding women lifting weights. Now, she has opened Liverpool’s first female-focused gym on Old Hall Street, aiming to provide women with a safe space to workout.
The gym, called ‘Pandora’s Fitness Studio’, aims to change the mindset around exercise as it focuses on strength-building rather than weight loss. Lucy said she wants to encourage women not to focus on aesthetic goals and that it is more important to see how your body feels rather than how it looks.
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Lucy said: “The idea behind it is that there isn’t a place for women in Liverpool to go and feel safe in a gym. I think not enough women are encouraged to build strength and lift weights. It’s so beneficial for your mental health.
“It’s about trying to break down that patriarchal system of weight loss that wants to keep women small and encourages them to stay weak. I want to make exercise less of a chore and more of a community activity that people enjoy doing.
“As a personal trainer I realised most commercial gyms have a similar vibe and all the time I wished there was a place women could go to feel comfortable.”
She became frustrated when comments from others meant her clients didn’t want to use the gym equipment without her and felt both uncomfortable and unsafe while in the gym by themselves. This meant they weren’t able to make the progress they were capable of achieving.
Lucy wants to make her fitness classes accessible for everyone, offering ‘Learn to Lift’ classes – similar to personal training – for just £10 an hour. The classes will teach women how to squat, deadlift and bench press, so that they can have the skills and knowledge even if they can’t afford more than one session. She hopes to be able to offer free workshops in the future.
Each class will encourage participants to build muscle by introducing friendly competitions to lift heavier weights as the weeks progress. Lucy said: “I think a lot of people are scared of lifting weights because they’re worried they’ll end up big and bulky but in reality it takes a long time to build muscle and that’s not going to happen.”
She added that she’d asked other gyms about offering strength-training classes but they all said one-to-one personal training brought in more money. She found that women’s gyms in the city didn’t offer heavy weights – and the most they would have was kettlebells, treadmills and yoga mats.
By contrast, Lucy has been busy getting her gym ready for the past four months with a spin room, benches, dumbbells going up to 25kg, a deadlift platform and much more.
The gym may be female-focused, but Lucy reiterated that the classes are open to anyone looking to build up their strength. She said: “Anyone is welcome and we’d never exclude anyone or assume their identity. But the gym will prioritise women in the way that most commercial gyms prioritise men.”
The fitness fanatic, who studied history at university and is now a student teacher at St Cecilia’s School in Tuebrook, said she first took an interest in strength-building in 2018. Previously, she’d been in a mindset that focused on weight loss and eating little.
But she found some inspirational women online, such as Krissy Cela, and began to see the benefits of getting stronger. She said: “I feel so much better now and don’t even think twice about stomach rolls and things like that. I want to help people to get out of the mindset I was in.
“It’s been such a long-term hobby and I’ve been waiting so long for the chance to do something like this.”
After working hard to open the gym since January, the gym’s first classes will run on Monday, May 30 and will also include spin and group personal training sessions. The studio is co-owned by Natalie Kipling and Trudi Townsend who run pole classes.
Lucy told the ECHO: “I’m so excited. It feels like a dream come true to actually open it because it’s been so long in the making.”
