The Squat: On Women and Strength Training

A sharp, personal account of women’s long fight to be allowed to build their own bodies. Martinsson, a journalist and weightlifting coach, traces the intellectual history of female strength training from 19th-century strongwomen to today’s fitness influencers, asking why something as simple as lifting heavy things has been so fiercely opposed.

Why Start Here

This is not an instruction manual. It is the book that explains the culture you are entering when you pick up a barbell. Martinsson writes with the authority of someone who has both lived the experience and reported on it, drawing on research, fiction, and her own journey as a competitive weightlifter growing up in a working-class Swedish town.

The book fills a gap that most strength training literature ignores entirely: the question of who gets to be strong and on whose terms. Martinsson documents how women were excluded from strength sports, how grassroots pioneers pushed back, and how the current fitness industry both empowers and commodifies female strength. It is a book about barbells, but also about bodies, power, and resistance.

What to Expect

A narrative work blending cultural history, personal memoir, and journalism. Originally published in Swedish as “Knäböj: om kvinnor och styrketräning,” the book is accessible to anyone interested in the social dimensions of fitness, whether or not they train. Martinsson’s writing is crisp and occasionally funny, and the book moves quickly through its 210 pages.