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.

Why Start Here

This is the book that explains the culture surrounding strength training from a perspective most books in the genre ignore entirely. 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 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 moves quickly through its 210 pages. Martinsson’s writing is crisp and occasionally funny.