Features of women's vorkout

Natalie Pashkoff – trainer, founder of the BarSisters website and social media groups dedicated to women’s vorkout – told “Championship” what is important to consider for girls who are going to WorkOut training for the first time.

– Natalie, how did you find out about vorkout?
– To be honest, it was by accident. Three or four years ago, after a jog, I came to a street playground to work out. Push-ups, pull-ups – I always liked it. And one of the guys at the playground asked me if I knew what vorkout was. To which I replied, “No, what is it?”. It felt like I was out of touch with what was going on around me. I came home, googled and realized that vorkout was something I had always wanted to do, but didn’t know what it was called.

– Were there organized workouts for girls as well then?
– When I first learned about vorkout, there was nothing organized for girls. That surprised me very much. There were girl athletes who gave demonstrations, but there were no trainings or competitions for girls. This seemed unfair to me. We traditionally believe that boys are important for physical fitness and girls are not. But I thought it was necessary to pay attention to girls’ training, and specifically for beginners. After all, many women want to strength train outdoors, but just don’t know where to start. At that time, even training videos on the Internet were aimed at guys who can already do pull-ups and push-ups, and there was no suitable material for girls. It seemed to me that the exercises for girls should be easier, because often their physical preparation is weaker. Of course, with regular training, progress is made, but you have to start with something very simple.

I came home, googled and realized that vorkout is something I’ve always wanted to do, but I didn’t know what it was called.

– Did a lot of girls come to the training sessions?
– When I was training in Moscow, there were quite a lot of girls with different levels of fitness. There were those who couldn’t even do a single pull-up, and those who had already practiced other sports before. They were better prepared, so I gave them more difficult tasks.

– So the exercises for girls and men are different?
– No, the exercises are absolutely the same, which the guys use in training. But they are often performed not in their original form, but in a lighter form: either with the support of a partner, or with special rubber loops. Or they are slightly modified movements that teach the body to perceive a certain load, which will later help to do the desired exercise.

– Do you have a favorite platform?
– To be honest, I don’t care where I work out. The main thing is to have something similar to a tourniquet and bars. If we talk about the Moscow venues where we used to train, we used to train in the Park of the 50th Anniversary of October next to the metro station “Prospekt Vernadskogo”. There is a pretty good ground there, where there is everything you need. I liked the fact that there are bars of different diameters. For grip training it is very useful to do exercises on a thick bar: it is harder to hold on to it and perform exercises.

– Do you think that women’s vorkout is sufficiently developed now?
– Now there are competitions for girls. When I first started practicing, there were no women’s categories. Then women’s categories began to appear – OFP and “Freestyle”. In OFP, that is general physical training, included pull-ups, push-ups from the bars, from the floor – simple exercises for quantity and quality. In the category “Freestyle” girls during the allotted time (usually about two minutes) show their skills. Also Russian girls take part in the world championship every year. In terms of competitions everything has become positive. But in terms of training for beginner girls is still there.

– What is important for girls to take into account during training?
– I think the most important thing is not to feel sorry for yourself. It is very rare when a girl really gives her best and achieves results. As a rule, girls have one peculiarity: they feel sorry for themselves: I’m afraid, I won’t do it, I’ll just sit next to them. This is what prevents them from doing strength exercises. Although it has long been proven that girls should pay more attention to strength training, and men, on the contrary, to stretching. After all, men are naturally stronger. Accordingly, they have a high risk of injury if they do not stretch their pumped-up muscles.

I think that vorkout is one of the coolest sports that can be invented for women.

Women are more flexible, they can stretch better, but there is also a risk of injury due to hypermobility of the joints. So you need some kind of framework to support all that flexible beauty. I think that vorkout is one of the coolest sports you can think of for a woman. The workouts affect the whole body, and the results appear much faster than with other types of physical activity.

– What advice would you give to beginners?
– First of all, I would advise you to familiarize yourself with the “100 Day Walkout”. The advantage of this program is that there are a lot of descriptions, explanations, answers to questions that arise among beginners. It is a very simple program, which can be performed even with zero level of training, just adapting the exercises for yourself. It includes the basic exercises of vorkout – pull-ups, push-ups and squats. This is where you should start, because until a person learns to push up from the floor well at least a few times, he will not be able to push up from the bars.

– And how often do girls need to exercise?
– It depends on the state of health, on how accustomed she is to physical exertion. If a girl hasn’t done anything for 10 years and suddenly starts to train, it won’t lead to anything good. I think that this question should be solved individually, depending on how you feel. At first, the main thing is not the result – it is important to accustom yourself to training, to let your body get used to it and adapt to the loads. Then you can set yourself goals. In the beginning there should not be any global goals, at this stage the task is one – to become healthier, fitter, athletic.

– How important is nutrition during training?
– I believe that nutrition is 50 percent of success. Nutrition is very important. For example, I have a healthy diet – a lot of protein, complex carbohydrates, necessarily fats. Very often, when girls go on diets to lose weight, they exclude fats. This should never be done, because fats are the brain, nerves, skin, hair, nails. It is the speed of reaction, thinking – it is health. It is necessary to exclude carbohydrates, and simple carbohydrates – this is what is very quickly digested and raises blood sugar levels. It is enough to exclude it, and the figure will become quite good, but with training, of course, the effect will be even better!