Big & Bold: Strength Training for the Plus-Size Woman

by Morit Summers, Emme (Foreword)

Meet your new training partner! If you are a plus-size woman and want to get stronger, but you are intimidated by the gym or don’t have access to a personal trainer, Big & Strength Training for the Plus-Size Woman is for you. Unlike books that target weight loss as the ultimate goal, this book emphasizes why strength training and movement are important for women of all sizes and how progress is not tied to a number on the scale.Big & Strength Training for the Plus-Size Woman offers clear and simple instructions on how to safely perform 83 exercises to make them more effective for larger bodies. Master the squat and hinge exercises for the lower body; push and pull exercises for the upper body; and loaded carry, rotation, and anti-rotation exercises for the core. Learn why some movements are more important than others and how to safely progress by manipulating the reps, sets, load, and rest periods. Sample workouts—from beginner level through advanced—enable you to determine your starting point for strength training goals. Choose from a variety of training equipment for many of the exercises or follow the dumbbell- or kettlebell-only workouts if you have limited access to equipment. You’ll also find tips for clothing and equipment needs. And, because she’s “been there, done that,” author Morit Summers explains how to pace yourself with advice on when and how often to work out and what to do if you become overwhelmed on your journey.Big & Strength Training for the Plus-Size Woman will inspire you to start putting one foot in front of the other to become a stronger, more capable version of yourself.

Genres: Nonfiction, Health, Fitness

200 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 17, 2021

About the author

Morit Summers has been a Personal Trainer since 2007, defying industry standards with her abilities and inclusive approach. She holds many certifications including NSCA and is a CrossFit Level 1 Trainer. Summers began her career at the State University of New York at Cortland, and from there moved onto Equinox Fitness where she progressed to a Tier 3+ trainer, and over time began teaching incoming classes of trainers.

In 2016, she launched her own business, Morit Summers Personal Training. At her personal training studio, clients range from individuals just beginning their fitness journeys, to seasoned athletes. Aside from personal training, she is an expert fitness consultant. She has been featured in Shape, Health and Fabuplus Magazines, Good Day New York, and various health and fitness podcasts and campaigns including Lane Bryant's LIVI Moves. Summers strives to constantly further her education and contributions to the health and fitness industry. With the right tools and motivation, she believes that anyone can live a healthy lifestyle and achieve their fitness goals. The proof is in her own story, which has fueled her passion for the health and fitness industry.

Reviews

[Hannah]

The only thing about this book that is specific to plus-sized women is the part of intro and part of the conclusion and the photography, and all of them belong in regularass books about strength training, not just a specialty one. It was nice to see full-color photographs of powerful women of different colors and larger sizes demonstrating proper form for exercises, and there's no reason (well, there are reasons, but no defensible ones) not to have them as models in any old book about strength training.

What this really is is the best-written guide I've read (I've been going on a Human Kinetics bender this week and reading a lot of their titles, and I can genuinely see progress in how they cover gender and body size tracking alongside the original pub dates of the books) about beginner strength training, but I don't particularly like the conflation of "plus-size" and "beginner," and ironically I don't think the author would like to conflate those concepts either, since she and I agree with the actual scientific conclusion that body size and mass do not tell you anything about that body's health or fitness level. There were a few nods to how larger bodies may look or feel different slotting into machines, but not as many as might actually be necessary or most useful. I know one thing that is frustrating about fitness equipment is that it's really great for forcing you to have proper form when an exercise is new, but it also is limiting because it's built for the average, lean adult man, so if you have larger thighs or a bigger stomach or boobs or less height or whatever, some things may literally be impossible not because it's impossible for your body but because it's impossible for the machine to accommodate your body, which is a problem with the machine, not your body. I'm not plus-sized, though I am "fat" for a fitness instructor (which is a little like being a plus-sized couture model in that it's dehumanizing and misuse of words and pseudoscientific and also completely silly because you can recognize that you are still not suffering anywhere near as much as the people who are bigger than you but it's also still a legitimate hurdle because the world you're working in refuses to fit you in their paradigm) and have an extremely large bust, so I have not equivalent but parallel experiences of "oh, this thing we made for a standard-sized thing doesn't fit you? You are the problem, not the thing that doesn't accommodate you," and I'm not trying to say those are the same, only that I use that as a referent when thinking about how I as a skinnier-than-some, fatter-than-others fitness professional can design a workout for someone larger than I am and be affirming and accommodating in my language and framing, not just my design. I hoped to get a few more pointers from this book via specific instructions on how to modify an exercise or a piece of equipment for larger bodies, but I didn't really get a lot of that, and that also makes me wonder if that's then going to be useful for larger-bodied people.

I like that Summers used cues about how you should feel, since something a lot of fitness professionals do badly is translate so-called standard cues or corrections to larger bodies ("your thighs should do X" or "your spine should touch X" and cues like that aren't neatly applicable to all sizes, and relying on visual cues like that means you don't necessarily catch bad form or honor good form because you're used to those very specific embodied cues that only work on a specific subset of body types), but overall this was more just a beginners' guide, and that should have been more directly communicated to the reader so that plus-sized experienced athletes and fitness enthusiasts skip it in favor of something more advanced. Like on the one hand I can see the appeal of a book written for a specific group of people so they know they'll get to see pictures of people who look like them and so on, because I advocate for that type of affinity and mirror book all the time, but there's just kind of a disconnect between the actual content and the promise of the title. Very good stuff, just not exactly the stuff I hoped for.

[Steph Carr (LiteraryHypeWoman)]

I'm not giving this one a star rating on purpose. My perspective won't fit with others who read that and it's perfectly fine.

This book is definitely geared more toward beginners. It breaks down how to do lifts and why they are good for you. As a former D1 athlete, that wasn't what I was looking for, but it could be for someone else.

I enjoyed her positivity on the page and encouraging the reader that they can achieve their goals with work and patience.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for CEUs.

[Lesley Looper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up some ideas and encouragement from this book. I’m focusing on weight machines at the gym for now, though.