A few weeks ago I sat down with Dr Caity Haniver from Melbourne West Barbell Club for a conversation on the podcast. Caity is an osteopath and strength coach who works at the intersection of rehabilitation, strength training and women’s health.
What I appreciate about Caity’s work is that she’s not interested in reinforcing the usual narratives around women’s bodies. The ones that tell us we should be smaller, quieter, more controlled.
Instead, her work centres on something far more interesting.
Helping women become capable.
Our conversation explored what happens when women stop training for aesthetics and start training for performance, and why that shift can fundamentally change the way we relate to our bodies.
The Health Literacy Gap Women Are Left With
One of the things Caity spoke about during our conversation is how little education most women receive about their bodies.
We’re often taught what our bodies should look like, but not how they actually work.
We’re given rules.
Eat less.
Move more.
Try this plan.
Follow this protocol.
But very rarely are we encouraged to build true health literacy. The kind that helps us understand our own physiology, capacity, recovery and strength.
Instead, many women learn to outsource authority.
To programs.
To coaches.
To influencers.
To anyone who sounds confident enough.
The irony is that women are more than capable of understanding their bodies. We’ve simply been conditioned to believe someone else must know better.
Rebuilding that understanding is one of the most empowering things a woman can do.
Strength Training Changes the Conversation
A big part of Caity’s work focuses on strength training, not as a cosmetic tool, but as a way to build capacity.
Strength training is often framed as a way to “tone” or sculpt certain parts of the body.
But the real value of strength has nothing to do with aesthetics.
Strength is capacity.
It’s your ability to produce force.
To stabilise yourself.
To carry things.
To move confidently through the world.
When women start lifting weights with performance in mind, the questions begin to change.
Instead of asking:
How do I look?
The focus shifts toward:
What can I do?
That might mean lifting heavier than you ever thought you could.
It might mean moving without pain.
It might mean building a level of physical confidence that simply didn’t exist before.
And that shift in focus can be incredibly liberating.
Why Performance Goals Matter
One of the things we discussed during the podcast was the difference between aesthetic goals and performance goals.
Aesthetic goals aren’t inherently bad. Most people want to feel comfortable in their bodies.
But when appearance becomes the only measure of success, things get tricky.
Aesthetic outcomes are unstable.
They fluctuate with hormones, stress, lighting, angles and water retention. They’re easy to obsess over and hard to control.
Performance, on the other hand, is much more grounded.
Did you lift the weight?
Did you complete the session?
Did you improve your technique?
Progress becomes tangible. Measurable. Real.
And perhaps more importantly, performance goals encourage women to treat their bodies as something to develop, rather than something to constantly critique.
Learning to Care for Our Bodies
Another theme that came up in our conversation was the idea that caring for your body is a skill.
Not in the restrictive sense.
Not in the punishing sense.
But in the sense of understanding how your body works and what it needs.
What helps you recover.
What supports your strength.
What builds resilience over time.
These are things that can be learned.
They’re not reserved for elite athletes or people with perfect routines.
They’re accessible to anyone willing to approach their body with curiosity rather than criticism.
The Long Game of Strength
Strength training isn’t a short-term project.
It’s not a six-week challenge or a quick transformation.
It’s a long-term relationship with your body.
A process of slowly building strength, capacity and trust in yourself.
And when women make the shift from chasing aesthetics to pursuing empowered performance, the entire experience of training changes.
Movement becomes less about shrinking.
And far more about supporting the life you want to live inside your body.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This piece was inspired by my conversation with Dr Caity Haniver from Melbourne West Barbell Club, where we dive much deeper into these ideas.
We talk about:
why strength training is so important for women
the myths many women have been taught about lifting
how women can start reconnecting with their bodies
and what it actually looks like to train for performance
If this conversation resonated with you, you can listen to the full episode here:
🎧 From Chasing Aesthetics to Empowered Performance — Interview with Dr Caity Haniver