 Weightlifting. Think of the sport and one might picture a weight room ringing with the sounds of clanging metal and crowded with experienced muscle bound men. It's no place for a beginner, a woman, and certainly not both. Women in Weightlifting, a UC Berkeley club is on a mission to change that. So my name is Tara Asachi. I'm the president and founder of Women in Weightlifting. I founded the club last year, 2021. There's like a few reasons why, but I guess the main one was just over the years of being in the weightlifting community myself. I've noticed a really large amount of people who are like intimidated by the gym, like women especially, because it's a male dominated sport. So the goal really was just to build a community and you know, bring in some professionals to educate people, get some trainers. I started weightlifting in my freshman sophomore year of high school. I was like a really skinny person. I like had a lot of negative things to be said about myself by like other people. So it definitely like internalized a bit and that's kind of why I started out weightlifting. I wanted to like build some muscle and become strong. And then I just grew like a love for the sport and like a love for the strength that you build. You know, I always for strong woman and empowerment. And so I felt very empowered every time I was in the gym lifting heavy weights. You know, I want other people to feel that way. Weightlifting is something I've always wanted to do, especially being part of just a group. Because I've always really like struggled with like my weight and like body image at a very, very young age. Christine instantly felt connected to all the women at the club's first training session as they seem to be united by one common goal. A desire to look and feel their best, something she has struggled with her whole life that has led to periods of self-harm. At a very young age, like five, I was like sexually abused. So I've never felt like my body was my own. I've always felt it kind of in a way repulsive, you know, because it was seen without that permission to be seen. I wouldn't eat. For days, I wouldn't eat at all. So I struggled with that for a very long time. And then there was also moments where another phase in my life where I did resort to cutting my own skin because it just didn't feel like my own. Now I feel like I love my body, but I need to work on it because I have neglected my body in a lot of ways. Christine appreciates the stability and instruction that has come with joining the club to especially valuable concepts in a field so fraught with empty promises. The fitness industry, especially through social media, is a little bit dangerous because, you know, everyone can be a fitness influencer. A lot of people just blindly watch them and then thought that's the right thing to do and that can definitely be dangerous. So I would, like, you know, I would suggest to, you know, reach out to the people who already have the experience and then use channels that are, you know, credited, you know, from professors, from personal trainers. I'd say definitely in the sense of community, we've built that for our members over the past year. But in terms of education, we hope this semester to really push that and get that going, yeah. If you're interested in weightlifting and you, you know, view the world through the lens of a woman or you understand the struggles that women face in sports like these, then, you know, we are open to you. We, like, welcome you with open arms and encourage you to step foot in that weight room. You have every right to be there as much as a man, I always say this, and yeah, you got it, you know, you got it. This has been Ava Andrews from CalTV News.