“The Paly weight room is like a middle school dance,” Kevin Anderson (’11) said. “There is a clear line that divides guys and girls.”

The weight room is a cramped building located between the boys’ gym and the pool deck. The 24 machines and structures, which overshadow the size of the interior, consist of a wall of free weights, a roman chair, four different bench and squat bars, two leg press structures, and several other leg, core, and upper body machines. Aside from a broken bike, which greets incomers at the door, there are no cardio apparatuses. It is dimly lit, and grungy, masked with an odor of sweat and metal.

After the final school bell rings a group of male students enter the weight room. The students begin with bench presses, bicep curls, and leg presses, each guy interacts with the other. When bench-pressing they spot for each other, joke around, and listen to hip-hop through a worn down boom box. It is all comfortable and familiar, until two female athletes walk in. The guys look over and notice the new feminine presence, glance at each other, and the horseplay dies down.

In the corner, one of the guys is lifting free weights. After a few reps, he exhales with strain, allows the bar to drop and steps back as the weights clatter to the ground. As the two girls enter, they pick up a medicine ball on the opposite side of the room and hurry out to start their regimen outside.

The chill of an unfamiliar breeze provides temporary relief to the two girls hard at work outside of the weight room. Both Katerina Peterson (’11), and Mary Albertolle (’11) are in the process of pre-season conditioning for the varsity girls’ basketball team.

Katerina Peterson started on the varsity girls’ basketball team and was a varsity shot-putter her freshman and sophomore year. Peterson frequently works out in the weight room because as she explains, “I’m really busy outside of school and Paly’s easily accessible to me throughout the day.”

Peterson became motivated to go in the weight room when she was introduced to how beneficial weight training could be to her improvement in her various sports.

“I became influenced by my coaches to become better when I first started training for basketball and track,” Peterson said. “Coach B [coach Brandon Sakowski] brought me into the weight room for the first time, and opened new doors for me. After getting used to training I gained this feeling of wanting to become better and felt the need to improve more after I saw the positive effects pay off. Once signs showed that I was becoming stronger and faster, I liked the results and continued to be influenced [to go to the weight room].”

Peterson’s routines for track and basketball include power cleans, box jumps and bench presses. However, although many exercises are useful for both sports, Peterson targets specific muscle groups for each sport.

“During basketball season it’s all about leg work outs and working on building speed and jumping higher,” Peterson said. “For track it’s more about power. I’m building my strength and really working on my arms, legs, and core. There’s a lot of different work for each sport.”

Peterson explained that specific leg workouts for basketball improve speed and agility, essential components to being successful throughout an entire game. In track, it is even more essential to workout both the lower and upper body.

“In track you are using all of your body to push an object as far as you can,” Peterson said. “You use all sorts of muscles to create an inertia that influences the ball before you even let go of it.”

Throughout her two years of utilizing the Paly weight room, Peterson has noticed a great improvement in her overall physical condition.

“Oh yeah, I have changed big time,” Peterson said. “I’m a lot stronger and leaner. I’ve become a lot quicker and in way better shape. I take pride in that.”

Albertolle, a two year JV starter on the girls’ basketball team, is training hard to compete with the varsity squad in the 2009 season.

Since freshman year, Albertolle has been building up her strength, becoming more powerful each year.

“I definitely do heavier weights than I did freshman year,” Albertolle said. “I can do more reps and help other people with their form.”

When in the weight room, Albertolle usually focuses on leg muscles.

“It’s important to have the endurance to stay in a defensive stance. It takes a lot of strength,” Albertolle said.

Albertolle realizes the effect of years of weight room training and how it has enabled a growing skill in basketball.

“It makes me more physical,” Albertolle said. “In the fourth quarter I can still be aggressive.”

Both Peterson and Albertolle begin their regimen by tossing a ten-pound medicine ball to one another; starting with underhand tosses, then chest passes, and finally from the top of the head.

The extent of Palo Alto athletes’ work out routines is not limited to the practices and games that occur on the Palo Alto campus. For the majority of Paly Vikings, extended workouts outside of school are necessary to keep them at a high level of play, one they must be at in order to compete in their respective sports. Of a sample of thirty boys that are involved in various sports at Paly, 45% of them work out and find the Paly weight room suitable for their particular work out regimens. However, of a sample of thirty two female athletes, only 14% work out in the weight room on a monthly basis; the other 86% of the time is spent either at full service gyms such as the YMCA, or are at home or another location where weight lifting machines and cardio apparatuses are not necessary.

Back inside, one of the weight room regulars feels unaffected by the girls’ presence.

“It didn’t change at all,” Conner Raftery (’10) said of the atmosphere when girls came into the weight room. “I was thinking about my workout. It doesn’t affect me. I saw them, but I was thinking about my workout.”

Tory Prati (’12), a guard for the football team who also plays basketball and track, expressed this sentiment.

“It’s a distraction and girls change the atmosphere from ‘push yourself’ to a more relaxed environment, which isn’t good for lifting,” Prati said.

Upon encountering guys in her endeavor to the weight room, June Afshar (’10), the girls’ Varsity Water Polo team’s starting goalie, could feel a subtle, negative vibe emanating from the completely male inhabited domain.

“They definitely have a ‘what’re you doing in here’ kind of look,” Afshar said. “They don’t have to say anything, I can feel it.”

As she begins her exercises, a few guys, who will remain nameless, smirk at her or yell comments like ‘yeah get it June!’ in what she interprets as a condescending manor. One boy yells in passing, “Look at June trying to get buff!”

“I feel really underestimated, like they think it is a joke I am in here,” Afshar said. “I guess they can’t see that I am serious about my workout.”

This disbelief in an unfamiliar presence in a formerly comfortable area sparks conflict within males. This occurrence is explained by a psychological theory known the Cognitive Dissonance Theory.

“[This] is a situation in which you have conflicting ideas and it creates a tension within the person,” Psychologist Orit Atzmon explained about the Cognitive Dissonance Theory. “There is a tension here [where guys feel that], ‘we belong here, [we are] the physically stronger gender, what are they [girls] doing here?'”

The idea that males are threatened by a new factor in a normally familiar atmosphere, explains much of the tension between boys and girls in the weight room.

“It is a threat,” Dr. Atzmon said. “So it’s more comfortable to interact with people who are like you because when there is a difference, there is a threat. It is easier to [be] separate [from those who are different than you].”

It is more difficult to interact with a different gender because they are socially different and interact in different ways. This fact causes a rift between the sexes, especially in the weight room.

This discomfort leads to a divide between the two genders in such an environment, which is the stem of several generalizations.

“The differences are looked at as inferiority or superiority,” Dr. Atzmon said. “So if I’m a guy and you’re a girl, I’m better than you. It’s a distorted perception but it’s how we perceive a different group of people. The difference is looked at as less than.”

Afshar’s hypothesis regarding guys’ perceptions of the seriousness of girls’ workouts in the weight room proves to be true according to this theory. However, she can understand why the stereotype persists ever today.

“Guys are taught to see themselves as these athletic machines, superior to girls, so when girls mess up their plan they can’t help but be offended,” Afshar said. “I think that most boys aren’t trying to insult the girls, it just comes naturally to them.”

Afshar is not only the starting goalie for the girls’ varsity water polo team, but she is also pursuing a water polo career at the collegiate level. Afshar’s ambitions are led by her love of the game.

“I really like water polo and I want to see what I can do at a more competitive level.” Afshar said.

In order to be competitive at the level Afshar strives for, she needs to work out regularly, improving her strength and endurance. Afshar explains her main emphasis in the weight room.

“I usually focus on upper shoulders and core because for my particular position [goalie] those muscles need to be strongest,” Afshar said.

An average workout for Afshar includes band training three times a week, with the school team, and weight training with her Stanford club team outside of school.

Afshar has made strides since her freshman year and first year playing water polo, dedicating more time to strength in her junior and senior years.

“I didn’t use the weight room at all freshman and sophomore year because I was on JV,” Afshar said. “But once I got to varsity I had to be stronger to compete. I wasn’t going to get stronger by just going to practice.”

On Peterson and Albertolle’s second set, they encountered coach Pete Colombo meandering past the weight room. He looks at them, smiles and asks why they are there.

The girls laugh and do not take the comment seriously.

“I feel like a lot of boys’ coaches feel that we shouldn’t be there,” Albertolle said. “It feels good, though, because you are proving them wrong and showing them girls can be in the weight room.”

Peterson also took the comment in stride.

“I didn’t think of it in a sexist way,” Peterson said. “I’m just used to people asking me what I’m doing in the weight room.”

The Paly PE department, as well, disregards the gender difference in the weight room. Because every student enrolled in physical education at Paly visits the weight room, regardless of sex, physical education teacher Jason Fung teaches boys and girls the same way.

“I teach kids how to get stronger,” Fung said. “I teach them how to lift weights, properly. Lifting is lifting, girl or boy. Just like you don’t teach soccer any differently to girls or boys, you teach them the same thing [in the weight room].”

Afshar, on the other hand, has had contrary experiences with coaches in the weight room.

“I’ve never seen the coaches, besides girls’ teams coaches, say anything to the boys to help make it easier for the girls,” Afshar said. “In fact, I’ve seen some coaches laugh at us [the girls water polo team] when we come to work out.”

Albertolle and Peterson move onto kettle bell squats, stair sprints, the vertimax, and box jumps, all of which are lower body exercises. Girls are naturally stronger in their lower body, a possible explanation for why no girls are on the immortalized bench press plaque wall. The wall, however, is not the only factor in the males’ perception of females’ strength.

“Guys think girls are weak because of society,” Emilee Osagiede (’12) said. “Girls are expected to fail.”

Osagiede, who played Varsity basketball her freshman year and is a competitive soccer player outside of school, agrees with Peterson that the weight room is easily accessible.

“It’s convenient and easy to get to,” Osagiede said.

Osagiede, who suffered from a dislocated kneecap and a torn meniscus simultaneously, and later an anterior cruciate ligament injury, utilizes the weight room as a source of rehabilitation for her injury. Her regular routine includes doing leg extensions, bench-press, lateral raises, bicep curls, leg presses and using the vertimax. She works out her upper body initially and then targets her lower body.

“I work out my lats, then biceps, triceps then my abs, then move to lower body, which includes calves, quads, and hamstrings,” Osagiede said.

Osagiede has found that the accessibility of the weight room has contributed strongly to her success in basketball and soccer by strengthening her muscles and getting her back to her physical condition before her injury.

“My major muscle groups are way more noticeable and stronger,” Osagiede said. “Like my calves, hamstrings, and quads because the machines in the weight room really helped build the muscles.”

Not only does the weight room provide a place to increase strength but it also encourages a motivation for self-improvement.

“I don’t want to look weak, I want to impress people,” Peterson said. “I think I am respected for it.”

Osagiede has felt a similar need to prove herself.

“Sometimes it is awkward,” Osagiede noted. “But I don’t want it to look like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

According to Laura M. Horsch, a local adolescence psychologist, this phenomenon, in which chances of failure is increased due to perceptions, is known as Stereotype Threat.

“Stereotypes are generalizations about people based on membership in a certain group or category,” Horsch said. “Stereotype Threat happens when a person is at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about their group and as a result sometimes performs worse than they otherwise would.”

The anxiety of a constant judgment sometimes impairs the results of the athletes. “It is hypothesized that this happens because the person develops anxiety that they will perpetuate the stereotype if they do not perform well,” Horsch said. “This anxiety in turn actually interferes with their performance.”

There is a tendency for qualities like aggression and strength to be associated with males.

“Even though a lot has changed over time, stereotypical ideas about gender as it relates to physical activity still exists, which suggests that females are less athletic than males,” Horsch said.

Because of this lingering generalization many females attribute athletic successes to outside factors, or coincidence.

“Even when females do have athletic success, studies have documented a tendency for female athletes to believe it is due to luck rather than to their own skill or ability,” Horsch said.

Some females feel required to put on a facade when going to the weight room. A mask of impartiality and a fake swagger are key elements to this deceptive persona. Other girls feel relief when there are no guys in the weight room, since they no longer have to maintain a steely exterior.

For this reason, Osagiede was glad for the lack of males in the weight room when she went in to work out.

“I was relieved there were no guys in the weight room today,” Osagiede said. “I felt like I didn’t have to act or pretend like I was tough.”

Osagiede’s lack of confidence in her own athleticism when males are present, according to Fung, is due largely in part to the pressure of having to compete with the intense level of weight lifting that occurs in the weight room.

“It’s intimidation,” Fung said. “Why would the girls want to go in there?”

Paly trainer John Tamez agrees that girls are intimidated by the idea of going into the weight room.

“Girls who are brought into it [the culture of lifting], like those that play basketball or water polo, understand lifting, so they do it,” Tamez said. “But a girl is not going to be motivated to work out by herself in front of boys.”

Another major factor in the gender tension is the hormone influx associated with adolescence.

“The sexual aspect that is on everybody’s mind for a few years now plays a major role,” Dr. Atzmon said. “You want to be attractive to make a good impression, be liked, be desired sexually, socially, and academically. The tension is very important. Once you put the genders together they try to impress each other in different styles. In adolescence this is heightened.”

Regardless of whether the causes of the awkwardness of the male female interaction in the weight room is due to Stereotype Threat, the Cognitive Dissonance Theory, or even the immaturity of High School students, it is evident that a difference between the two genders exists in the Paly weight room.

As Peterson and Albertolle gather their bags along the outer wall, the sonorous beats of the newest D-Lo song fade into the distance the farther the two girls walk, each step distancing themselves further from their male counterparts. <<<