Stronger
Changing Everything I Knew About Women’s Strength
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Sunday Times Sports Book Award
Stronger will change what you think you know about strength and, most importantly, empower you to go on your own journey to discover what strength looks like for you.
'This book gives us permission to establish a healthy relationship with our bodies and strength' – Fearne Cotton, author of Happy
If you are the girl, the woman who feels like she is never enough, that she will never be as strong, as good, as capable, I am here to tell you that you are enough. You can write a different story.
Having gone from hating P.E. to becoming a powerlifter who can lift over twice her own bodyweight, Poorna Bell is perfectly placed to start a crucial conversation about women’s fitness – one that has nothing to do with weight loss. In Stronger, she shows how all of us can tap into our inner strength and find the confidence that physical pursuits can amplify – the confidence that has been helping men to succeed for centuries – and that women can find too.
In this updated edition with a new introduction, Poorna tells not only her own story but those of a range of women, investigating intersections of race, age and social background. Part memoir, part manifesto, Stronger explodes old-fashioned notions about getting strong and explores the relationship between mental and physical strength.
Whether you’re into weightlifting, running, swimming, yoga or don’t consider yourself to be sporty at all, Poorna shows how finding strength can work for you, regardless of age, ability or background.
‘A beautiful, inspiring book that will change the way you think about exercise. I only wish it had existed when I was younger.’ – Bryony Gordon
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
At the beginning of 2016, Poorna Bell made a list of what she wanted from the year, including becoming the fittest she had ever been, and strong in mind, body and spirit. The previous year, the journalist and author had lost her husband. In this, her third book, she writes movingly about that loss, and inspiringly about her journey to becoming a competitive powerlifter in her thirties. Drawing on her own experiences as well as a survey of more than 1,000 girls and women from different backgrounds, and countless studies, she paints a convincing picture of how finding strength and fitness of whatever kind suits us can impact every area of our lives. Clear-eyed and passionate, her account lays out how PE lessons, mainstream gyms and a culture focused on weight loss let us down; how flawed but widely held conceptions of strength—what it looks like, who can or even should have it—exclude and alienate; and how we can change these things for the better.