Sharanya Roy was 11 when she joined a sports academy to learn basketball. “I was excited,” she says. But that didn’t last long. She was the only girl in a batch of 10 boys and the coach made her aware of it every session. “For the first month, he just made me run around the field and fetch the ball while the boys played,” she says. When she was put in a match, she played badly and was told off as “good-for-nothing”.It ended her pursuit of basketball. Years later, the Bengaluru-based Roy rediscovered her athletic side after finding Sisters in Sweat. When she went back into an arena, it was with an all-women group that egged each other on.Co-founded by Swetha Subbiah and Tanvie Hans, the community has over 36,000 members in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi, among other cities. Roy now plays badminton and football, and does pilates. “I’d never played football in my life. But when I do it with the women here, I can fall, learn, make lots of mistakes — all without judgement,” she says.Sisters in Sweat is one of a growing number of fitness forums exclusively for women that are thriving because they offer a place where they can be free from objectification, ridicule or judgement.The big equaliserOne such forum bringing women together, for a more uncommon workout, is Tania Sudan’s pole dancing academy in Delhi. “The workout is a very tough one and demands concentration on the pole. So, women cannot get conscious of their bodies. And here, they don’t need to. They can give up their inhibitions and just enjoy themselves,” says Tania, who describes women’s fitness forums as “a big equaliser”.Jignasa Sinha (25), a software engineer, says she had never felt confident in her own skin till she started these classes. “I was always the fat kid that everyone made fun of in school. If someone had told me back then that I would one day dress down and move on a pole like nobody’s watching, I would have laughed,” she says.Sinha goes to the gym four days a week, but it is the two days of pole dancing that really make her feel good about herself. “The idea that I could feel feminine or sensuous used to be alien to me. But now, I feel like I’m in control of my body,” she says. She is surrounded by women, all of them dressed the same way, many of them on the same journey. “I know that no one is judging me,” Jignasa says.When Mumbai resident Ritika Arora went into early menopause at 45, her doctor suggested she join a gym and start strength training. “I would get comments about the shape of my body, and how much I should be able to lift because of how much I weigh. I gave up,” she says.Going strongA year ago, Ritika attended her first event in Mumbai held by ‘Gym Girls Club’, a women-only weightlifting community that teaches strength training. She is now a regular. “No one is saying things about my capabilities or my body. I have become much stronger,” Ritika says.Co-founder Anusha Mendosa says strength training is generally seen as a male domain, and many women are made to feel weak because they can’t lift as much as the men around them. “That is why we created this space where women can be themselves and learn from scratch,” she says.Delhi-based ‘Women in the Hood’ has, meanwhile, made both physical and mental wellness its focus. It holds events themed around movement, discussions on health, finance and wellbeing. It arranges vacations, too.The idea behind the forum that every woman should have another in her neighbourhood who can be there for her. “We have a community of nearly 800 women across the country who are connected through WhatsApp groups,” says founder Sohini Mishra.Therapeutic bondFor regulars at these forums, the bonds they have formed have moved beyond fitness classes. Sudan’s pole dancing students get together once a month for a ‘feminine energy date’. They say it is like a therapy session, where they can talk about their lives.Khushi Mehra (32), who works in her family business, says when she first started the classes, she was recovering from an illness. “Meeting the girls in my class was my biggest motivation to show up to the studio every week,” she says.Ananya Garg, a data scientist, came back to Delhi a couple of years ago after completing her masters abroad. “All my friends had moved away. This academy is where I found a circle of friends again,” she says.Roy says restarting her fitness journey after having her son felt like a struggle because few, if any, in regular gyms understood what she was going through. “But there were so many new mothers at Sisters in Sweat,” she says. They meet regularly with their kids, share experiences and advice, and lift each other up. “I feel like I have finally found my tribe,” she says.Priyata Brijabasi, a journalist based in Delhi, says she and her friends joined Sisters in Sweat together and it has made their bond stronger. “We get coffee or breakfast after our sessions, and end up sharing what’s going on with us,” she says.Co-founder Subbiah says she is proud of the community the initiative has helped create. “If a member needs help, they put it on the WhatsApp group. Somebody always responds,” she says. “We have established a sisterhood.”
