A Physical Education

”“Candid and illuminating…more than a fitness transformation story. It’s a reckoning with the mental and physical consequences of a culture that tells women their bodies are problems to be fixed.”
–Harper’s Bazaar
“A physiological, as well as psychological, transformation that reads as nothing short of a revelation.”
–The New Yorker
“Charts Johnston’s transformation through weightlifting in captivating scientific and emotional detail, articulating the sneaky ways that gender can inform body image, and what women in particular can do to reclaim both their literal and figurative strength.”
–Los Angeles Times
“With equal parts wit and rigor, Johnston traces her evolution from someone beholden to diet culture to someone who fuels, lifts, and lives on her own terms.”
–Well+Good
”[A Physical Education] incorporates memoir, science writing, and cultural critique, offering a technical breakdown of the effects of Johnston’s time in the gym, as well as condemnations of diet culture’s scams and hucksters. The book is not a how-to, but more of a why-to: Strength training, in Johnston’s telling, reframes both body and mind.”
–The Atlantic
”[An] openhearted blend of memoir and science writing… [and] an empowering resource.”
–Publishers Weekly
“A thought-provoking memoir about falling in love with weightlifting–and, perhaps more importantly, learning how to unapologetically take up space in the world.”
–Bonnie Tsui, author of Why We Swim and On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters
“Make no mistake: A Physical Education is no lifting manifesto. It’s about powerlifting in the same way that Friday Night Lights is about football–it’s there, all over the place, but you don’t have to participate in it or love it to understand it as a metaphor for life, man.”
–Vanity Fair
“This book performs power from the inside out. It reminds us: when we turn away from the cultural messages that we must be young, beautiful, and thin–false fictions that ask us to destroy ourselves–we might learn to turn toward hundreds of other forms of beauty, erotic power, senses of self. Where Casey Johnston takes her body, there is joy, release, revelation.”
–Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water and Reading the Waves
“I can’t stop talking about this book. A Physical Education is for every woman who ever dieted, looked at herself in the mirror and hated her stomach, or cried when she stepped on the scale, which is to say: every woman. This book is both a rallying cry and a testament to what happens when a woman finds her strength. Read this book and get free.”
–Lyz Lenz, author of New York Times bestseller This American Ex-Wife
“A Physical Education is a profoundly engrossing journey of how one woman stepped into her power, literally and metaphorically. Casey Johnston is our Virgil through the weightroom, seamlessly blending memoir, history, and science. In lucid prose, Johnston shows how strength training is an exit ramp off the hamster wheel of diet culture and antidote to the shame and isolation so many women experience. Full of heart and humor, this book made me want to get stronger.”
–Elizabeth Greenwood, author of Playing Dead and Love Lockdown

Casey Johnston is an American writer and editor. She has written the fitness advice column “Ask a Swole Woman” for multiple outlets since 2016 and a newsletter about weightlifting, She’s a Beast, since 2021.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.