Empowered Strength & Fitness Studio is a Women’s Gym in Tugun, Gold Coast. Their goal is to help women at all stages through the lifespan lift weights and feel confident in their gym environment.

They aim to do this by providing a unique culture & community, centered around empowerment in a small-group strength training environment. They aim to help their members overcome barriers and build healthy habits to create a lifestyle they LOVE.

“We encourage Women to CHASE STRONG.”

The beginning of Empowered is an interesting story! Their owner, Carla Bull has always been passionate about coaching female-specific programs and helping women learn to (and fall in love with) lifting weights.

Carla is an Australian Track sprinter and in April 2022, she took out the Women’s Stawell Gift race in Victoria. Using that prize money, she set about opening Empowered.

During our conversation, she graciously opened up and shared with us some heartfelt words about her incredible adventure. She expressed how fulfilling it feels to be able to empower women, helping them discover their strength, both physically and mentally. Her passion shines through as she describes the joy she experiences in witnessing women transform their lives, gaining confidence and embracing a healthier lifestyle.

Being a Women’s Gym, the environment is much more inviting for women to come in and give new lifts a go. By helping women feel confident in their gym environment, they are encouraged to perform lifts they may not want to do in a commercial gym. It allows our programming to be very female-specific and for us to cater to women at all different stages of life.

Whether this is our junior & teen classes where we are introducing young girls to the gym and fostering a love for movement, our seniors (Golden Girl) classes where we enhance mobility and bone density, or simply being able to cater for the women’s body during pre- and post-natal and well as post-menopausal stages.

For so long, HIIT has been the go-to option. HIIT classes are great, however the further benefits of strength training should not be underestimated, and we hope to introduce more women to this style of training.

We are very early on with building our member base- which is so exciting! We’re seeing a large range of age ranges and experience levels signing up to our main classes!

Opening the studio has been such a rollercoaster of emotions! Our highs come when we see our members accomplish their goals of lifting certain weights or telling us how good they feel!

“Our lows are there as we navigate the waters of business!”

Having a different style of training from the average group class, it takes a bit of getting used to for new members! We find those that follow our programming for a few weeks and can track the weights they are lifting can see the progress they are making and its then that they really fall in love with the training style.

Doing our research while getting started we looked at all the equipment available and VERVE was the obvious choice. We wanted a slick, professional feel for our gym which we felt VERVE would provide - and they delivered.

This is specifically the case with our favourite piece of equipment in the gym being the Freestanding Rig! We had this customised to suit our space and needs perfectly! Being so versatile, we use it every single class for many different exercises!

Our parting message to all women is to CHASE STRONG. We wholeheartedly believe this is the best way to train. CHASE STRONG and everything else will follow. Whether this is your confidence increasing, your mood improving, or your body composition changing! You’ll find a new sense of empowerment and enjoy training so much more!