Rejecting these exercises has been an important part of learning to exercise for power and resilience. It felt like a feminist victory to walk straight past the machines associated with these weird body goals – proof that I’m no longer subject to diet culture’s version of exercise.

The reality hasn’t been so empowering. When I went to a physio complaining about all the usual niggles like back pain and tight hips, he told me the muscles in my inner thighs were so weak that they weren’t properly stabilising my hips and knees.

So many of us neglect to train certain muscle groups, whether as an act of defiance or a blanket hatred for the exercise. Friends and colleagues tell me they’ll happily skip over training their abs (too time-consuming), calves (too macho) and triceps (too painful). Others avoid entire workouts, such as running, because it reminds them of when they were obsessed with burning calories, or strength training, because of the never-ending fear of bulking up.

“How I learned to detach inner thigh workouts from diet culture to ease my back pain”