Strength Training: It does the body good women

I’ve always said strength training makes muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones stronger and cardiovascular training makes the heart stronger, thus more efficient.

Women are more prone to navigate towards cardiovascular exercise to burn calories and reduce adipose tissue size and shying away from strength training for the fear of developing bulking muscle and gain weight.

The fact of matter is women are not capable of developing Arnold Schwarzenegger or Lou Ferrigno physique. Though women and men can both gain muscle mass through strength training and/or calisthenics, high levels of the hormone estrogen hampers the ability of women to build large muscle mass or size, therefore, women will have less muscle, more body fat, and be physically smaller than men. Another major reason is child bearing which a woman will use her body to nourish a baby and herself. There are many other reasons why women may have different muscle and fat ratios such as body type, race, climate, lifestyle, and genetics just to name a few.

So women if you truly want to decrease body fat, increase lean muscle tissue, and burn more calories adding strength training to your cardiovascular routine will only accelerate your weigh loss goal, but will make your body into a lean, mean, fat burning machine.

Here are some tips to get your machine moving.

Learn proper technique

If you have never lifted weights before, hiring a professional personal trainer would be advise. You may think it’s expensive, but think of it as an investment in your health. If this is not an option you can go to library, local bookstore, and/or review free on-line videos. Remember learning proper technique at the beginning with prevent injury and dissatisfy if you are not seeing the results you want.

Take time to rest

Rest is one of the hardest concepts for my clients or people to comprehend when starting a new exercise program. They are so motivated and want instant results that they fail to take rest days. As a result, they burn out fast and never see results that they want. Give your muscles at least 24 hours of rest if you’re doing total body weight training. If you are over 40 years of age, take 48 hours of rest between weight training days. Rest is when the body repairs itself so you are doing the body well.

Start slowly

If you are a novice, you may want to start with light weight until you become comfortable with lifting weights. Remember, your ligaments, tendons, and muscles are not used to additional stress and neither are you so start slow. Keep repetitions between 12-15 with light weight. Once you can do 15 repetitions without fatigue, increase weight.

Do a total body workout

Current research has indicated that total body workout is just a beneficial as specific muscle group training on designated days. If your upper body is weaker do more concentrated exercise for chest, back shoulders, and arms. If you’re lower body is the problem, you’ll have to harder since the lower body has largest number of muscle fibers in your whole entire body. Focus on glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves. You can do single set repetitions or double set either way research has indicated that both methods are just effective.

Use proper weight

Choose a weight that is heavy enough so you can do a single set of 12-15 repetitions with the last 1-2 repetitions difficult to finish. Remember to keep proper technique with lifting you last reps.