Strength Training For Women The Fact & The Fiction
Strength Training For Women
If you are like almost 80% of the women in America that exercise regularly, your workouts consist of cardio exercise and avoid that dreaded part of the gym – the weight room floor!! According to the National Centre for Health Statistics, a mere 21 percent of women take part in strength training two or more times a week. However, adding those two sessions a week can translate into a reduction in body fat of 3% over just 10 weeks! If this isn’t reason enough, check out the following reasons to add strength training to your workouts:
Fact - You will burn more calories in a 24 hour period: Although cardio burns more calories than strength training during an 60 minute session, a study in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that women who completed an hour-long strengthtraining workout burned an average of 100 more calories in the 24 hours afterward than they did when they hadn't lifted weights
Fact - Increased Metabolism: Muscle makes up about a third of the average woman’s body. As muscle is metabolically active, it burns through calories unlike fat. So replace 10lbs of fat weight with 10lbs of lean muscle and you will burn an additional 25-50 calories a day!
Fact - You Can Target ‘trouble spots’: Unlike cardio exercise, with strength training, you can target the areas of the body that you want to tone up and strengthen.
Strength Training for Women
Fiction - Muscle will make me bulky? Women do not, and cannot, naturally produce as much testosterone as men do, so it is impossible for a woman to gain large amounts of muscle mass. Muscle does weigh more than fat so you will notice a loss in inches before you see the scales move…but isn’t the important number the dress size?!
Fiction – Lifting will make me stiff and inflexible: If you train correctly and use the full range of motion then you will actually improve muscle flexibility, and of course you will be stronger after your program!
Fiction – Strength training is all heavy weights: Not at all! There are so many options for workouts, using body weight, weighted balls and resistance to mention but a few. Meet with a trainer to discuss a program that you are comfortable with.
Fact – Reduced risk of osteoporosis: In addition to strengthening ligaments and tendons, which serve to support our joints and decrease the likelihood of injury from other activities, bone density increases dramatically, reducing our risk of osteoporosis. So knowing all this, what is stopping you from getting out there and trying some strength training exercises? Just two days a week hitting the major muscle groups and in a couple of months you will feel stronger, look leaner and have the increased confidence that goes with the control you have over your body.
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