FEMALE TRAINING MISCONCEPTIONS

Some of the most common phrases I hear from my female clients are:

“I don’t want to add weights because I feel my legs will get bigger”

“Only cardio will help me lose weight, lifting weights will only make me heavier”

“Weight lifting is only for men!”

Women in general have a tendency to avoid weight training and to focus more on cardiovascular and endurance exercises and classes, because they believe this is the only way to attain their dream bodies. While work-outs of this nature are good for burning calories, fun to perform, help you become healthier and stay motivated, alone they are not enough for your body to transform. After losing weight during the first few weeks of cardio work-outs, your body will eventually adapt to them and reach a plateau. Instead of building muscle and shaping your body, you will experience an inevitable loss in muscle mass and strength in the long term.

Why should women do weight training? Here are 7 reasons why weight training is great for women:

1. You burn more fat by lifting heavy weights, because your metabolism can stay elevated for up to 48 hours after your work-out. This contrasts with regular cardio exercises, where you stop burning fat shortly after the work-out;
2. Weight training changes your body shape. It can slim you down, create attractive new curves and help to avoid the middle-age spread. You will not bulk up because you don’t have enough muscle building hormones (testosterone) to build substantial mass like men do. By keeping your diet clean and healthy, you will burn fat and not become bulky;
3. With the obvious physical changes in your body, weight training will help you build confidence and boost your self-esteem;
4. It also builds stronger bones for women and increases muscle mass which leads to better flexibility and body balance, and protects you from osteoporosis and stress fractures which occur in women as they age;
5. Weight training improves your mood because your body releases endorphin hormones as much as it does during resistance training; 
6. As for injuries, weight training improves joint stability and builds stronger ligaments and tendons;
7. Other notable health benefits include a healthier heart by increasing the good cholesterol in your body and decreasing the bad cholesterol; lowering of your blood pressure; maintaining a healthy blood sugar level by making your body more efficient and removing glucose from the blood. 

Women should feel more comfortable doing weight lifting in addition to some cardiovascular and aerobic exercises. In short, it helps your body look better, improves health, elevates your mood and makes you less injury prone compared to doing only cardio training. What I suggest is 2-3 weight training sessions per week for improved shape and health benefits, combined with 3-5 times of various endurance training or classes per week; but always remember on the days of combining your sessions with both types of work-outs, you should start by lifting weights followed by cardio exercises to boost the fat-burning effect. When you do weight training, your body uses glucose and muscle glycogen to produce energy, while at the end of the session your body will be depleted from glycogen; this will lead you to use fat instead of glycogen to provide energy, leading to a break-down of fatty cells and burning more fat.

In a later article I will discuss different body metabolisms and how to train for maximal muscle gains and fat burning losses.