Welcome to what will be a regular feature here, where we address a common fitness myths, half truths, bro science and all manner of misinformation you can find. As personal trainers, part of our job is to cut through the clutter and give you real information that will give you real results. Today’s topic is about women and weight training.

Now if you’re reading this and you are an normal woman (or a curious man) most of you have the same fitness goals. You want to lose some body fat, “tone up” your arms, maybe see some abs, build sleek sexy legs and develop your butt to be a bit rounder. If I’m wrong, feel free to call me out. But after talking to many women about their fitness goals, those keep on coming up. Let’s look at those a bit closer.

If you want to “tone up” that involves building some muscle, and losing body fat. If you don’t build muscle you will just look skinny or even worse, skinny fat.

Fatloss simply comes down to diet and maintaining a calorie deficit, so we will leave that to another time.

Building muscle then would become your top priority. And building muscle means building strength, and building both means lifting weights. Heavy (for you) weights. How heavy? Heavy enough to limit you to 8-10 reps per set. Now, before you get all “I don’t want to be bulky”, which I will address later, here are the benefits of weightlifting for you gals (and curious guys), as discussed in a study conducted by the University of Texas(1):

Your chances of developing diseases like diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cancer are significantly reduced.
Your bones become stronger.
Your metabolism speeds up because muscle, even when idle, burns energy. This makes it easier to stay lean.
Your life expectancy increases.
Your immune system becomes stronger.

Sounds pretty good to me. How about you?

If that’s not enough, research has shown that having lean, strong muscles helps you age better, giving you better mobility, lower body weight and lower body fat levels.(2) Win win.

Now to address the idea of “getting bulky”. The underlying hormone that is responsible for building muscle is testosterone, which as a woman, you have between 5% and 10% of an average male. That means, without taking steroids, you will have a hard time building massive muscle mass. Research has shown that women’s testosterone levels do not increase with resistance training, only growth hormone, estradiol (similar to estrogen) and cortisol.(3) So you can essentially train hard, get all the benefits and not worry about getting big. I promise.

So what exercises should you do?

For lack of a better way to put it, you train like a man. That means picking up a barbell, doing some bench presses, squats, RDL’s and deadlifts. Add some arm curls, tricep work, ab training and some metabolic circuits to tie it all together. As you get stronger, your muscles will become more defined, and with a proper diet, the fat will melt away, leaving the sleek new you behind.

If that sounds like what you want, why not sign up for a FREE trial at Gold’s Gym Siglap and find out more.

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References:

(1) Wolfe, Robert R. “The underappreciated role of muscle in health and disease.” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 84.3 (2006): 475-482.

(2) Chen, B. B., et al. “Thigh muscle volume predicted by anthropometric measurements and correlated with physical function in the older adults.” The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging 15.6 (2011): 433-438.

(3) Consitt, Leslie A., Jennifer L. Copeland, and Mark S. Tremblay. “Endogenous anabolic hormone responses to endurance versus resistance exercise and training in women.” Sports Medicine 32.1 (2002): 1-22.

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