Health and fitness myths are still alive and well. It’s OK for guys to skip leg day, fat is bad for you, resistance training damages your joints, and women don’t need to lift weights. This article is all about why women should lift weights and will dispel that last ridiculous myth.
I’m sure there are a number of reasons that women seem to avoid the free weight section of the gym like the plague. Society has traditionally placed pretty firm gender roles on women. The jobs they should or shouldn’t hold, how they dress, roles within a family, and moral standards to name a few.
These gender roles have even permeated into acceptable workout standards for women. If you saw a woman on a treadmill, in a yoga class, or doing some odd jazzersize routine in a colored leotard, nobody would bat an eye. Seeing a girl throw 225 on the a barbell and squat it, now everybody loses their mind.
These roles have sunk in deep but thankfully the times are changing and many of these traditional gender roles are being pushed to the wayside, fitness standards included. Never before have you seen more women getting in the gym and working out like everyone thinks a man should. And the result? A lot of really strong, fit and healthy women.
There is still a huge contingent of women, however, who either lack the knowledge or are too afraid to pick up a weight. I want to make very clear in this article that lifting weights not only is great for looking amazing but also provides some essential health benefits that women are missing out on by not adding this into their workout plans.
YOU WILL NOT LOOK BULKY!!!!
Let’s just get this one out of the way right now. “I don’t want to look bulky.” This is a common and maddening misconception. It is unbelievably hard for women to “bulk” up and is definitely not something that happens by accident. This is for two reasons: one is science, and the other is hard work, motivation, and probably a few not so legal cocktails shot into your ass with a needle. Let’s start with science.
Testosterone and human growth hormone (HGH) are the main hormones responsible for muscle growth. Without high concentrations of those, building big, bulky muscles is impossible. Women have on average 20 times less testosterone than men do. This means it is extremely hard to pack on muscle mass at the rate or level of a man. I know, I know, women can do anything a man can, except build muscle the same. It is far more difficult to do for a woman.
What about female body builders? They do exist, however, there is a heavy amount of supplementation, some of which doesn’t fall on the legal side of the fence. I am not saying all muscular women are unnatural but you are not them. 99% of the population, man or woman, are not them. They work exceptionally hard, are extremely motivated, far more knowledgeable about fitness, eat better, and sleep better than you and me and everyone else. This is their passion and most likely, their livelihood. A person casually lifting weights a few times a week for health benefits couldn’t touch that in their wildest dreams. To summarize, they try really hard to look like that; it wasn’t an accident caused by three days a week of lifting for half an hour.
You Are In Control Of How You Look
The word bulky is pretty subjective. What looks too bulky or muscular for one person may be too small for another. It is entirely up to you to determine what level of muscle you want to obtain. Below are a few pictures of different women who all have different levels of muscle mass.
These women all have extremely fit physiques but the level of muscle mass varies. Still, they all have an appreciable amount of muscle which would not be achievable without weight training. Just like anything in life, you get out of weight training what you put in.
As you start lifting, you will see how your body changes and can adjust your frequency of lifting, rep range, weight lifted, and nutrition to suit your goals. If you want to just use weight lifting as a tool to tone up and get healthy, you can add in a couple of 30 minute strength training sessions a week. If you want to look jacked, then up the weights and lift more often. You will have complete control of your body’s changes.
Lifting Weights Helps You Lose Weight
This benefit is certainly not exclusive to women, but women especially should not neglect the powerful fat loss benefits of strength training. Studies have shown that if women incorporate three weight training sessions a week into their exercise routine, they can gain two pounds of lean muscle mass. This results in losing almost twice that in body fat as well.
This means that overall you will have lost almost four pounds of fat and replaced it with two pounds of muscle. A few pounds of muscle gained throughout your entire body is certainly not enough to make you look bulky. That, however, in combination with the fat loss can make you look leaner and more toned.
When someone says they want to “tone up”, this really means they want to lose some body fat while increasing the definition of their muscles in a resting state. That is exactly what weight training can do for your body. Add this in with cardio and/or yoga and you can really start to see some visible strides in your weight loss goals.
Not only that but increasing muscle mass, even by a few pounds, increases your metabolic rate, which means you burn more calories just by being alive. This is done two ways. First, if you strength train your muscles to fatigue, your body kicks into repair mode, which of course takes energy (calories). Second, muscle cells take more calories to maintain than fat cells, so you will burn more in a resting state.
Weight Lifting Increases Bone Density and Slows Muscle Loss
Unfortunately, time can be unkind to women in a few areas. First being bone density. Women start losing bone density at an earlier age and at a faster rate than men. Women greater than 50 years of age have a four times higher rate of osteoporosis, and they tend to have fractures 5 – 10 years earlier compared with men.
Weight lifting has been proven to help maintain and even increase bone density through stressing them. This can help women avoid some of the age-related injuries that come along later in life due to bone loss.
The second thing that happens to women is that they lose muscle at a higher rate than men as they age, and it starts earlier. Adding weight training can greatly slow this process which helps prevent injuries as you get older.
All Those Other Benefits Too
While the last few sections have been a little more gender specific, there are a host of other benefits weight lifting offers to both sexes.
The obvious one being, you will get stronger. Increased muscle strength has a ton of benefits, from being able to perform day to day activities easier to avoiding injury. Many injuries to the joints and back are caused by muscle imbalances. These imbalances can lead to extra strain on joints, the spine or connective tissue.
Heart health also increases. We all know exercise is good for the heart. However, studies have shown that people who weight train have better circulation and lower blood pressure. This is an added benefit to the cardiovascular benefits of just doing cardio alone.
Stress levels will also decrease. You may have heard of runners high; well, weight training can have a similar effect. Your body will produce a rush of endorphins which gives you a positive mood swing after a workout.
What does all this add up to? Increased confidence in yourself. Being stronger, more athletic, leaner, and healthier is a huge positive for your self-esteem. This starts to become self-fulfilling motivation as well. The more confident and happy you are with yourself, the more likely you are to continue to take good care of your body.
But Where Do You Start Weight Training?
Outside of the fear of getting bulky, the other thing that can hold women back is being unfamiliar with the weight section of their gym. While it can sometimes look like an apocalyptic waste land of scary machines and mutant meat heads, it really isn’t as bad as it seems.
If you are just concerned with general fitness and health benefits, then the best place to start is structuring a few lifting sessions per week that center around compound lifts. Compound lifts are lifts that use multiple muscle groups to move the weight. These include bench press, squat, dead lift, over head press, pull ups, and dips.
As you get comfortable with these basic lifts and their variations, you can decide what other auxiliary lifts you want to add in. It all depends on what you want to target and how you want to look.
A basic weekly fitness routine may look something like this:
- Monday: Chest/Back and cardio
- Tuesday: Yoga(or stretching)/Cardio
- Wednesday: Rest
- Thursday: Shoulders/Legs and Cardio
- Friday: Yoga(or stretching)/Cardio
- Saturday: Arms/Core
- Sunday: Rest
This can obviously be tailored in many different ways to fit your schedule. The point is, it is easy to fit in three lifting sessions a week and still make time for cardio or other fitness classes of your choice.
Most importantly, just start. You will learn as you go. Most gyms have orientation classes or trainers willing to assist you in learning the ropes. YouTube is always a fantastic resource. Do some research up front and create a workout routine that works for you.
Don’t let fear of looking stupid stop you. Nobody is really paying as much attention as you think. The serious lifters are focused on lifting. The non-serious lifters probably look just as stupid as you think you do. It’s all temporary; in no time you will feel at home by the dumbbell rack.
Wrap Up
Hopefully this article has helped remove some of the road blocks from getting you in the gym and adequately shown why women should be reaping all the benefits weight training has to offer.
At the end of the day, it is your body. You should look and perform how you want. The health benefits speak for themselves and should not be ignored.
Thanks for reading and please leave any feedback or suggestions you have in the comments!