Working Out With Weights

No exercise programme is complete without weight training, but it seems to be the thing that most women prefer to avoid, convinced that they will end up with the bulky muscles of a weightlifter.  This is absolutely not true as women do not have enough of the hormone testosterone to produce muscle bulk like men do and in fact female weightlifters have a really hard job to produce big muscles.

So why do women need to weight train?  Wouldn’t aerobic exercise be enough to lose weight and shape up?  The answer is no.  Muscle tissue is absolutely necessary to the body and the more muscle you have the more calories you will burn at rest when you are not doing anything, even when you are sleeping or relaxing in front of the TV.  Toning and strengthening muscles also stabilises your joints and makes them stronger, making them less vulnerable to damage, and toned muscle gives shapely limbs and a pert butt.

Adding a weights session or two a week to your workouts is quite simple and does not require all the complicated machines in the gym, which can be very intimidating to the uninitiated!  Women don’t need heavy weights to tone muscle so Ladies, you can easily get by with some neat dumbbells at home and all you need to do is lift and lower them a few dozen times or squat down and stand up while holding them to tone your body.

Muscles strengthen and develop according to the strains placed on them, so if you lift weights for a few weeks you will find that it starts to get easier – this is the point where you need to get some heavier weights to keep your body challenged or change your exercises to work your body in a slightly different way and keep it guessing.  If you don’t, you muscle gains will plateau and then eventually reverse as your body has become too used to that particular weight and you will gain no further benefit.

If you want to combine cardio with strength training why not take a look at the Kettleworx?

Tagged as: kettleworx