Should Women Lift Weights Regularly?

By Howe Russ


Should women lift weights or will they wind up looking big and bulky, a look which most females don't want? Alongside HIIT, this is one of the most popular questions in fitness clubs today.

If you have been exercising for a while you'll already know that the mainstream fitness business has a new trend each year. More often than not, it's not actually a new method, it merely reverts to an old training style which had faded from popularity. After years of yoga, boot camps and kettlebells it's the return of resistance training combined with high intensity cardio. []

While it's fantastic that girls are no longer scared to ask trainers about resistance training, there are still a few old, useless myths which attach a negative stigma to it. This puts a lot of ladies off, despite not having any solid evidence behind it. These myths include:

* Resistance training is meant for men, and will make women bulky.

* Women need to use very light dumbbells only.

* Women need to do low resistance and high repetitions to tone up.

* Avoid training your lower body if you do cardiovascular exercise, because it will give you bigger legs...

Despite having no scientific evidence at all to back them up, you'll hear most of those myths in any fitness center around the country. Even today, when we're at a huge advantage with the scientific research carried out in the industry every day, these issues still seem to exist in the mainstream.

Are you ready for the facts? Resistance training is absolutely vital for any lady looking to tone up and achieve a lean physique. To put is quite simply, you should be doing it.

It would be easy to look at a female fitness competitor and presume that's what will happen to you if you train with barbells and dumbbells. But that would be as foolish as a man looking at Arnold Schwarzenegger and making the same presumption. Female's release much less testosterone than males, causing the muscle building process to be far harder. Female fitness competitors don't just go to the gym, they diet and supplement specifically to add size...

After all, if building muscle really was as simple as just picking up a weight then most men at the gym would look like Sylvester Stallone. But they do not. Do not concern yourself with this myth.

Training with barbells and dumbbells is a fantastic way to burn off more fat, as well as toning the muscles so they look leaner and stronger. You won't be getting bulky unless you're trying to bulk up, i.e. eating a bulking diet. Furthermore, if there is an area of your body which you consider to be too big at the moment, such as legs, then that is an area which would severely benefit from the use of resistance training.

So let's make our final verdict, should women lift weights or avoid them completely? Not only should they be using them, they should be using them regularly! The most recent science in the fitness industry confirms that regular resistance training and HIIT are one of the most effective methods for burning unwanted body fat and getting leaner.




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