Go for the weights, girls!

Strength training is inevitable when you want to have a firm body!

Do you know the sight: when you come into the gym and all endurance machines are occupied by women, especially the steppers and cross trainers? I always ask myself: what might be the goal of these ladies? Stay the way they are and keep a loose body with only a few muscles or do they want to burn fat and look shredded? If you actually ask these women most will probably say: ‘I want a sexy butt, firm arms, and a flat belly. In magazine x there was an article on how lose fat and it said I have to train with a steady heart rate of 130 and at least for 30 minutes or otherwise the fat burning process won’t start.’ Ahhhhhhhhhh……. that always makes me scream… It must have become common knowledge that ladies won’t reach their goals with this. But is hasn’t. The myth that you have to do cardio work for hours and girls will get huge muscles when training with weights is still living on. My appeal to all you ladies out there: Go for the weights or you will stand on the stepper with your magazine in hand one year from now and your body will not have changed a bit.

Strength training doesn’t give you big muscles?

Absolutely not! Look at the women of Hollywood like Beyonce or Gwen Stefani. They all lift weights to get a firm body.

Important facts about strength training for women:

1. Women don’t have the disposition for big muscle growth. The hormonal balance of women is different to that of men. The male sexual hormone testosterone is mainly responsible for muscle growth and since it is a male hormone women have considerably less and don’t have the ability to grow huge muscle mass.
2. Doing cardio training for hours lets your muscles melt away. If you want a sexy, well-formed body you have to built muscle to form your body. The lovely curves of your butt, arms, and shoulders are formed by muscles! So where there are no muscles there aren’t any curves. You can burn calories (and thus fat) during cardio training but afterwards your metabolism works exactly like before. You can change that with intense training with weights!
3. Soft weight training with moderate weight and many repetitions is a waste of time. You will feel the burn in your muscle when doing the 50th rep in your gym class but this impulse isn’t enough for your muscle to start growing. In order to make your muscle grow you would need a loading time of 45 – 90 seconds or a maximum of 12 repetitions.

How does weight training affect women?

• Firm body with nice curves (reducing cellulite and the infamous bingo wings)
• The resting metabolic rate is increased so our organism is more efficient and burns more calories even in resting periods. In contrast, a moderate cardio training will only burn calories during the actual training.
• Increased self-esteem because you feel more attractive and better in your own skin

What do you have to do?

To all my customers I recommend a full body strength training at least twice a week where they train the big muscle groups. Exercises like squats, pull-ups, and push-ups are sufficient in the beginning. Choose a weight that you can lift not more than 12 times. This means that the last one or two repetitions are the last that you can do in perfect form. If you can do more reps the muscle is not working at capacity.

The good news – it does not have to be weights

The priority is to have a challenging resistance. Our power bands are the optimal alternative to weight training. The alphaband Set PRO enables strength training for all fitness levels – without big and bulky weights. Packs super small and can be used anywhere. And now, have fun training!