Women and Weight training...

Time and time again I see the same women sweating it out at the gym and working their butts off for months doing the same cardio routine over and over.

Today’s blog is all about women and weight training... That’s right ladies!! LIFTING WEIGHTS BURNS MORE CALORIES THEN CARDIO!!  Now I’m not saying you should all stop cardio and just become massive body builders... NO... what I am saying is that your fitness routine should consist of a minimum of 3-4 resistance training sessions a week. Let’s face it your all too scared to weight train because there are so many myths out there relating to women gaining size and “looking like men” if they go near a dumbbell... well that’s not true!

Let’s take a look-

If we are looking at calorie for calorie then yes Cardio does have a slight advantage by being able to burn 10-12 calories a minute compared to 8 to 10 calories a minute when lifting weights... BUT... did you know your body continues to burn calories for about an hour after a weight training session!

Lifting weights gives you a metabloic spike for an hour after a work out  because your body is trying hard to help your muscles recover. That means you will burn and extra 25 percent of the calories you just fried during your weights session. Also for every 1.5kg of muscle you build you will burn an extra 120 calories a day just chilling out. The more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism, the faster your metabolism the more calories burned.

Now for the Myth busters-

Weight training makes you bulky and masculine.

Wrong! Women do not, and cannot, naturally produce as much testosterone (one of the main hormones responsible for increasing muscle size) as males do, it is impossible for a woman to gain huge amounts of muscle mass by merely touching some weights.

Women picture themselves looking like those professional body building women when they think of weight lifting. Most of these women, unfortunately, use anabolic steroids (synthetic testosterone) along with other drugs in order to achieve that high degree of muscularity, not to mention the hours of training and strict diet that’s involved.  For the everyday women who conduct weight training without the use of steroids get that firm and fit cellulite-free looking body that you see in most fitness/figure shows these days. Mmm yes please!!...

If you stop weight training your muscles turn into fat.

This is like saying that gold can turn into brass. Muscle and fat are two totally different types of tissue. What happens many times is that when people decide to go off their weight training programs they start losing muscle due to inactivity (use it or lose it) and they also usually drop the diet as well. Therefore bad eating habits combined with the fact that their metabolism is lower due to inactivity, and lower degrees of muscle mass, give the impression that the subject’s muscle is being turned into fat while in reality what is happening is that muscle is being lost and fat is being accumulated.

Weight training turns fat into muscle.

This is the equivalent of saying that you can turn any metal into gold; don't we wish! The way a body transformation occurs is by gaining muscle through weight training and losing fat through aerobics and diet simultaneously. Again, muscle and fat are very different types of tissue. We cannot turn one into the other.

Women only need to do cardio and if they decide to lift weights, they should be very light.

First of all, if you only did cardio then muscle and fat would be burned for fuel. One needs to do weights in order to get the muscle building machine going and thus prevent any loss of muscle tissue. Women that only concentrate on cardio will have a very hard time achieving the look that they want. As far as the lifting of very light weights, this is just more nonsense. Muscle responds to resistance and if the resistance is too light, then there will be no reason for the body to change.

So ladies get off the treadmill and get into the weight section with all the boys and show them how it’s done...

source:

Wayne Westcott- Ph.D., director of research at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Hugo Rivera- About.com's Bodybuilding Guide and ISSA Certified Fitness Trainer