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Female Strength Training For Beginners

Training for the purpose of getting stronger and lifting more weight is not something that most women have tried--but female strength training is the best way for most of these women to achieve their goals.

Most of my female clients have the same objectives They want to lose weight and lose bodyfat. When I tell them that the best solution is to gain ten pounds of muscle, they look absolutely horrified, but it's true. The more muscle a person has--male or female--the less bodyfat that person will have. And the more muscle a person has, the stronger they can be.

The most common reaction is "But I don't want to get all huge and muscular!" This is absolutely the least likely scenario, but I do understand why it is the first thing that occurs to them. I live in America, and according to our fashion magazines, the ideal of female beauty is currently a stick-thin woman who looks like she can barely stand under her own power. If that is the body a woman is trying to achieve, the thought of adding muscle is terrible.

But the women on the magazines are not as healthy as they could be, and health and longevity and quality of life should always take precedence over looks when a man or woman goes to the gym. The good news is, it's hard to get the healthiest body possible without looking great in the process.

Now, to address the concern about becoming muscular overnight. If there was a way to build that much bodybuilder-quality muscle in a hurry, then you would see a lot more guys strutting around with bodybuilder-quality physiques. The truth is that there are no shortcuts that aren't chemical-based. Men who want to bulk up and are actively trying to build muscle usually can't get there, and they have a lot more testosterone to work with than women do.

If a woman will squat, deadlift, and work on overhead pressing, always with the goal of lifting heavier weights or lifting greater volume, she will lose fat. yes, she will build some muscle, but that muscle will burn fat as well. And having enough muscle to be strong feels good.

There are too many women who never get to realize this, because strength training is the opposite of what most women do in the gym. They watch a DVD that says they need to find the pink dumbbells and do high reps with light weights, because otherwise they'll, you guessed it, bulk up.

Well, guess who is usually making those recommendations? The people who sell the pink dumbbells and write the programs that call for little weights and a zillion reps.

If you are a woman and you are not getting the results you want, I cannot recommend it strongly enough: focus on gaining strength and the rest will come. It has to. Having a strong body is your right and it will greatly improve your quality of life. Female strength should be praised, not avoided.