Women's Strength Training --
Exercises for Women and Misconceptions

By Mohamad Alodah

This is a very common question I get asked by women who want to improve their bodies through changing body composition (women who want to lose body fat or/and gain muscle tissue), or get in shape and be strong for performing better in a specific sports and confront everyday tasks.

But women seeking strength-training sometimes have concerns regarding this issue and how to go about it. Women’s concern can be summarized in few words; women who are seeking strength-training don’t want to be bulky and muscular like men, period.

You know like those weightlifters or bodybuilders’ physique, most women want to firm up their bodies, tone their arms and lose some body fat but still maintain their feminine sexy look.

A very small percentage of women who have a full-time job as professional bodybuilders and practice strength-training for the sole purpose of getting big and very lean through training many hours a day in addition to using performance-enhancing supplements/drugs.

Women performing strength-training naturally should not fear getting huge or bulky like men for a valid reason that the majority of women have lower levels of testosterone than men.

So, the rest of the women’s population who want to get in shape through utilizing strength training should relax and start performing strength-training to get the health benefits of strength-training.

Strength Training Benefits For Women

Women can gain many benefits from performing strength-training, here’re some:

1- Strengthening and increasing bone density which can minimize the loss of your bone density as you age. You see, the bones are a living organism like your muscles, and they’ll adapt and strengthened like any other organism in the body so the more resistance and impact your bones go through the more calcium and other substances they need to build to healthier bones.

2- Women doing strength-training and who want to bear children in the future can benefit from strengthening the pelvic-girdle muscles and the adductor and abductor thigh muscles.

3- Women can gain a lot of self-confidence being strong for daily challenges and look darn good too, especially living in a culture which is usually dominated by men in many aspects of life.

4- Women who perform strength-training the right way can improve the health and look of their posture in our ever increasing sedentary lifestyle and limited motions.

Women’s Strength-Training…Should it be Different than Men?

Some fitness experts recommend that women should perform higher repetitions and maybe more sets because of some physiological differences (hormones profile and neuromuscular activation levels).

So for example, if men are needed to perform between 8-12 repetitions for gaining muscle size, women maybe can benefit with 10-14 reps. Other than that, women should perform strength-training like men and they can gain the same benefits as men do.

But weight training for women should also change every few weeks by performing strength, muscle hypertrophy, and explosive (plyometric) routine in order for women to progress in strength training.

Another concern of women who wan to perform strength-training is this; women are higher in sports related-injuries because of their Anatomical and Biomechanical gender differences.

I have not seen any data indicating that women are generally more susceptible to weight-training related injuries. We need to take this myth of the frail, fragile woman out to the curb!

However, in recent years we have noted an increase in the anterior cruciate ligament (also called the ACL) injuries in female athletes. This may indicate that women may be more prone to ACL injury because of the configuration of their hips and legs or simply those women are now more active and thus the chance of injury is increased.

This is yet another good reason to utilize strength training. Strengthening the leg muscles, especially the vastus medialis, will improve knee stability and thus reduce the risk of sport injuries to the knees

Women’s Strength-training and Exercise selections

I think women should “let go” of the obsessive use of machines (especially the adductor and abductor machines) and perform more free weights, more compound (multi-joints) exercises, like and not limited to:

- Free Weight Squats (not the Smith machine)

If you’re not familiar with some or all the above exercises then invest some time (and maybe money) to learn how to perform these excellent and effective exercises for burning body fat and, gaining muscle size and strength; which all can translate to firmer arms, thighs, butt and so on.

Founder of how-to-exercise.com, Mohamad Alodah, BA Health Promotion, American University, is an ISSA certified personal trainer with many years of experience specializing in strength training, diet, kinesiology and anthropological nutrition. Mohamad has perfected customized programs to motivate individuals to achieve their goals in strength and endurance building, overall fitness improvements, alignment, flexibility, and weight loss. how-to-exercise.com reveals the secrets that have been most successful for proven results.

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