Selena Deleon – THE WORKOUT MANY WOMEN believe that lifting weights will make them "bulk up" and look more masculine. Fortunately, this does not happen as easily as is believed. The way that your body responds to weight training is unique to your genetic makeup and gender.
Unlike men, women typically don't gain size from strength training, because men have 10 to 30 times more of the hormone testosterone, that causes muscle mass to increase. Every individual's muscles will respond to weight training in different ways. Some women need only to train with weights for a few weeks to see a marked difference in the size of their muscles, whereas others will work for a year for the exact same result.
Those female bodybuilders, whom you may have seen around, are in the gym for hours and hours daily, lifting very heavy weights for very few reps (several sets of five or six, not one set of 12) and they may also be taking steroids (something that is never recommended because it could really cause hormonal and health problems).
If you're doing 15 reps of each exercise and you're struggling to complete the last couple of reps with good form, that's an ideal range for you. Athletic women who are able to develop significant muscle growth typically have a lower than normal oestrogen to testosterone level; a genetic disposition to develop a greater muscle mass and a very intense and heavy resistance training programme.
The average woman who strength trains two to three times a week for eight weeks gains 1.75 pounds of lean muscle, and loses 3.5 pounds of fat. Of course, the amount of fat lost as a result of your training depends on the amount of calories that are being eaten. If you are consuming more calories than the body can use up at a time, then this will result in zero pounds of fat lost, but as long as the weight training sessions carry on, the gains of lean muscle mass will continue as normal.
If you find that you are making gains on the scale after a few weeks into your strength training programme, pay closer attention to the amount of calories that you are putting in. You may be gaining the muscle that you want to look toned without losing any fat, and thus appear to "bulk up" instead of getting the toned, lean look that we all anticipate.
Toning the body is a simple two-step process. The first step is to work those muscles and the second is to provide the proper type of fuel in the correct amounts.
As you add muscle from strength training, your resting metabolism will increase, so you'll burn more calories all day long. For each pound of muscle you gain, you'll burn 35 to 50 more calories daily. As a result, even if you spend your recovery period in a chair, your body will continue to expend calories at a greater rate than normal. For individuals who are interested in losing weight, this post-exercise calorie burn may help to shed a few extra pounds. So, for example, if you gain three pounds of muscle and burn 40 extra calories for each pound, you'll burn 120 more calories per day, or about 3,600 more calories per month. That equates to a loss of 10 to 12 pounds in one year!
Occasionally a woman (usually one who has a bit more testosterone than normal) will start getting a little bulkier than she'd like. In that case, the solution is easy - keep exercising, but lighten up on the weights and increase your reps per set, so as to maintain the muscle tone. Your muscles will decrease accordingly. It's that simple. Believe me, it's far easier to lose muscle than it is to build it.
The bottom line is, any woman who is interested in losing fat, gaining strength, increasing muscle tone, and transforming her physique should be weight training. So go girls!
Selena DeLeon is a certified professional trainer.
