Here’s some strength training advice for strong women like you! 

Why doesn’t anybody admit that kickbacks, bridging and lying abduction‘s are not a woman’s fitness plan?

Women, like men, are human beings. Human beings only have so many movement patterns that makes sense, squat, lunge, push, pull, hinge just to keep it simple. What are you talking about you may ask. I’m saying women need to squat, deadlift, bench, overhead press, and carry. I know it’s fun to think that you will get the booty you want by buying those cute bands a instatrainer was trying to sell, unfortunately that’s a load of you know what! ‘But Aarion I don’t want to get muscular like those bodybuilders’. I’m here to tell you after working with women who had the same misconceptions, you won’t.

Strength Training for Strong Women

For the Sake of simplicity I will  avoid scientific jargon. Now with that being said to create a toned look you need to lose body fat and build muscular tissue and density. Your body will adapt to the stimulus which it is given. If you give the body strength training stimulus within a proper range of repetitions and sets and rest, the body will adapt by strengthening the bones the muscle tissue in the surrounding ligaments and tendons.

Now you might be thinking “Aarion, I just want to get rid of this stubborn belly fat”. Well, I have some news for you, you must exercise the whole body. Fat does not leave one area, however it does store in certain areas due to certain hormonal changes and so on, but I said I would keep it simple. The body loses fat basically evenly so you need the right stimulus  as I said before.

You need to trigger a stimulus through the whole body by exercising the whole body with compound movements.

Compound movements utilize the muscles surrounding more than one joint so for example, a squat uses the hip, Knee, ankle joints to perform the movement, while forcing you to brace your core. Let’s compare that to Bicep curls this really only uses the elbow joint and is training the bicep muscle. Now applying a little common sense what do you think will create more stimulus and burn more calories, while creating full body strength? Hopefully you chose the squat.

Here’s an example of different rep ranges and set ranges for stimulus needed for wanted adaptations. You’ll need 30+ minutes of vigorous activity to blow through your sugar storages and start tapping into your fat storage. That’s why a typical exercise session should be 45 minutes to 60 minutes 30 minutes least depending of course. You will also need to cut your current calories by about 25% For weight loss that is. For weight or muscle gain it would be kind of the opposite adding calories. Anyway onto my examples.

• Stength gain = 1-5 repetitions for 3-6 sets. Moving the load quickly. The amount of weight you will lift is dependent on assessments first. 3-5 minutes rest.
• Muscular growth = 6-12 repetitions 2-4 sets. 1-3 minutes rest.
• Muscular  endurance = 12-20repititions for 1-3 sets. 1-2 minutes rest.

The heavier the weight the more rest and more sets needed. The higher rep ranges require less rest and more time under tension. These are of course general but proven ways at least in the beginning to promote adaptation.

Women need not avoid heavy loads. Women are strong and need to train that way! Sometimes life can be heavy, so train heavy. With proper coaching of course.