Avoiding the Pitfalls of Strength Training Tips for Women

There are many ways to exercise for fun, happiness, and health, but I personally find it best to lift heavy weights. However, as a woman, it was difficult for me to find the information I needed on where to start. Popular advice for women usually says that you “tone up” and spend whole days doing glute exercises. Tips that are supposedly written for people in general often target young people, and people from every other demographic are either relegated to a footnote or seen as a complete blind spot. So where do you start?

I would like to share some of the things that I have learned over the years. There are many thriving women lifting communities out there, and I promise that over time, you will find your way to one or more of them. Until then, here’s what you need to know.

The basics are true for everyone

By gradually lifting all heavy and heavy weights, you build muscle in the specific parts of the body that you are training. Doing harder and harder exercises will also make you stronger in these exercises. (This phenomenon works hand in hand with muscle building, although muscle strength and size are not technically the same thing.)

Burning fat is not part of strength training, but people often pursue the goal of burning fat and gaining muscle at the same time, so it’s worth mentioning that you can lose fat (throughout your body, not in specific areas) by burning more calories than you. eat while lifting to maintain your muscles. “Toning” is not a type of exercise, but you can get a “tone” look — which really just means muscle definition — by building muscle and losing fat.

The exact response to a workout will vary from person to person, and your strength in the gym may change from day to day.

Following a well thought out program will help you achieve your goals, whoever you are. (This is in contrast to doing random workout videos or roaming the gym and lifting whatever you feel that day)

All of this will be true regardless of your gender. People are people, muscles are muscles, and the differences between men and women are not significant enough to require completely different types of training.

Specific numbers are often written for dudes

So what’s different? Basically, most of the information on strength training is presented as general advice for people, but it is actually written for guys. Often especially guys between the ages of 20 and 20. Or, to be more specific, guys in their 20s and 20s who are already highly motivated to lift weights have spent a lot of time in gyms and just need a little guidance so they don’t spend years curling their arms all the time. … workout.

Even though this is a fairly narrow demographic, a lot of the information you find on the internet about weight lifting is written with you in mind. If not, you may need to adjust a few things.

You can hear people say that you can add 5-10 pounds to your deadlift with every workout when you are a beginner, or that you are a beginner if you are still squatting less than 300 pounds, or that while you are building muscle. phase you have to drink a gallon of milk a day . All of these statements reflect more fundamental truths: that you can add weight to your exercises every week when you first start exercising seriously, that your squats will soon reach the levels you only dreamed of, and that calories and protein help build muscle.

Instead of relying on specific numbers, you might have to work hard to figure out the correct numbers from zero. (Is it unfair that women have to do more mental work than your average brother to get started? Yes. But is it worth doing this work in the long run? Yes.) handle your body. You outgrow the beginner program not when your squat hits a certain number, but when your squat increases, slow down and then plateau. Protein intake should be within the range required for muscle gain , which you can calculate based on your body weight .

You don’t have to drop the whole plan. When you look at something like initial strength , it may seem like it just isn’t for you. And yes, this was not written for you. But the idea of ​​lifting harder and harder works for anyone, so make sure you don’t give up on the simple idea of lifting weights because it seems like a man’s job. You may not add 10 pounds to your deadlift in week two, but you can add something . (In fact, if you start out with less training experience than the average guy, it could mean you will progress faster than they did.)

Body size often matters more than gender

Here we come to our first physiological difference, which can make life in the gym difficult: most of the equipment is designed for men of average height and is not always suitable for people of shorter height. Including many women.

A standard barbell can be difficult to hold with small hands, so if you are doing Olympic exercises you will definitely need a women’s Olympic barbell . In powerlifting, there are no separate bars for men and women, but you may find that you prefer a deadlift bar to a power bar, or that hook grip is simply not your preferred method of grabbing the bar.

I want to make one thing clear: you don’t need special women’s equipment or special women’s advice to navigate a regular gym. Beware of anyone who tells you they are using the same bar or following the same advice as their brother is training like a man. Instead, look at women who excel in your chosen sport – Instagram is great for that if you don’t have a personal role model – and notice how they train.

Typically, when it comes to the gym, take a moment to think about how best to use it and not just do what other people do. For example, the pull-up bar might be at a height that is comfortable for a tall guy, but if you are shorter, you may have to drag the plio box to reach it. The bench press stations can be set with the barbell at a specific height, so you need to remember to move the barbell to the lower set of hooks before you start loading the plates.

“Adapt as needed” may seem like obvious advice, but sometimes you don’t realize that you’re aiming for something. The lowering of the bench press was a revelation for me, as it allowed me to take a wider grip and better lean on my shoulders. I could bench with a higher barbell, it just forced me into a less effective position and made me think that I was weaker than I really am.

Your upper body has more potential than you think

Compared to men, women generally have proportionally less muscle mass in the upper body than in the lower body. This often leads us to give up the idea that we will ever be strong in the upper body, which is a mistake.

What this means is that we can often make respectable strides in our squats, deadlifts and other lower body lifts all at once. You may soon have more leg muscles than your stereotypical sibling who skips leg day. Enjoy it.

But don’t stop there. We tend to get frustrated with things that we think we are “not very good”, which can lead to our legs being a workday every day and assume that our arms, back and chest are not deserve a workout. But your upper body muscles will respond to training just like any other muscle. If you think your upper body is weak, you should train it more . Your efforts will be rewarded.

More voluminous workouts can often help. If your progress is slowing down on the bench press, overhead press, or chin-up, look for a program that gives more set reps and / or more general sets on that lift. I got the best results on the overhead press when I did it five times a week.

As with everything else in life, train hard and you will get results. It’s really cool to have a huge bench when you used to think you were doomed to the arms of a Tyrannosaurus.

Average differences don’t matter much to humans

There are some subtle, research-backed differences between the physiology of cis men and cis women, but remember that these differences are based on averages, not individuals.

For example, you might read that women are better at endurance work than explosive strength, or that women can recover faster between sets, or that women can often do more reps with higher weights than men, even if these women are men have the same strength when measured as one rep max. These statements are mostly true, and if you want to know more, trainer and researcher Greg Knuckles will elaborate on what the study says about these differences.

But when you exercise, it doesn’t really matter which is true for women in general or men in general. You lift the weight and you either lift it or you don’t. It doesn’t matter if someone else could lift this weight more than you or not. You train to get yourself strong.

For me personally, much of what is true about women on average is wrong; I, for one, do not do well with high repetitions. But that’s just me. You can use the sex difference information as a starting point for training experiments, but the only real answers to these experimental questions are your experience in the gym.

Your menstrual cycle won’t necessarily affect your workout.

Some research suggests that hormonal fluctuations that occur during the menstrual cycle can affect strength or performance in the gym. However, if they do occur, these changes are minor and do not necessarily affect everyone who has a cycle.

If you take hormonal contraception, you won’t have your menstrual period, but there are also studies looking at whether contraception itself can affect strength.

Some trainers and influencers suggest that people adjust their training programs according to these factors (for example, doing lighter workouts a week before their period), but many women don’t bother adjusting their workouts to fit their cycle, and they are doing great.

I asked powerlifting coach Claire Zai about this. She tells clients, “We’re going to approach learning with the thought that learning will go well until proven otherwise, and that you will be strong every day until proven otherwise.”

A good trainer or a good training program will give you the ability to tailor your training based on what’s going on in your life . Sometimes, you may not be able to lift as much as you expected, whether it be due to a poor night’s sleep, a busy day at work, or some other factor in your life or your biology. If your menstrual cycle is affecting your workout, you can adapt to it as needed. But you don’t need to start training with the assumption that you will become weak. We all had bad days during which we still played well.

“The most important thing you can do is be consistent,” says Zai. If you have cramps or feel tired, exercise often helps you feel better. And you’ll get stronger in the long run if you keep showing up for workouts, even if every day at the gym isn’t perfect.

Reorient your normal

To get your bearings, surround yourself digitally (if not in real life) with women who are well versed in weightlifting. I’m old, so I remember Stumptuous being one of the few sources of weight lifting advice on the Internet written for women. We also have Swole Woman these days and countless other qualified trainers and social media athletes like Meg Gallagher (aka Mega Squats), Claire Zai (which I quoted above), Sohee Lee, and Alyssa Olenik .

As a side note, I have always been wary of men who claim to be experts in female lifting or female physique. Without naming names or repeating accusations, I’ll just say that my instinct has never led me wrong so far. (This is not the case for men who are generally knowledgeable and include all genders in their interactions; these guys are okay, and in fact, being inclusive is good.)

Use Instagram or other social media to inspire you or learn about the world of weightlifting, but build your follower list. When your ribbon is filled with women’s powerlifting and weightlifting killing them in CrossFit, doing strong (women’s) men’s competitions and more, your perspective on the world begins to change. You begin to better understand what is possible and what you might aspire to. It’s much more fun to dream of someday joining these strong women on the platform than to get attached to the here and now, when the here and now means looking back and realizing that you are the only girl in the gym.

Beware of people who try to limit your potential.

There are people – people of all genders – who can try to lower your expectations. Women who talk about lifting weights and getting stronger, but always only use rubber bands and tiny dumbbells and mimic HIIT . The bros who take 45 pound plates off the rack in the gym because it never occurs to them that you can actually use them.

The best community to search for is one where people believe in you. This is not to say that they should cheer you up, but they should expect everyone in the room, regardless of gender, to be on their way to something bigger and better. Maybe you will find this community at the gym or on a team; you might find it in a group text with like-minded friends from all over the country.

In addition, there are people who will bluntly say that you should lift less, or that training will make you “bulky”, or that you are “too small” to lift a certain weight. They will try to sell you 40 pounds of weight for $ 300 , telling you that this is all you need to “be successful.”

Sometimes this misguided advice is overtly sexist; at other times, it slows down your progress so you can avoid injury. While this sounds smart on paper, it often leads women to fail in the end. The human body is more elastic than tender. Lots of dumb gym guys put this theory to the test every day, and they usually get out of it alive.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by conflicting advice, remember: Constant training and heavy weights rarely get you astray. In the same vein as “behaving with the confidence of a mediocre white man,” ask yourself what a determined, slightly tight gym guy would do if you were. Probably stop getting hung up on things and gain weight, right? You can do that too.