WOMEN SHOULD NOT LIFT WEIGHTS!
GOTCHA!! 😜
Whoever says that is a jerk off 👆
Haha now keep reading!
Ladies lifting weights has always been very taboo, although there seems to be a lot more women these days getting amongst it, Which is great!
A common goal for women when they join a gym is to lose weight and tone up. Majority of them head straight to a cardio session thinking this is the best way to achieve what they want. IT IS NOT!
To sculpt your body, to burn fat and keep it off long term, to perform better inside and outside the gym weights are KEY! Lifting weights will increase your strength and develop your basic movement patterns leading to an increase in your performance capacity meaning more ‘out put’ and more calories being burned!
Lets talk metabolism, Christian Woodford breaks it down the best!
Think of the metabolism as a furnace, and we want to keep the flames roaring all the time. In order to keep the flames high there is 3 factors that come in to play.
1. BMR (basal metabolic rate), this is how many calories you burn at rest doing nothing and we want this nice and high. In order to do this we must build some lean body mass (muscle), the best way to do this is with resistance training (weights).
2. Thermogenic effect of food (breakdown of food), when we eat after we train we trigger an anabolic response in the body (muscle building, repair, adaptation). This will allow us to build lean muscle and use this to help burn that stubborn body fat. People seem to think that training fasted and not eating for hours on end after is how to burn more body fat it is not! We must fuel correctly!
3. Exercise, When we exercise we move our bodies, the more we move, the more energy we use, the more calories we burn. Another key thing to remember when it comes to exercise is when we lift weights we are triggering the fast twitch muscles fibres. This means more muscle tissue recruitment, leading to more energy being used and more calories being burned.
All forms of exercise have their place and we must keep a good balance. I find the best way to do this, is to get a structured weights program (2-3x per week), then decorate your week with all the cardio and other forms of movement you love!
