Women should not avoid Strength Training

If you are a regular at the gym then you would notice that there are more men than women.   It is because that more women don’t want to bulk up since most of them believe that they would gain more muscles if they would lift weights and that is something that they want to have.   Men want to gain more muscles, but a woman doesn’t dream of gaining big muscles since they won’t look attractive the other sex.   However, that is the misconception as women can’t grow as big as that of men. 

Is there a difference between the exercises of men versus women?

The answer here is definitely yes since the two aren’t made exactly alike.  Men tend to grow bigger than women.  The latter can’t grow as big as men since it has something to do with the level of testosterone present in men.  While women do also have testosterone, the count is not as big as that of men.   

Exercise is created, so that we can become healthy and not just to improve our looks.  And women doing heavy lifting would not have the same result as that of a man since their bodies aren’t the same.   Men are created bigger than women and no exercise can change that. Of course, we see some body builders with an oversize muscles because they are using some form of drug to help them bulk-up.   And those drugs could also have the same effect to women, who want to bulk-up.  But, women just doing some heavy lifting won’t have a bulky muscle; instead they would have a very sexy body because that is the composition of the body.

At the end of the day, both men and women are just created the same.  Actually, women should do more strength training since they are the ones that are always gets harassed on the streets.   If they are stronger, then they could easily fend off any attack against them.   Aside from that, there are other reasons why women should engage in strength training such as:

1.  Strength training helps people to lose weight – Women like to be thin since that is what attractive to the opposite sex.   If you have muscles then you would lose fat whether you are doing something or not.  Muscle burns calories and it would help you to become sexier. 
2.  It build strength – Being stronger allows you to do things that you aren’t able to do before.  Simple things like opining a jar or lifting your kid won’t be a problem for you anymore. 
3.  Increased blood circulation – This would make you more attractive as there would be less cellulite on the bum and thighs. 
4.  Balanced physique – one of the most common problems of most women is that they don’t have a proportioned body.  They have a bigger lower body compared to their upper body and strength training can help them to balance this.
5. Strength training increase bone density and decreases joint pressure – Not only that women, who engage in such activity would be less of a risk to injury, but they could also lower the risk of having Osteoporosis from occurring.

7 Facts that you need to know before you can build an effective Strength Training Routine

Building a strength training routine that can help gain a great body can be tricky since there are lots of thing that you need to consider.   If you are going to ask 10 trainers about the best strength training routine then prepared for 10 different answers.  Below are guidelines that you can use to build your own program.  These guidelines are use by most trainers in preparing a program that is used for different clients.

1. Muscle can’t be strength train today and tomorrow – there is always a need to rest between training.  You have to allow 24 to 36 hours of rest before exercising the same body parts.   You’ll just strain yourself if you would insist on exercising that part of the body and that might lead to injury. 
2. There are no such thing as spot reduce –  Say, you want to lose a few pounds off your stomach, doing 100 crunches in a single day won’t help since that might lead to some problem at the end.  If you are serious in reducing some fat around your waist then you need to consider the rest of the body.  You can only achieve that if you rest, exercise and eat well. 
3. Spot tone – We can concentrate on one part of the body if we want that part to be bigger.  The secret lies on focusing on one group of muscle, which is also known as targeted training.   We could grow one single muscle part (hypertrophy).  This can be done easily with the help of machines. 
4. Strength training must be regular and consistent – you can’t undo something fast if that takes year; you need consistency for you to see results.  The best thing that you could do is a total lifestyle change.  You need to replace most of your bad habits with some healthy ones. 
5. Change your routines every 4 to 6 weeks – Most people hits a plateau and that stops their body from improving.   That is the reason, why you need to change your routines at least every 4 to 6 weeks.  If you does change your routine regularly then you would see a great change in your body as soon as possible. 
6. Strength training routines must have something to do with the specific goal – Specific goals can range from weight loss, hypertrophy, maintaining weight or adding bulk.  And since each goal is different, you would need a different approach for each goal.  Someone, who wants to lose fat, would have a different training routine with someone, who wants to be stronger 
7. All muscle groups must be use within a week – You need to separate your training routine for each group such as biceps, triceps, shoulders, chest, back, abs, quads, glutes, hamstrings and calves.  If cannot balance your time with a few of them then you would create an imbalance and that would result to an imbalance in the body.

Strength Training 101

If you want to lose weight then you should learn strength training since this training method is useful in losing weight.   Also, it not only strengthens the body, but also builds a muscle that can be appealing to the opposite sex.  There are a number of forms of resistance that you can use to accomplish what you want, such as bands, body weight, and specially designed weights or machines.

Back in the past, strength training was only used by athletes for known reason.  However, as time progresses, more and more people discover the benefits that they could get from doing strength training even if they weren’t an athlete.  Now, it is recognized as the most critical factor among health and fitness of all genders, ages, and abilities.

There are a number of reasons why strength training is so important and here are some of them:

1.  It preserves and enhance muscle mass
2.   It preserves and enhance metabolic rate
3.   It improves the bone density
4.   Helps to control the insulin level in your body
5.   Lowers the risk of injury
6.   Helps you to easily do your daily activities
7.  Lessens the risk of injury
8.  Helps us to balance
9.  Improves our self-esteem
10.  Enhances strength and endurance
11.   Enhance speed, power and agility
12.  Improve the composition of the body
13.  Decrease bad cholesterol of the body, which could harm us
14.  It lowers blood pressure

Things to know

Sets and reps – Performing 15 repetitions of weight training are vital for the muscle and if you does more than that then you are improving your muscular endurance.  Less than six reps would increase your power, 6 to 12 reps keeps your muscle tension while developing your muscle. If you do more than 12 reps then you are improving your endurance level and metabolic conditioning.

 How to choose exercise sequence?

It is important that you start with the hardest exercise of all then you can gradually move to the lightest.  This would make things easier for you since you are stronger and fresher.  As times move, you tend to be tired and more than likely; it would be harder for you to do the hardest exercises.

Training Progression

There are several ways to enhance your strength through strength training routine.  You could the weight you are lifting, the repetitions you are performing and the sets that you need to complete.   Decreasing the tempo of the speed also allows you to improve your strength.  If you limit the resting time, it won’t be good for the body as your body doesn’t have enough time to fully recover.  Also, changing exercises from time to time really help in your progress.

Know the Speed and Strength Training Pyramid and become a faster athlete

If you are going to build a house, you need a solid foundation to make sure that the house won’t easily collapse.   This is also applicable to athletes since they need to develop their strength.  They depend too much on their speed and strength that if it fails them then their whole dream might collapse.   This is known as the training pyramid.   This is the foundation of the training program for most of the athletes nowadays.  It is true that each of us differs in strengths and weaknesses because of the different training experience we have.  We need to look at the foundation of the athletic performance.   After the performance evaluation, we can identify the areas of strength and weaknesses.   From there on, we can improve on anything we want with regards to our body.

General Physical Performance (GPP) is the considered as the base; therefore, it encompasses a wide variety of training concepts.   Here, it is believe that some general physical qualities are much more important than anything else regardless of the sport you want to excel in.   By improving GPP, you are able to enhance the physical abilities needed in that specific sport.   Those, who are new to strength training, should begin at that physical level.   Those are already experience must revisit GPP to enhance their performance once more.  GPP is composed of:

1. Aerobic and anaerobic fitness
2. Static and dynamic flexibility
3. Core strength and stability
4. Coordination and balance
5. Muscular endurance

The performance of an athlete will be greatly affected if they lack in any of these areas.  Sad, to say, you won’t progress far if you lack in part of these areas.  It is not important, what type of training you are into, but you need to include all of these into your routines.

Strength

This can be identified mostly from your ability to lift heavy objects.  It depends on what type of activity you are engage in.   Most of the athletes would improve their performances by doing ground based, multi-joint, and free weight exercises.  If you want to be faster, you need to develop relative strength.   This has something to do with the weight to body ratio.   It is said that the fastest athletes can squat twice their body masses.   This would take time to develop, but would really improve your jumping ability.   Here are the type of strength that you can train:

1. General strength
2. Max strength
3. Strength endurance
4. Relative strength
5. Starting strength

Speed-strength

This means that it is along the force velocity curve.  In the force-velocity curve theory, it is assumed that faster movement would generate less force.  This has something to do with the amount of time needed to contract the muscle.  Strength training can force end of the force velocity curve.  The goal should be to use the strength to apply them at a greater rate of speed, or learn to apply our newfound strength with more athletic movements.  To achieve this, you can several activities including speed squats, band squats, Olympic lifts, sled pushes and pulls, resisted sprints, weighted plyo's, vertimax.  And all of these fall along the speed-strength continuum. 

Speed

Speed training is the utmost peak of the pyramid.  This means that you need sport-specific movements and the performance must be at a high velocity with the use of optimal technique.  To train such way, you need to train at the velocity end of the force-velocity curve.  The external resistance must be lower while the rate of speed and force application must be high.  Your training needs to start with sprints, plyo's, and agility drills, which falls into speed training.  You need to train in all aspect such as top speed running, acceleration, change of direction, and deceleration.  This kind of training would prepare you for almost any kind of sport.