Weight Training

Why Should Women Lift Weights?

While cardiovascular exercise is a great way of burning the fat, adding a little weight training to your workouts will earn you extra calories every day. You’ll even be burning extra calories while you’re sleeping or sitting on the couch watching Eastenders.

Aerobic exercise may burn a few hundred extra calories for dinner, but for every additional pound of muscle you gain through weight training, your body burns around 50 extra calories every day of the week.

Research has shown that regular weight training can increase your Basal Metabolic Rate by up to 15%. So for someone burning 2000 calories per day, that’s a potential 300 extra calories, more than a Mars bar, burned every single day.

Weight training is just as suitable for women as it is for men. Many women are wary of taking it up for fear that increased muscle means increased masculinity, this is not the case.

Testosterone is a very important factor in the development of muscle shape, so as women have very low levels of this hormone their muscles develop differently, meaning a little resistance training will not lead to a bulky, butch physique.

Don’t overdo it and make sure that you leave a day or two to recover in between sessions. Muscles grow while resting, so pushing yourself as hard as you can seven days a week won’t do you any favours.

I use Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training programme. You have tons of programmes to choose from, you change your programme every four weeks and after 12 weeks of training you take a full rest week. Most of Craig’s workouts have you working out with weights 3 x per week, plus some fun activity (30 mins) on non weight days, with a full day off. My schedule typically looks like this:

Monday Workout A plus 20 mins HIIT = 45 minutes
Tuesday Dancing to some awesome tunes on my mini trampoline = 30 minutes
Wednesday 30 minutes on bike whilst watching TV! = 30 minutes
Thursday Workout B plus 20 mins HIIT = 45 minutes
Friday One of Craig’s ab workouts (no crunches or sit ups in site!) = 30 minutes
Saturday Workout A plus 20 mins HIIT = total workout time 45 minutes
Sunday Rest day

Total workout time for week = 3 hours 45 minutes. Your 30 minutes of fun activity could be running about the park with the kids, a brisk walk in your lunch break, an exercise class, 30 minutes playing a game that gets you moving on the wii. Anything that will get you moving that you enjoy counts! On these days I really don’t feel like I’m exercising, I even watch TV when I’m on my bike! For me investing in a home exercise bike and a set of dumb bells and bench has been the best investment of my life.

So what are you waiting for? Check out more details on Craig’s Turbulence Training programme, or get the free 4 week work out plan when you sign up for my newsletter!