By Clark Leaders, Certified Personal Trainer and Metabolic Assessment Technician
The notion that women who weight train get bulky is A big FAT myth!
As a personal trainer I talk to a lot of women who are afraid to do weights because they are afraid of bulking up, especially in their thighs. So I’d like to address this issue: it takes a tremendous amount of weight training for a woman to bulk up, even more so than for men. It is very difficult to bulk up for either gender and it doesn’t come from doing general strength training. It just isn’t very easy to gain muscle mass, but men have the advantage because they have the anabolic steroid testosterone which helps build muscle. So unless you have done something to alter your body chemistry, you won’t bulk up.
Women who do strength train might gain some mass but they will lose the equivalent amount of mass in fat, and by trading muscle for fat it will help them burn extra fat because pound for pound muscle burns more calories than fat. In addition although weight training doesn’t burn as many calories as cardio, it significantly increases the average daily metabolic rate which is the perfect foundation for losing weight.
And there are so many benefits of weight training:
It prevents loss of lean body mass that happens from dieting and/or aging
Weight training workouts burn calories
It changes your body composition, which helps shape your body and keep you healthy
Weight Training strengthens bones and connective tissue, along with muscles
It helps keep you strong and active as you get older
Weight bearing exercises help prevent against osteoporosis
I also encourage women to “mix it up” and have fun with their strength training by taking classes that work different muscles than they would normally use, and by including workouts that focus on their core, such as Pilates, Strength training classes, and Kettle bells.
Clark Leaders is a Certified Personal Trainer NASM/AIS, and Certified Metabolic Assessment Technician at Life Time Fitness in Plymouth, MN. He can be reached at (763)-509-0909 ext. 301, or: cleaders@lifetimefitness.com
