Unfortunately, some women may consider muscle building or strength training to be an activity exclusively meant for men. However nothing can be further from the truth.
Weight training is any strength training exercise where weights are used for resistance. It’s a fact that women who perform weight training enjoy better health and often improve the look of their body. The challenge is often knowing how much weight to lift.
It’s important to note that weight training comes in many levels, and the lifting done for general health is completely different from the type that women bodybuilders perform. In fact, it would take quite a bit of very deliberate effort and specific technique to get as big as those women who choose to become bodybuilders.
How Much Weight To Lift?
As a general rule of weight training, you don’t want to succeed with every set. A set is a group of consecutive repetitions. A repetition (or rep) is one complete motion of an exercise.
Lifting should be a struggle. If it’s too easy, it means the weight isn’t heavy enough.
This gives the body the message that it can handle it, and that it doesn’t need to grow more muscle mass and improve.
Make sure you use appropriate weight as a beginner to avoid injury. You can increase the weight, as you get stronger. Typically, if you can easily do 10 reps with a weight it is too light.
You don’t want to ask your body to deliver, you want to force it to adapt
Adaptation means the body needs to grow stronger and build more muscle mass to survive. Safety should also be a top concern. So it’s important to use the correct weight for your fitness level and to perform the exercises in a safe and careful manner to avoid injury. A personal trainer can be of great help in this regard.
Free Report: 10 Muscle Toning Mistakes Women MakeReps & Sets
- Rep (repetition) → one complete motion of an exercise
- Set → a group of consecutive repetitions
For building muscle mass, an 8-12 rep range not including warm-ups with 2 to 5 sets per specific exercise will yield good results. As you advance, you will be able to perform more sets.
Shock The Muscle
The body is a miracle of adaptation. No matter what you throw at it, its only goal is to do whatever it needs to survive and succeed. So in order for training to be effective on a continuous basis, you have to challenge your body and shock the muscle by periodically changing your routine.
Rule of thumb: If it’s too easy, it’s time to upgrade
- Use fewer sets
- Add weight
- Add new exercises
- Alternate between power and endurance lifting
- Turn to more advanced principles including, compound sets, or drop sets that will quickly shock your body and get it back into a growth stage to further propel your results
- Rest break time between sets will depend greatly on the type of lifting you’re doing and its goals.
Rest and Recovery Between Workouts
Muscle grows during recovery and rest periods and not actually during lifting, which is why rest periods are critical in effective weight training. Insufficient recovery time results in further muscle breakdown with each workout that causes a decrease in both their size and strength.
The main consideration is to fine-tune a balance between workouts that progressively overloads the muscles and rest periods that allow them to heal. It’s during recovery time that muscle grows.
10 Muscle Toning Mistakes Women Make
Just two weight lifting sessions per week can actually reduce your overall body fat by around 3% in just ten weeks’ time, even if you do not change your diet in anyway and help you to achieve or maintain a lean and toned body.
One of the most important, if not the most important consideration in weight training is to learn and maintain proper form at all times with any lifting moves you do. This is critical in avoiding injury and to get the best possible results in muscle growth. Download the free report, 10 Muscle Toning Mistakes Women Make to discover more about how much weight to lift and to help you get the best results from your workout.
