Like many women, I once had little to no understanding of strength training and why to do it. For one, it intimidated me (understandably), and for another, it seemed counter-intuitive to work on building something when I was trying to get smaller. So instead I did what most people in that position do: I spent an hour on the elliptical or the treadmill every day, on a very empty stomach, just to be able to whittle myself down to an “acceptable” size—a size where I could at least like myself. Loving myself was a whole other story. And once I was on that program, my “reward” was accompanied with constant hunger and irritability. But gosh darn it, I had willpower! Yay.
Yay?
Fitness shouldn’t be killing you.
Maybe you’ve been here, too. It feels like no matter what you do, your extra pounds don’t budge, and it seems the only recourse is to live a life of extreme (and unhealthy) discipline, or to give up. Not to mention that a life of deprivation and strong-arming yourself is not sustainable.
My problem is that I was constantly focused on reducing parts of myself that I hated rather than building it into something I could draw strength and confidence from.
I wasn’t doing strength training because I thought that any effort to build strength would contradict my goal of reducing size. Instead, I would focus all of my efforts on cardiovascular exercise in an effort to burn fat away.
Boy, was I wrong.
Strength training is your secret weapon for fitness.
The fact is, strength training will help you build your body into a lighter (if you want!), stronger, more energetic and dynamic body in far less time and with far less effort than cardio training alone.
While messaging has gotten much better over the years, there’s still a lot of misunderstanding around strength training, especially as it relates to women and fitness goals. There are still trainers out there, some of them quite famous with celebrity followings, who perpetuate a myth that women shouldn’t lift heavy weights because it causes us to “bulk up.” And it appeals to our logic, too—even though it’s scientifically incorrect. Furthermore, there’s a general distaste of any “bulk” or musculature on women.
There are two problems with this line of thinking. One, it’s flat-out wrong. You’ll generally get smaller lifting heavier things. And two, it only feeds the sexist notion that “muscles are masculine.” They are not. They are part of your body, like a foot or hair or eyes or a jaw.
Won’t I “bulk up” if I strength train?
OMG no.
First of all, consider the math.
If you want to lose weight, you generally have to burn more than you consume, right? And to gain weight, you must consume more than you burn. This works the same for building muscle as it does for adding fat—it requires you consume enough calories to do this. People who bulk up for fitness competitions or sports typically eat large amounts of food every day in order to have the resources to make that muscle tissue. So assuming you eat within a generally normal calorie range for your size, and that you don’t increase this twofold or more when you begin strength training, you will not grow large muscles.
Hormones matter.
But also, women in general lack the hormones to build “bulky” muscles. You could work out for five hours and eat 4,000 calories a day of protein (please do not, though) and you would never, ever, ever get large muscles without additional hormonal support. The women you see competing for Miss Olympia take hormones. You will never look like this. Unless you want to, of course, and even then, it will take an extraordinary amount of work to get there.
It takes a lot of work to bulk up significantly.
On top of that, even men have trouble bulking up sometimes because there’s a third factor at work here: your genetics. We all respond to exercise differently, and on top of that, it can change over time. Two women with similar fitness levels and sizes could each respond a little differently to the exact same workout regimen. However, there are still basic principles at play, and to understand your own body’s response to exercise is best found out by jumping in and trying it yourself. Be your own guinea pig. Know also that as your body acclimates to strength training, it generally gets better at it. So if you see little development at first, as long as your form is good and you’re challenging yourself, you’ll eventually see improvements.
But you won’t ever be surprised by a manly physique when you look in the mirror.
Even fitness models don’t look muscled up in everyday life.
Some of my favorite female trainers with incredible bodies are Zuzka Light, Hannah Eden and Jamie Eason.
“I know that,” you might say, “but they still look too bulky to me.” Okay. Fine. But many of those women look that way because they want to look that way and they’ve been working really hard at it for years. They are also in the fitness business, and in order to grow a following and be successful, a healthy and strong physique is a must-have marketing tool.
But they don’t necessarily look like this every day. For photoshoots, they often diet and train for weeks beforehand to get their bodies in peak condition. They might go tanning to get a healthy glow, and once they’re in the studio, they might be oiled down to accentuate muscle definition. In their workout videos, their bodies are actively working, so they look more muscular.
If you saw these ladies at the beach relaxing with their families, they would probably look…well, less muscled, maybe less tan, and also…great.
And if you don’t want to look like that, you won’t. When you embark on a strength training journey, it probably will take a long time before this problem comes up, but if it does, you can easily alter your training to decelerate muscle growth in those areas.
Strength training shifts the focus from reducing to building.
The best part about strength training is that it allows you to build something rather than chip away at it.
When I found strength training, I felt excited and in control of my fitness like I never had before. It was about sculpting my body, not throwing it away. I had to accept what I was given, sure, but I could still shape that however I chose.
It also allowed me to look at my whole body, and not just the parts of myself I hated. I’m a naturally pear-shaped person, and while I now realize that it’s common for women, when I was in my teens and early twenties I wasn’t looking at all women. I was looking at models and actresses in magazines, who seemed to all have fairy-like slim legs and hips (this was also back a few years, before any big booty craze set in). So for most of my young life, fitness was about slimming down my legs, and nothing else.
You can’t spot-reduce. But you can spot-build.
But one day I remember looking at myself in the mirror and realizing that maybe if I felt bottom-heavy, I could actually balance out my own physique by working out my shoulders and making them a little more prominent. I started out adding some strength training at the end of whatever cardio session I used to do (usually Stairclimber or Elliptical or Nordic Track). Not knowing a thing, I sought out machines that had pretty pictures on them with shoulder muscles highlighted, and did a bunch of sets. I learned that deltoids were the muscles at the top of the shoulder, and the ones that gave your shoulders a particular shape.
A couple of weeks later, my roommate looked at my arms and said, “Wow. Your shoulders look really good.”
She was right—they did. The work paid off, and I was feeling not only more balanced-looking, which was my goal, but now I was proud. My efforts were showing. And I was stronger.
So while incorporating strength training into your routine can shrink your size, you can also use it to emphasize some areas over others. It can change your overall shape.
Believe it or not, it all starts with your mind and your outlook. If you don’t have healthy goals or healthy reasons for your fitness goals, you will never reach your goals. You won’t truly be motivated, so you’ll lose interest, or you will get there and be a little lost as to what to do next. You might be disappointed because you told yourself (even if you didn’t know it) that you would be happy when…
Even if your goal is just to lose weight, shift the focus to loving yourself and caring for your body. As the Fit-Bottomed Girls say, “you can’t hate yourself healthy.”
Fitness is not a destination.
Fitness is a lifelong journey, so strap in and get comfortable.
Goals are great, and if you have an event you want to get fit for, even better, because you have a timeline and some fire under your butt. But like dieting, working out shouldn’t stop once you hit that goal.
The good news is that reaching goals and maintaining goals are different. It takes a lot less effort to maintain, and it doesn’t take that much time.
But you need to love it.
You won’t love it every day. But at least love the feeling of having had a workout, if not working out in general. If you’re having trouble loving anything about it at all, ask yourself why that is. Are you self-conscious about working out where others can see you? Ditch the gym and do home workouts. Is it so difficult it drains you of energy? Cut back on the intensity or the difficulty. Is it not challenging you enough? Add or increase resistance, or amp up the intensity. Maybe you’re just bored? Then try something new.
If you hate everything about working out, but feel you should, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. It’s always sucky to do something only because you “should,” because that means that you’re taking your choice out of the matter. You’re just following someone else’s blueprint without understanding the “why” of it for yourself.
Take your power back.
So if you hate it but feel the need to, like you should, why is that? Are you feeling out of breath when you play with your kids? Do you want to be able to sleep better? To fit in your clothes better? What’s the reason?
Then make it your choice. Then track what it is you want to change. Check how your clothes are fitting, or how much less tired you are when running after your kids, or how it’s easier to lift your luggage to the overhead compartment.
Some of those changes take a little time to show up, but the one that doesn’t—my favorite reason of all to work out—is your mood. Working out naturally lifts your mood, and can even help with more serious conditions such as depression and anxiety.
Once you can see the positive results for yourself, you won’t ever want to go back.
When you have fitness locked into your life, you’ll find you’ll want to shift things around from time to time, and strength training brings a multitude of new fitness facets into your life. Your goals will change. You might want to drop 50 pounds, then maintain the body you have once you reach that goal. Then maybe you’ll decide you want strong arms, or a juicy butt, and adjust your fitness program. Or maybe you want to learn a handstand or a backbend. Maybe you want to have more fun with your fitness. But the overarching goal of any fitness program should be to feel amazing. It should make your life better.
Muscles aren’t masculine.
Then there’s the notion that “it’s not feminine to be muscular.” This is bull. Here’s why.
I want you to imagine someone that’s a generally accepted sex symbol who’s male. By “sex symbol” I mean someone who is generally thought of as having a great body. Think of a couple of them. Got some? Good. If your imagination is failing you, here are the some of the last few years’ worth of People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” winners:
Now think of a few females. Here are some that came up on top on a Google search:
- Scarlett Johansson
- Gal Godot
- Zoe Saldana
What’s the difference in muscle tone? Generally, the men have a lot more, right? The women sometimes are “toned” (which means nothing technically, but you get the drift) and sometimes slim, but without a clear assurance that they definitely work out. The men, on the other hand, look like they have trainers and spend hours in the gym and and eat nothing but chicken breasts and broccoli.
The main difference in the two genders’ ideal body types is the amount to which one is “allowed” to look like they work for it. The other is ideally supposed to look like they don’t work at it.
Muscles aren’t masculine. You don’t “look like a man” if you have muscle tone; you look like a strong beautiful woman who works out, just like those male sex symbols look like men who work out. No one expects them to just wake up looking like that. On the contrary, many many male actors were able to transform into sex symbols simply because they took up a rigorous training schedule. Look at Chris Pratt. [pictures].
Show me the facts.
There are many ways to strength train, but no matter what, increasing your muscle mass will actually cause your metabolism to raise. This is because of a couple of factors:
- Muscle is denser than fat, so it requires more energy, even at rest.
- Strength training burns calories after the workout is over.
Muscle weighs more than fat, or more accurately, it’s denser than fat. That also means that it naturally requires more energy to sustain itself, even at rest. If you need a good visual, here you go. [get a picture of one pound of muscle vs one pound of fat.]
What does that mean? Well, it means that you could be strength training for a few weeks, feel great, find your jeans are a little looser and you have more energy, but then the scale has the same weight as you did when you started. You could weigh the same or even more, and be smaller.
One of my favorite examples of this is a video from 2012 about a model named Laura Dziak who started CrossFit and gained 15 pounds, yet stayed the same size. And that size was super small—size 0—because, well, she’s a model. But she stayed tiny and still grew incredible strength. And kept modeling. How cool is that?
Muscle just takes more energy to exist. But also, there’s something called an afterburn effect, or in more scientific terms, Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC). This means that most forms of exercise don’t just burn calories while you are doing it, but continues burning calories after the workout is over. Strength training burns less calories on average during the workout than cardio (but it depends on your training style), but this afterburn effect is heightened with strength training. Depending on the intensity of your workout, you can continue the fat-burning for up to 14 hours after your workout is over.
Strength training gives you a higher ROI (Return on Investment) than cardio alone.
If you spend the same amount of time and energy on a strength training program as you would on a cardio program, you will net back to yourself more calories burned overall, a higher metabolism, probably a smaller frame and loads of other benefits:
- Reduced chance of osteoporosis
- Better posture
- Reduced pain, especially back pain
- Less chance of injury
- Reduced risk of heart disease
- Strength for everyday tasks
- Mental clarity and improved memory
- Higher energy throughout the day
And my personal favorite:
- Improved mood
Working out your muscles is like an investment plan in your fitness. See the full list of benefits here.
So wait…cardio is useless?
Not at all. I can see why you’d think that, though. Mia culpa.
Cardio is amazing, and many of those benefits you get from strength training, you also get from cardiovascular exercise, though perhaps to a lesser degree.
If you have a cardio-based program, and you LOVE it, and you’re not looking for anything more, then great. Engagement is the number one factor in any healthy fitness program.
While there is a delineation between “cardio” and “strength training,” a workout doesn’t need to be one or the other. Often, it’s some combination of the two, which is my preferred workout style. The trainer Jen Sinkler has a program called “Lift Weights Faster” for that very reason; you can get the benefits of both in one workout.
But even so, having a nice variety of workout intensity, styles and lengths is the most beneficial. I love a good run outside in the park, or a long walk on a Saturday afternoon. Perhaps you have a yoga class you love, or a team sport you engage in, which keeps everything engaging and social. You don’t need to give that up to strength train. Do it all! Switch back and forth, or do a little of it all every week.
The goal is to incorporate fitness in your life in a way that makes you excited to continue.
There are so many ways to train. The beauty of strength training is that it not only opens you up to new equipment and exercises, but once you see and feel the results, you’ll be that much more excited to set goals and smash them, before setting new goals and smashing them, too.