5 reasons why girls need to pull iron in the gym

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If a girl wants to have an athletic and healthy body, she must go to the gym, where she will work with weights - dumbbells, barbells and block machines. In this article, we will tell you why ladies do not need to be afraid of strength training and why exercises with a barbell will not turn a fragile girl into a Hulk.

1. Strength training leads to passive burning of calories

Lifting weights contributes to the passive burning of calories: the more developed your muscles, the more energy you need to store them. Simply put, musculature speeds up the body's metabolism, which leads to more efficient fat loss.

2. Resistance exercise makes bones healthier

Working with an adequate weight makes the bone denser. With the right technique and the right exercises, your bones get stronger while your joints are gently stressed.

At 20 or 30 years old, women are probably the last thing to think about the health of bones and joints, but believe me - with age, your body will thank you sincerely.

3. Strength training will make you independent and confident

Physical strength inspires not only men, but also women. This is a subtle psychological moment that is difficult for people who are far from sports to understand.

Yes, nine out of ten times you won't have to carry your own bags from the store or help your child lift the bike to the fourth floor. But when this tenth time comes (and sooner or later it will), you will be confident in yourself.

No one says that moving furniture or taking home purchased products for a week is an easy task, but exercising with weight will turn it from impossible to feasible. This is a small personal victory and invaluable experience.

4. Cardio alone will not make your body athletic

Constant volumetric lipolytic (fat burning) workouts will help you lose weight and partially get rid of body fat, but they will not help you get an athletic body. Alas, beautiful figures are not built by just running. And if Michelle Jennecke's physique seems attractive to you, know that elastic roundness and a flat stomach are forged, including using weights and dumbbells.

Separately, it should be said about the numerous home workouts published on YouTube. Among tens of thousands of videos on how to remove fat deposits on the sides, lower abdomen or on the thighs, a fairly large percentage is occupied by videos with workouts at home, almost lying on the couch. At the same time, rarely any of the model instructors is engaged exclusively according to the shown program: most of the female teachers visit gyms and work with additional weight.

5. With the help of yoga or Pilates, you will not be able to lose tens of kilograms

Although yoga and Pilates can help you achieve weight loss and maintain muscle tone, these disciplines are recommended to be used as a supplement to a gym workout routine to improve joint flexibility and mobility. One example of a training scheme that will work out is three days of strength training plus one day devoted to yoga, Pilates, or group training.

Why the gym doesn't make you a broad-shouldered Superman or a huge Hulk

Hormonal background

One of the reasons why girls are afraid to lift weight is the fear of losing their femininity, becoming "pumped", too large, muscular and embossed. In fact, you should not worry about this: normally, the female body simply cannot synthesize such an amount of testosterone to maintain a huge muscle mass.

Female bodybuilders, who so often "scare" newcomers to the gym, use additional pharmacological support, that is, use anabolic steroids.

To tell the truth, growing big muscles is difficult even for men with supplemental testosterone and a number of other hormones. Barbell squats or dumbbell presses won't turn you into a Hulk, but they will help you round your buttocks and lift your chest nicely.

Diet

Obviously, the diet of the athlete is very different from the fashionable diets that celebrities are supposedly sitting on. If you find yourself in the hands of a competent trainer who will help you balance your diet, you will understand that for muscle growth you need to eat a lot and not at all what you want.

If you get in good physical shape - a feasible task that thousands and thousands of fitness women cope with, then building lean muscles is a completely different story, possible only with serious volitional effort. Broad shoulders will not appear "by accident" and your arms will not look like bodybuilding "all of a sudden."

Training program

A training program, like genetics and nutrition, determines how quickly your muscles grow. Even professional bodybuilders, whose training plans are made by more experienced athletes, build huge muscle volumes with great difficulty.

Women's fitness is very different from men's. In women's workouts, there are many exercises where several muscle groups are involved at once, and not just biceps or triceps, for example. This leads to an increase in total muscle mass and a decrease in the volume of body fat, and not isolated hypertrophy of any particular muscle group.

It is also interesting that girls, as soon as they start to play sports, cease to be afraid of muscle hypertrophy. On the contrary, they ask trainers to do more isolated exercises so that the glutes, calves, or thighs appear more developed.

If we have convinced you that there is nothing unnatural for the female body in weight training, start training, having previously consulted with a sports doctor about the permissibility of performing certain exercises.

The following is a basic program for a beginner athlete. Three months of regular exercise on it will change your body much more than a year of half-hour morning jogging or self-study at home.

Basic program for the beginner athlete

Day 1

Power section:

• Barbell Squat - 6-8 reps
• Barbell (bodybar) pull to the belt - 8-10 reps.
• Jogging shvungs - 8-10 reps.

Three exercises form one circle, such circles need to be done from 3 to 5.

Cardio:

30-second sprint on the treadmill, 60-second jogging. Repeat 5-8 times

Day 2

Power section:

• Deadlift with a barbell - 6-8 reps.
• Push-ups (possible from the knees) - 8-10 reps.
• Kettlebell swing - 15-20 reps.

Three exercises form one circle, such circles need to be done from 3 to 5.

Cardio:

30-second sprint on the treadmill, 60-second jogging. Repeat 5-8 times

Day 3

Power section:

• Back lunges with dumbbells - 8-10 times.
• Pull-ups with the help of a partner or in a gravitron - 5-8 times.
• Squats with a jump up - 5-8 times.

Three exercises form one circle, such circles need to be done from 3 to 5.