Strength training may seem like a boy’s club, but it’s not just for body builders and young men- it is important for people of all ages, shapes, sizes, and physical condition. Developing a good strength training routine is even very important for women- it improves wellness, health, and overall quality of life.

Are you a woman having trouble with your weight- even though you are spending amble time on the treadmill and elliptical? The key to breaking your plateau and jump starting your weight loss may be weight training. According to experts, only 21% of females actually strength train two plus times per week- this is a major error on that other 79% of women’s part! Hitting the weights two or more times a week will reduce body fat by as much as 3% in as little as 10 weeks! That could be as much as 3 inches off your waist and hips- with minimal effort at that. If you want to look sculpted and melt the flab, you should find the time to fit strength training into your day.
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The Best Strength Training for Women

Tired of sweating all over every piece of cardio equipment at the gym and still getting zero love from the scale? You need more iron. Not in your diet—in your hands. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, a mere 21 percent of women strength train two or more times a week. What you don’t know: When you skip the weight room, you lose out on the ultimate flab melter. Those two sessions a week can reduce overall body fat by about 3 percentage points in just 10 weeks, even if you don’t cut a single calorie. That translates to as much as three inches total off your waist and hips. Even better, all that new muscle pays off in a long-term boost to your metabolism, which helps keep your body lean and sculpted. Suddenly, dumbbells sound like a smart idea. Need more convincing? Read on for more solid reasons why you should build flex time into your day.

Torch Calories 24/7

Though cardio burns more calories than strength training during those 30 sweaty minutes, pumping iron slashes more overall. A study in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that women who completed an hour-long strength-training workout burned an average of 100 more calories in the 24 hours afterward than they did when they hadn’t lifted weights. At three sessions a week, that’s 15,600 calories a year, or about four and a half pounds of fat—without having to move a muscle.

What’s more, increasing that afterburn is as easy as upping the weight on your bar. In a study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, women burned nearly twice as many calories in the two hours after their workout when they lifted 85 percent of their max load for eight reps than when they did more reps (15) at a lower weight (45 percent of their max).

There’s a longer-term benefit to all that lifting, too: Muscle accounts for about a third of the average woman’s weight, so it has a profound effect on her metabolism, says Kenneth Walsh, director of Boston University School of Medicine’s Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute. Specifically, that effect is to burn extra calories, because muscle, unlike fat, is metabolically active. In English: Muscle chews up calories even when you’re not in the gym. Replace 10 pounds of fat with 10 pounds of lean muscle and you’ll burn an additional 25 to 50 calories a day without even trying.

Target Your Trouble Spots

If you’ve ever tried to ditch the saddlebags and ended up a bra size smaller instead, you know that where you lose is as important as how much. As great as it might be to see the numbers on the scale go down, when you’re on a strict cardio-only program your victory is likely to be empty. A recent study at the University of Alabama at Birmingham compared dieters who lifted three times a week with those who did aerobic exercise for the same amount of time. Both groups ate the same number of calories, and both lost the same amount—26 pounds—but the lifters lost pure chub, while about 8 percent of the aerobicizers’ drop came from valuable muscle. Researchers have also found that lifting weights is better than cardio at whittling intra-abdominal fat—the Buddha-belly kind that’s associated with diseases from diabetes to cancer.

Just don’t rely exclusively on the scale to track your progress in the battle of the bulge. Because muscle is denser than fat, it squeezes the same amount of weight into less space. “Often, our clients’ scales won’t drop as fast, but they’ll fit into smaller jeans,” says Rachel Cosgrove, owner of Results Fitness in Santa Clarita, California. And it’s the number on the tag inside your bootcuts you want to get lower, right?

Start Pumping

Begin with three weight-training sessions each week, recommends Joe Dowdell, founder and co-owner of the New York City gym Peak Performance. For the greatest calorie burn, aim for total-body workouts that target your arms, abs, legs, and back, and go for moves that will zap several different muscle groups at a time—for example, squats, which call on muscles in both the front and back of your legs, as opposed to leg extensions, which isolate the quads.

For each exercise you do, try to perform three sets of 10 to 12 reps with a weight heavy enough that by your last rep you can’t eke out another one without compromising your form. To spark further muscle building, William Kraemer, Ph.D., a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut, suggests alternating moderate-intensity workouts of 8 to 10 reps with lighter-weight 12- to 15-rep sets and super-hard 3- to 5-rep sets. (For a more detailed fat-blasting workout, check out “Do This at Home,” below.)

And remember to fuel your workout properly. Too many dieters make the fatal error of cutting back on crucial muscle-maintaining protein when they want to slash their overall calorie intake. The counterproductive result: They lose muscle along with any fat that might have melted away. Sports nutritionist Cassandra Forsythe, Ph.D., co-author of The New Rules of Lifting for Women, recommends that you eat one gram of protein for every pound of your body weight that does not come from fat. For instance, a 140-pound woman whose body fat is 25 percent would need 105 grams of high-quality protein. That’s roughly four servings a day; the best sources are chicken or other lean meats, soy products, and eggs.

Ready to turn yourself into a lean, mean, calorie-torching machine? Then go get pumped!

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Muscle burns far more calories than fat- that’s a well-known fact in the world of weight training. Combine that with the extra calories burned during the weight lifting session, and you are already on your way to a leaner physic. Don’t let the initial calorie burn of cardio sessions fool you either, if you add in weight training sessions- you’ll burn faster, and better overall.

Researchers found that women who trained for an hour long focusing on strength exercises burned 100 more calories in the following 24 hours than if that had not lifted weights. Over a year’s time, that translates into 15,600 calories for someone who trained 3 times a week-think 4-1/2 lbs of fat lost without additional work. By ramping up that afterburn, you are putting your natural fat burns into overdrive. So, what exactly do you do? It’s as easy as increasing the weight you lift.

Long term benefits of strength training are very appealing too! More muscle means a better performing metabolism. All that lean muscle just dissolves the fat, even when you’re not actively getting exercise. Just going about your normal everyday routine will torch calories and fat when you are fit.

Muscle building also comes in handy when it comes to those pesky trouble spots. Women commonly have a difficult time with belly fat, flabby upper thighs, and saddlebags- something overall weight loss, and cardio alone may not cure. Weight lifting helps tone those trouble areas too.

Just remember that when you do begin your strength training routine, you will have to adjust your diet to compensate for the extra nutritional needs. Even women need to get the right amount of protein in order to maintain healthy muscles. An average size woman needs about four servings of protein a day- preferably those that come from lean meats, soy, and dairy.

How do you plan to start your strength building routine? Tell us about your exercises and diet.

If you weight train, you probably already know a thing or two about supplements- including the different types, and the best brands on the market. A lot of people are still resistant to trying supplements, and attempt to keep up a healthy body without them, but in this day and age- is that really even possible? In a world full of toxins and foods that lack much of the nutritional value they once had, are supplements needed?
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How Important Is Supplementation For Fitness?

Do supplements help you reach your goals faster? Explore the benefits of supplementation, and the impact on performance and muscle gains.

For many who prefer to maintain their weight and their health without the use of supplements, they need to consider that the Industrial Revolution has resulted in a sedentary lifestyle (decreased physical labor requirement) and refined/processed foods which has resulted in a decline in weight management. Our environment has changed faster than we can adapt, many of us as we age store excess energy (fat) as if to prepare for a case in which we couldn’t find food regularly or needed to store energy for physical activity as would have been the case over a hundred years ago.
However, the fact is that we spend most of our time on our butt thanks to technology and it is harming our health. As much as some would like to complain about the health care costs of lifters injuring themselves and requiring surgery, the fact is that the majority of health care costs are the result of heart disease and cancer (the top 2) and many of the major complications of obesity are right below those top two on the list (heart disease is the #1 complication associated with obesity). So if technology has caused us to become sedentary and it has negatively impacted our health, why not fight back with technology?

I’m not talking about becoming dependent on pharmaceutical drugs to maintain your health. I’m talking about the supplement industries ability to aid in motivation, exercise performance, recovery and the regulation of calories. Take into account a research study done on college age men and women on the effectiveness of supplementing with meal-replacements and a weight loss product on body composition and markers for fitness levels. While the effectiveness of the weight loss supplement was inconclusive (the supplement and its ingredients were not disclosed) it was determined that the meal replacement when used in conjunction with exercise, had positive improvements for fitness levels and body fat reduction (1).

For every person that you can think of that is a supplement guru or lives the bodybuilding lifestyle there are 10 people who either don’t believe in, or fear supplementation. By fearing supplementation I don’t mean being afraid of the products in general, but there are those who feel taking different products at the same time will somehow automatically lead to side effects or degraded health; and in some cases they believe they will receive more muscle growth then they want.

Now there are cases in which creating your own supplement stack is a bad idea and that is always the case when it comes to stimulant or caffeine based products. Everyone has either heard it before or asked the question “can I combine these two pre-workouts?” or “Can I take this pre workout with this fat burner?” Just to make things clear…no stimulant product in the recent history of the supplement industry was designed to be combined with another stimulant supplement.

Part of the reason for so many misconceptions is the result of advertising; unfortunately, to grab the attention of potential customers describing how products make you feel in the most colorful ways possible is part of the game. However, when advertisements start guaranteeing muscle gains in a certain period of time or promote a product as being so strong it could possibly be harmful to your health; that’s when things go too far.

Now for those who don’t believe supplementation is effective at all, it should be known that many of the ingredients and analogues of amino acids are based on things found in food in concentrated amounts for performance. Outside of creatine and protein (especially the BCAAs and the other amino acids that are in protein) there are very few supplements that have a direct correlation with muscle growth.

The majority of supplements, if you look closely, are associated with boosting performance or recovery to aid in your efforts to gain muscle. With all the research being done on supplements and steroids the one thing that can get overlooked at times is the fact that muscle growth has a direct relationship to training. Even if you took steroids, if you sat at home doing nothing, there would be no muscle growth to speak of.

For those who don’t believe in supplementation who feel they are of a higher education level, much of the research disproving the use of supplementation is based on popular supplements like L-arginine being disproven for many of its major uses pre-exercise in terms of increasing the pump or increasing performance (2). But for every bit of researching disproving an ingredients application, there is research supporting ingredients like Citrulline Malate and GPLC (Glycine Proprionyl L-Carnitine) for the same use with benefits for muscular endurance and improved performance.

Also, some of the research discrediting supplementation is ill conceived. All too often research will be done on an ingredient to test for increases in lean body mass after only a short period of time (4-8 weeks) on ingredients that were only meant to promote increases in endurance/performance or recovery. And they use this as evidence to disprove supplementation use when, as stated earlier; outside of creatine and amino acids much of the ingredients in supplementation promote increases in performance or recovery which allow the user to make gains in muscle growth if diet and training are in line with their goals.

A particular case in which this is evident is in a research study done to determine the effectiveness of a protein/carbohydrate supplement, the researchers attempted to discover some sort of correlation between the supplement and performance despite the fact that it is primarily promoted for recovery. They did however discover markers for increased recovery thanks to protein/carbohydrate supplementation (3).

Another aspect of the supplement industry that is criticized is the pre-workout. It is well known that caffeine interferes with creatine’s effectiveness if they are taken at the same time; however this is not enough to discredit the use of stimulant based pre-workouts. Your strength is largely central nervous system based, so caffeine’s ability to decrease pain associated with exercise and result in an acute increase in strength is very real (4).
Also, in a study done on sedentary (does not exercise on a regular basis) men, it was determined that a low-calorie energy drink aided in their physiological adaptations to exercise (5). This is very important when you consider that it improved their body’s ability to adapt to a stress (exercise) that it was not previously trained to be able to handle.

Supplementation even for beginners can be important for helping them to cope with the physiological stress associated with returning to exercise. More research on popular specific ingredients like the recovery enhancing L-carnitine L-tartrate can be found in the article ‘The Key Amino Acids, Minerals, And Antioxidants For Recovery’ and the latest information on glutamine and creatine supplementation can be found in the article ‘Glutamine and creatine: Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks’.

As far as the concern for taking too many supplements, although too much of something is a bad thing (see ‘The Key Principle for Life, Dieting and Training: Moderation’) much of it is unwarranted. The largest known concerns based on research for supplementation are that fat soluble vitamins (like A, D, E, and K) have known toxicity levels and that taking too much of single amino acids ex: L-Leucine, can interfere with the absorption of other amino acids (6).
Another concern that the NCAA took control of was excess protein supplementation which lead to dehydration. Now the NCAA’s new ruling is to not recommend servings of protein supplements in excess of 40g per serving. However, past this, as long as supplements are taken as recommended there isn’t too much cause for concern. creatine is constantly proven to be safe and effective and recently popular amino acids in research such as L-Carnitine L-Tartrate have also passed their preliminary tests for safety (7).

So in the end, while it is true that you’ll have to do a little research on a supplements ingredients before purchasing and falling into the hype; that doesn’t mean that supplements are ineffective. For every study that discredits a supplement, there is one that proves another ingredient worthy to add to your training regimen, and for every proven ingredient that is discredited for a particular use; if applied appropriately it can be irreplaceable in your supplement stack.

The key thing to also remember is that very few products have a direct relationship to muscle growth; they are mostly training aids, so there should be no fear of becoming too bulky or looking like the bodybuilders in the ads because you are using a product to increase your endurance and another to increase recovery.

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Many doctors and nutrition experts agree that using supplements is an important part of the equation for great health.

Could the necessity of supplements be as a result of the changing environment? Foods today are just not what they used to be- you could barely even call some of them ‘food’! So, are supplements the answer to filling in the nutritional gaps? Many people seem to think so, and a large majority of weight lifters are avid supplement users.
The supplement makers could hold the answer to the inactivity, and poor nutrition many Americans are currently battling with. This does not mean that people need to rely on them for all of the answers, but avoiding them is likely doing more harm than good in many circumstances. The answer may seem simple, and taking supplements may seem like a no brainer, but for every ‘believer’ exists ten other people who think it’s just a bunch of ‘witchcraft’ or ‘new age nonsense’.

It has been determine that when supplements are used in conjunction with a healthy lifestyle- think healthy meals and regular exercise- there is significant improvement in overall health and wellness. This was even more prevalent when supplements were used as meal replacements.

On the other hand are harmful habits when it comes to using supplements. Those supplements with too much caffeine or stimulants could be doing much more harm than good. Some researchers do not seem to be big fans of the use of pills to get nutrition, or to increase performance, but there is an equal amount of research to prove effectiveness.
The thing to remember when starting a supplement regime is that they are meant to compliment a healthy lifestyle, and fill nutritional gaps- they are not really intended to replace meals.

Do you use supplements? Tell us about your regime.

Are lower back pains as a result of exercising keeping you from feeling comfortable and keeping you away from the weight set? No need to pop pain relievers or sit out for a week, try stretching and other methods to keep the pain at bay.
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By “low-back aches” I’m not referring to an acute injury with severe back pain or low-back pain coupled with pain traveling down the front or back of your legs. That’s a topic for another day. Certain exercises can cause you to feel tight or compressed in the lower back. The key to reducing those aches is exercise selection and having a plan after the workout for reducing the aches.

The exercises that can cause low-back aches include barbell rows, T-bar rows, back squats, deadlifts, leg raises, Roman-chair situps and seated twists. The cause of the ache can be from the facet joints that guide movement in the spine; the disks, or shock absorbers, between the bony vertebrae; or even muscle strain, ligamentous sprain or tendinitis.

If the facet joints are causing pain due to compression from squats, stop looking up when you squat. Rather look slightly downward. Your back will flatten a little and unload the facet joints. Sometimes front squats are a good substitute for the compression of back squats. Also, stop performing leg raises of any type, as they will cause the hip flexors to tighten and arch your lower back, which will load the facet joints. Seated twists can also cause the facet joints to have an impact on one side and then the other and cause pain.

Inflamed disks may cause pain when they are compressed or rotated during squats, deadlifts, seated twists or rows. If you’re having low-back aches, try taking a break from those lifts for a few weeks. You can also vary the weights you use from workout to workout to give your back a heavier load followed by lighter workouts to allow recovery while still hitting the muscles to some degree.

When you finish your workouts, do a couple of stretches to help the hip and back muscles relax. That will help reduce the aches in your lower back. Lie on your back and pull one knee toward your chest with your fingers interlocked around your knee for 15 to 20 seconds. Then perform the same with your other leg. Repeat that entire process two more times, then pull both knees toward your chest with your fingers interlocked around your knees. Hold that gently for 15 to 20 seconds, then pull one knee toward the opposite shoulder for 15 to 20 seconds and repeat on the other side. Do that two times.

You can also do a traditional hamstring stretch if it doesn’t cause more pain. The last stretch would be a hip flexor stretch. Kneel on one knee with the other foot on the floor in front of you. Keep your abs tight and your upper body vertical and shift your body forward. This will stretch the hip flexors.

You can follow all of that by placing an ice pack on your lower back. You should find that you feel better after the workout and the next morning.

Train smart, then train hard.

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Lower back pain as a result of working out can be a very discouraging ‘side effect’ of exercise. This isn’t back as a result of injury or pain that travels throughout your legs also- but pain as a result of certain exercises that leave you feeling tight in the lower part of your back. Having a solid plan after a workout can help to reduce the aches and pains caused by exercising.

Some of the exercises that can lead to lower back pains include barbell rows, t-bar rows, back squats, deadlifts, leg raises, chair situps and seated twists. When these result in lower back pain, the cause is from facet joints that are intended to guide movement in the spinal area, the disks, shock absorbers, between the vertebrae, muscle strain, tendinitis, or a ligamentous sprain.

At the end of your workout, stretching to relax the hip and back muscles can help to greatly reduce the aches and pains in the lower part of the back. Do these stretches by laying on your back and pull your knee toward your chest- one at a time, with your fingers interlocked for about 20 seconds on each side. Alternate sides two or more times, the pull in both knees at one, then pull one knee in at a time towards the alternating shoulder- and repeat the entire process two or three times.

If it doesn’t cause more pain, you can even try doing a traditional hamstring stretch. Another stretch is the hip flexor stretch- this is done by kneeling on one knee with the other foot in front of you on the floor. Keep your abdominal muscles tights, and shift your upper body forward.

Follow workouts with ice packs, and alternating heat- especially if you already have pain setting in. Hot soaks and even swimming have also shown to be effective ways to loosen the muscles and joints, thus relieving tension and tightness.
Do you know some effective ways to relieve lower back pain after a workout? Let us know.

As you may have learned from working out so far , there is no magic bullet for weight training, no magic program you can follow 5 years and no universal blueprint to being 220lbs with a 28 inch waist. Otherwise, almost all the supplement stores would be closed down, trainers out of business and beaches slammed with “bodybuilding physiques”. However, there are basic rules anyone can follow to take their training farther and reach their goals.

Rule Number #1 : Logged Progression

The main rule with training for mass and strength you should consider is to keep it progressive, if you curled 110lbs for five sets of eight a month ago, can you do 115lbs or even 112.5lbs five sets of eight now? And more importantly are you doing more because your form is getting sloppier or because you really did get stronger?

When people see me curl 155lbs or bench 350lbs, they seem to forget that before 155lbs I curled 95,100,105,110,115,120,125,130,135,140,145, and 150….Progression got me to where I am and progression will keep me growing and getting stronger just like it can for you.

Another example I experienced was lat pull downs, when I started logging all my weights on exercises I was doing around 135lbs for 8 reps on lat pull downs and still have that recorded in my book , the next week it says 140 then 145 not much later and so forth. Now 6 months later I can do 220lbs on lat pull downs for four sets of 12(Just did that a few days ago) and talk to me a few weeks from now and hopefully ill be up to 225 or 230. Now you may have noted I like pullups far more then lat pull downs as a core mass builder, but when I switched to lat pull downs and simply progressed this way my pull-up ability also shot up. Just as slowly progressing on EZ bar preacher curls will help your standing barbell curl, incline dumbbell curl, and hammer curl strength all rise. In addition, do not forget to keep the tape measure handy because I guarantee if you progress on both tricep and bicep work consistently your upper arm size will progress as well.

So remember in the end you will have to progress to get bigger, period. You will have to challenge your body consistently to make it work harder and harder. Whether that progression is caused by increasing the weight, reps, overall training volume ( Total Sets and Reps) or by decreasing the time it takes you to do the workout is up to you.

My favorite way to track my workouts is online at http://www.weighttraining.com . There I can easily log them from my phone, and it quickly gives me data on my workouts such as total sets and weight used , records broken , estimates calories burnt and even gives you scores to beat.

Rule #2 : Friendly Competition

Competition kept friendly can be one of the greatest motivators a trainee will ever experience. Whether it be with your training partner or with others online like at at http://www.weighttraining.com, a little friendly competition never hurt anyone.

A good example of this comes to mind with me and my old training partner met back up for a workout. We got deep into the workout and started dumbbell curls, being the competitive guys we are we both kept increasing the weight after seeing the other do the same weight , 35s , 40s ,45s and so on. Now my muscles had not gotten any stronger since last weeks solo dumbbell curling when I did 35s for the sets of 12, but now just because of the spirit of competition I pushed for the 45s for the same reps and form.

Rule # 3 :The Mind Will Give Up Before The Body

One of the most underrated aspects of weight training is mental toughness; I make sure every person I train understands this. The mind in an untrained individual will almost always give out before their actual limits are ever reached, whether it be in that particular workout or overall potential.

In the earlier age of weight training when no man had yet benched 500lbs, 500 seemed impossible. People questioned, “Can a human being bench press 500 pounds?” And as people got closer and closer, until many of them were even in the 480s and 490s, but that magical 500, oh it seemed so far away. Until the early 1950s, a man named Doug Hepburn broke the mark. Then within a matter of months, more and more men pushed past the 500 mark, because that mental barrier of the magical 500 had been broken. Now 60 years later some high schools even have students who bench 500.

Rule # 4: Leave No Stone Unturned

Getting the best results will always happen when you go that extra mile, when you finish the race and can honestly say you could not have done anything more to get to where you wanted . When I step on a bodybuilding stage, I do not want to question if I trained hard enough, if I ate strict enough or if I used small things to get that last 5% of results. Can I say all the supplements I have taken (Whey protein, BCAAs , Creatine, Beta Alanine ect) have all helped me without a shadow of a doubt? No, but I would not take it back for anything. I did not take creatine because I knew it would work 100% for me

specifically, I took it because it helps many people and I wanted to be one of those people. Alternatively, that whey protein within an hour of my workout, sure some people argue it is useless, but more studies show it works and even more people swear by it. Did it help attribute to my 2-inch gain on arm size in a year? Who knows, but I would not take it back even it if helped just a quarter of an inch.

The point is no one knows 100% how something will affect everyone; my advice to you is to leave no stone unturned in your training, nutrition, or anything else in life.

Rule # 5: Break The Rules

As the great Arnold Schwarzenegger said, you cannot expect to be a maverick in anything if you do not break a few rules. Train differently then the person next to you, train harder, and train smarter. Likewise, do not do something just to be different. Many trainers these days will tell you a training or nutrition method, not just because it’s better or more effective, but just to be different or to stand out. Do not fall into this trap, everything you do needs to have reasoning. Just as if you are wary to buy a “new and improved” product off TV, you need to be wary in “new “exercise methods or diet approaches.

A “Certified Strength Coach” could say doing bicep curls with the other arm spinning wildly increases your neuromuscular activity and thus strength and muscle growth and many people would believe them, just like new “rapid weight loss ” methods come out everyday, but nothing ever sticks around.

Conclusion

In the end, you are going to have to find your own path to building a better physique. Finding out what type of training you respond best to and what type of diet you can easily follow will be half the fun. I encourage you to log every workout, train harder and smarter, and most importantly keep progressing. Never be afraid to move slowly sometimes, but never stand still.

I appreciate any feedback.  Leave a comment below and If you like it, share the love using the “like” button below.

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Brad Kelly writes a weekly article every Tuesday. He is a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer, Performance Enhancement Specialist, and Corrective Exercise Specialist out of Panama City, Florida. Driven by a passion to help others he not only trains locals, but also performs online personal training and writes fitness articles to reach as many fellow fitness enthusiasts as possible.