Body Building for Women

By: Michael Russell
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:18:39
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You often hear women telling each other how much they would love to start resistance training but they fear losing their feminine figure and replacing it with the muscular figures they see on the television, while watching female bodybuilding competitions. They state that they would love to tone up but not at the risk of having big strapping muscles. This misconception is shared with most women in almost all societies. The fact of the matter is only 5 percent of women have the genetic ability to develop any substantial amount of muscle any way. The women you see on the stages for those competitions are not only genetic wonders but they also use pharmaceuticals to help their body reach that point. Seeing that the majority of women out there aren't going to fall into this category its safe to say you'll benefit from some weight training.

Now that we have dispelled some myths lets look at some exercises you can do to start burning fat and building some lean muscle. Firstly most women who do take the plunge and start weight training are under the impression that doing more repetitions with less weight is what will help them tone up. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact most male bodybuilders tend to increase their reps in order to gain more muscle as it equates to a larger work load. The key to adding some muscle while maintaining your current weight (or as close to as possible) is to do compound lifts with lower repetitions and heavier weights. Olympic weight lifters and wrestlers are known to lift weights but their focus is not on gaining muscle mass. Their main focus is on adding explosive strength and muscular endurance while keeping their body weight the same. You have to remember for them to even gain 1 pound of body weight can be devastating as it might move them up an entire category in their competition. Some of the best compound exercises one can do are the squat and the dead lift. You might be thinking to yourself, but those are only lower body exercises. That is another misconception many people have. Both those exercises actually recruit a lot of the upper body in order to stabilize and help lift the weight. But more importantly these 2 exercises are known to be the best fat burners out of any exercise, be it aerobic or anaerobic.

The first things you need to do are explicitly define what your goals are. Are they to lose weight, add muscle or simply get stronger? Now you need to figure out exactly how many days it is that you can devote to your routine. Keeping in mind that, 45 minutes is more than an adequate amount of time per weight training session, you should try for 2 session's per week. Stay away from typical body building routines as they are usually excessively long and made for those using enhancements. A good simple routine to start with would be 4 sets of 5 repetitions of Dead lifts and squats on one day followed by 4 sets of 5 reps of both chin-ups and dips on your other training day. So in other words one day of lower body training followed by one day of upper body training. Try this routine for 6 weeks and fine tune the exercises to your liking.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Body Building.

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