How Should You Train if You’re a Woman?
It depends on what your goals are. If you want a lean and strong body, read on for the formula.
Probably you’ve heard it requires dieting on very low calories and tons of cardio. Maybe you’ve heard if you do any weightlifting it should be with very light weights and tons or repetitions.
The truth is, that’s all wrong. Women can and should lift heavy weights. Heavy, of course, is a relative concept. You should lift heavy for you. That’s the key to building muscle. Muscle will give you the curves you want. It also means you’re strong, which makes everyday living easier. You’ll handle mundane tasks like carrying the groceries or picking up your kid with ease. A bonus that doesn’t get a lot of hype is when you have more lean muscle you can actually eat more food without gaining weight.
One of the worst myths out there is that lifting heavy weights will make you bulky. They make it seem like all you have to do is basically look at a barbell and you’ll turn into a muscle monster. It’s true, there are women who are very big and very muscular. They got that way through deliberate effort over a long period time and to be honest, a lot of time, steroids. I’m not passing judgment. They get to make their own life choices.
Building muscle takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. If it really were as simple as doing a few sets of deadlifts, then most guys would be a lot more muscular. Men have an advantage in muscle building in that they produce far more testosterone than women (testosterone is a hormone that acts as a natural steroid). Even with this, guys still need to put in tons of effort to pack on pounds of muscle. Simply put, it’s not easy.
If you ever get to a point where you wake up one day and feel like you have too much muscle all of a sudden, you can just stop lifting.
Okay, so women should lift heavy but which exercises? A good training program will have you lifting 3-4 days a week doing mostly compound lifts. Examples of compound lifts are deadlifts, squats, pull-ups, and bench presses. The term compound lift just means you’re involving more than one muscle group and multiple joints in the exercise. The benefit is that you’ll be training the bigger muscles in your body in an efficient way. With squats, for instance, you’ll build all the muscles in your legs, your butt, and even your core.
But, Jason, I don’t want to get too bulky!
I hear you. I’ll explain that in a little bit.
Doing those compound movements will help you get stronger overall. Add in just a few isolation exercises and your workouts will be set up beautifully. Isolation exercises are lifts like biceps curls, or leg curls, in which you target a specific muscle group you want to accentuate. Only one joint is involved. This is how you build up the smaller muscles to give you the exact look you’re after.
There are countless ways you can tailor a specific workout regimen to fit your unique situation and your individual goals.
You want to train consistently. Sporadic efforts aren’t going to get you good results. This doesn’t mean you have to obsessively train every day. Depending on your preference and schedule, 3-5 sessions per week (consisting of an hour or less, each) is plenty.
Focus on getting stronger over time. When you first start out, you’ll find progress will come pretty easily. As you move further along, your rate of progress will slow. This is normal. It means you’re getting stronger. Slower progress is still progress.
Start your workouts with the compound lifts (after you warm up), and then do a couple isolation lifts.
Only utilize cardio as needed.
Committing 3-5 hours a week is not a lot but over time it will yield you the great results you want. Each time you’re in the the gym try to improve just a little bit over the last time. This may mean you add 5 lbs. more on a lift. Or maybe 2.5. It might be staying the same weight but doing one more repetition. Each incremental improvement is a win.
Your warm-up should be just enough to get you ready to lift, not tire you out before you get started. Do a few minutes of movement to raise your body temperature and get you loose. Then more specific movements to prepare you for the lifts you’re about to do. For instance, doing some bodyweight squats before you do barbell squats. Hit 1 or 2 compound lifts, then 3-5 isolation lifts. Then a stretch/cool down period for a few minutes. That’s all it takes in the gym.
Now, a brief controversial interlude: you don’t need cardio in order to get the body you want. For years we’ve heard how you need to do hours of sweaty, breathless cardio in order to get sufficiently lean. It’s just not true.
Cardio exercise is great for cardiovascular health. This is about the efficiency of your circulatory (blood) system. It’s not about building muscle, strength or losing fat. It is not an efficient way to accomplish those objectives.The commonly held belief is that its calorie-burning properties help with fat loss. It is true it does burn calories but there’s a more effective way to make that happen.
How Much to Eat?
It’s time to talk about food. We’ll go over the basics of all you need to know here. For a deep dive check this out. If you want to lose fat, there is only one way. You need to be in a calorie deficit. That’s just a term that means your body is burning more calories than you’re eating (a calorie is just a unit to measure the energy in food).
Calorie deficit - burning more calories than you eat. You will lose weight.
Calorie surplus - burning fewer calories than you eat. You will gain weight.
Calorie maintenance - burning as many calories as you eat. Your weight will remain the same.
Those are the only three states of energy balance. They will determine your strategy when it comes to how much food you’ll eat to achieve your goals.
It isn’t the addition of muscle that makes women appear bulky, it’s having too much fat on top of the muscle. (Incidentally, this is true for men also.) Eating at a moderate deficit will help you lose the fat. Hitting the weights will help you preserve or even build muscle. It’s this combination that’s going to give you the look you want.
What about a larger deficit? A moderate deficit is better than a larger deficit. If you just lose weight, you’ll lose muscle as well. This causes a change in size, not shape. You’ll be smaller, but the same proportions.
Calories are the main driver of fat loss but it’s important to remember that what you eat is also important. You probably have a pretty good idea of this already. Ask yourself, which is healthier 500 calories of pop tarts or sweet potatoes? This is just an example, but you understand that aside from calories, nutritional content matters. Your food should nourish your body with micronutrients (those are vitamins and minerals) in order to be healthy.
How much protein, carbs, and fats should you eat? Target 0.8-1.0 grams of protein per pound of target bodyweight. Including enough protein ensures your body will be able to preserve muscle tissue when you’re in a deficit. The remainder of your calories should come from a combination of carbs and fats that you find most enjoyable and allow you to adhere to your calorie target.
Still with me? Cool!
Now that calories are covered, let’s talk about how getting strong will dramatically improve how you look and feel.
Weight Training
You want to get strong at a relatively low body fat level. This will mean you’re lean and will have curves in the areas most women want to be.
One of the most pervasive and harmful myths out there is spot reduction. The idea that if you want to reduce the fat on a specific body part you can do that through exercising that body part is false. It’s untrue, a lie, a fabrication. You get the idea. It persists because we all wish it were true.
What you want to do is build up the muscle through training and reveal it through your diet. They’re two complementary processes. What’s the best way to get some muscle?
You accomplish this by focusing on a few compound exercises, such as the squat, deadlift, and press. Compound exercise just means the lift involves more than one joint moving and uses your body’s large, powerful muscles. Toss in a couple isolation exercises to build up some of the smaller muscles in a complementary way.
When you squat, you use all the muscles in your legs, your butt, and even your core. The deadlift is similarly a total body exercise. Doing pull-ups or chin-ups works your back, arms, and shoulders. The overhead press works your shoulders and arms. It’s easy to see how doing a few sets of these exercises is more efficient than working on each muscle group individually.
The key to continual progress is a process called progressive overload. All this means is that you consistently strive to increase the amount of work you do. If you do the same 3 sets of 10 repetitions with the same weight, your body will adapt and you’ll stop making progress. Once you’re able to do 3x10 for a given weight, it’s time to increase the weight. I recommend adding by the smallest increments yields the most steady gains.
You add the weight and maybe you’re only able to do 3 sets of 8 repetitions. That’s okay! Keep at it until you’re able to do 3 sets of 10 repetitions with it. It may take a few sessions before that happens. That’s perfectly normal. When you get it, you know what to do now, right? Yep, add some more weight and start the process again. If you want, you can also add another set or two, if you want to and have the time (but it’s not necessary).
(I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to use proper form. It means you’ll start using weights that will most likely feel too light. Using proper form ensures you’re training the right muscles for the lift and it lowers your chance of getting injured. If you get injured, you can’t train. If you can’t train, you lose time.)
A brief word on machine training. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using machines for strength training. They’re more accessible than free weights and a little bit safer. The machines move in a fixed path. That means you’re unlikely to injure yourself but you won’t work the smaller muscles that assist the larger muscles in stabilizing the weights. If you have access to nothing but machines, obviously they’re better than nothing. Using free weights will build those smaller stabilizers along with the larger muscles.
As you get stronger you’ll notice your clothes fit differently and that person in the mirror starts to stare at you just a bit longer each morning. Your body composition is changing. This is awesome and exactly what you want! However, the number on the scale may not be changing.
Often we have a number in mind of what we think the scale should read. The scale can be a useful tool, but it’s definitely not everything. For best results, you should weigh yourself in the morning, after using the bathroom and before eating or drinking anything. Understand that scale weight fluctuates from day to day, and in fact, over each day. This happens for several reasons, including whether you’ve eaten/drank, what you had, whether you’ve used the bathroom, if you’ve worked out that day, your sodium levels, etc.
If the scale tells you something you don’t like, but your clothes fit great, you like how you look in the mirror, and playing with your kids doesn’t wipe you out, you are winning. Period.
You don’t have to throw out your scale (though if it’s causing you anxiety, understand you don’t need to step on it). A great tool to track your body composition is using a tape measure to measure your waist.
For consistency’s sake you should do this in the morning, after you’ve used the bathroom and before you eat or drink anything. Take a deep breath in and out and measure the circumference of your waist at your navel. To get a proper measurement don’t suck in your belly or poke it out.
If the scale number remains the same but your waist is shrinking that is a great indicator that you’re dropping fat and building muscle. Again, that’s a victory.
For the record, you do not need to do any cardio for fat loss purposes. The value of cardio is that improves the efficiency of your body’s circulatory and respiratory systems. It certainly burns calories which can help increase a calorie deficit, but it’s not necessary.
If you enjoy cardio training, I wouldn’t say to stop doing it. Life is too short not to do things you enjoy. Just understand that, despite the overwhelming popularity, it’s not a requirement in order to drop fat.
You can incorporate it into your workouts after your weight training, if you want. Doing it before can leave you too drained to get the most out of lifting weights. Keep in mind that cardio can tax your body’s ability to recover. Doing excessive cardio can undermine your body’s ability to increase muscle and improve strength.
3 Types of Cardio
LISS - Low Intensity, Steady State Cardio. An example of this is going for a walk. This is not taxing to the body yet has cardio benefits. It also doesn’t tend to increase appetite.
Moderate Intensity - An example of this is what you normally find at the gym. People on treadmills, ellipticals and the like. Huffing and puffing for 30 minutes to an hour in hopes of becoming lean. I’m not a fan of this cardio. Many people find it ramps up their appetite. If you’re burning calories just to eat them back, just to burn them… you see how you’re just spinning your wheels?
HIIT - High Intensity Interval Training. You do a short all-out effort followed by a very low intensity recovery period. An example of this would be doing a 30-second sprint where you go as fast as you can, followed by 60 seconds of recovery where you’re taking it very easy. This is tough but it’s got a couple big benefits. It saves time. You can get a great HIIT session in 10 minutes (I wouldn’t recommend doing HIIT sessions longer than 20 minutes). It’s generally muscle-sparing, meaning it doesn’t send your body messages to shed muscles like moderate cardio can.
The Big Takeaways:
Lifting heavy makes you strong, not bulky.
Eating excess calories makes you bulky.
Weight training a few times a week is enough to build the muscle to transform you and get strong.
If you need to drop fat, eating at a moderate deficit in addition to weight training will get you the results you want.
Change takes time, so be consistent and patient and it will happen.
If you’re going to do cardio, LISS or HIIT is the way to go.
Sample Training Plan
This is just an example of a training plan. You would do these three workouts on nonconsecutive days to allow your body to recover. Each workout incorporates a leg exercise, an upper body push exercise, and an upper body pull exercise.
Day 1
Warm up 5-10 minutes
Compound Lifts:
1-2 Acclimation Sets
3-5 Working Sets
5-10 Repetitions per Set
Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes between sets
1-2 Acclimation Sets
3-5 Working Sets
5-10 Repetitions per Set
Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes between sets
Row:
1 Acclimation Set
3-5 Working Sets
5-10 Repetitions per Set
Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes between sets
Cool down and stretch 5-10 minutes
Day 2
Warm up 5-10 minutes
1-2 Acclimation Sets
3-5 Working Sets
3-8 Repetitions per Set
Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes between sets
1-2 Acclimation Sets
3-5 Working Sets
5-10 Repetitions per Set
Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes between sets
1 Acclimation Set
3-5 Working Sets
5-10 Repetitions per Set
Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes between sets
Cool down and stretch 5-10 minutes
Day 3
Warm up 5-10 minutes
Squat:
1-2 Acclimation Sets
3-5 Working Sets
5-10 Repetitions per Set
Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes between sets
1-2 Acclimation Sets
3-5 Working Sets
5-10 Repetitions per Set
Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes between sets
Rows:
1-2 Acclimation Sets
3-5 Working Sets
5-10 Repetitions per Set
Rest 90 seconds to 2 minutes between sets
Cool down and stretch 5-10 minutes
Accessory/Isolation Lifts:
(Optional) Pick 1 or 2 of these and do them after you finish your Compound Lifts each workout. Do 1-3 sets of 8-12 repetitions with 30-60 seconds of rest between sets.
Abs:
(Optional) You can alternate doing one of these exercises per workout. 2-3 sets of as many repetitions as possible with good form, resting 30-60 seconds between sets.
Thanks for reading! Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions or comments!
Email: jquinn.fitness@gmail.com Instagram: @jason.quinn.21
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