If transforming your body was that simple surely everyone would have the body of their dreams?!
Women, it appears, tend to have an especially hard time of it. In this age of endless online information, magazine articles and the latest training and diet “MUSTS”, regarding the gold standard approach to how you should train and what and when to eat. It’s of little wonder that there is also endless confusion and a frustrating lack of results to match.
This 2-minute read will provide a few simple rules for women to follow who want to change their bodies, whether to lose body fat, build muscle for a better physique, or to even just get a little STRONGER.
➡️Prioritise Weight Training 🏋🏼♂️
Whether your goal is fat loss, stronger curves, or better overall health, endless research continues to suggest lifting weights is a necessity and should be of primary focus for all of us.
Don’t get caught up in the myth that you need to do cardio or train in the “fat-burning” zone for hours to get lean either. Slow, endless cardio is largely useless for fat loss as the stimulus required to have continued success here will also need to increase over time. The results you once got from 30 mins work will need the increase as the body cleverly adapts to the challenge. I don’t know about you but I haven’t got hours of free time each a day to spend slogging it out on the treadmill?!
Cardio is also sadly very ineffective for increasing muscle also and will offer very little if any significant change in body shape.👙
➡️Understand How a Women’s Recovery is Different from a Man’s.💑
…Use Shorter Rest Intervals😅
Due to the metabolic differences between men and women, females recover faster when strength training – FACT!
Research compared the effect of 60, 120 and 180-second rest intervals in an upper body workout with the goal of completing 10 reps per set in men and women. The women in the study were able to complete significantly more reps than the men, regardless of the rest interval used.
Obviously, on a side note, women shouldn’t rely on programs designed for men either. (Another issue I see regularly). Being dragged around the gym by your partner and doing his “bro day chest and bicep blitz” may not be the most productive use of training time. Ultimately training goals and needs between the sexes will and should be different.
I’d strongly suggest having a bespoke training programme designed with your goals in mind and then experiment with shorter rest intervals (e.g. 1 minute not 5!), if you’re not seeing the desired results you’d expect from training endeavours.
🚨Before you cut all rest period completely however it should be mentioned that UNTRAINED women will recover slower than advanced lifters and may need slightly longer recovery intervals until they gain base levels of strength and conditioning.
➡️Avoid Anything that Causes Excess Stress 🤷♀️
(Diets, Cardio, Lack of Sleep & Mental Stress)
Long-term stress in every form whether it be physical or mental is especially bad for women’s bodies because it can throw an already delicate hormonal profile into complete disarray.
An issue I regularly see with new clients is this heightened physical stress from following low calories diets and then overtraining on top which dramatically increases hormone disruption.
Progesterone, which is the hormonal precursor to testosterone and estrogen, is used to produce unfavourable levels of cortisol instead. The negative effect here is hormonal imbalance and abundance of cortisol release which will inhibit any fat loss goals, therefore efforts should be made to reduce all stress and stressors as a priority.
➡️Train for Strength & Lift relatively “Heavy” 💪🏽
Most people who are lifting weights from my observations sadly do not use loads that are heavy enough to produce any changes in body composition or strength.
Women I believe are most at risk of wasting their time because there is a considerable bias against them lifting anything heavier than those pink 2kg dumbbells used mainly as doorstops. I’m not suggesting attempting to break any world records overnight, but choose compound exercises and use appropriately challenging loads with great form will help increase lean muscle, improve strength and tax energy expenditure, which in turn will help elicit at fat loss response as a by-product.
➡️Always Have a Plan When You Walk Into the Gym.📝
Leading on from my last point…
If you’re a trainer or have a background in exercise, you know that strength training makes people stronger and builds muscle because it overloads the body, causing it to adapt to stressors applied to it. (In this example moving weight from A to B).
Our bodies evolve incredibly quickly, which means that to keep making progress, you have to continually change some aspect of your workouts. Whether it be increasing this weight, adding reps or just improving exercise execution.
This is called periodization, and it’s basically just another word for having a “good plan”. If however as most you wander into the gym and randomly pick an exercise based on which way the wind is blowing that day, without thought of choosing an appropriate load to challenge as mentioned above how will you ever remember what you have done previously and what your body has already adapted too?!
So I’d suggest start by logging your favourite workout. Each time you visit the gym try and improve aspects of this routine. There is no need to continually change a workout either. As mentioned you can make plenty on continued progress grooving exercises with more challenging loads, utilising different reps schemes or just improving quality and control of that movement.
If you are looking to begin your journey to transforming your body, you might be interested in checking out my ladies only “Better Body Transformation Programme”