WOMENS HEALTH
How I Sneakily Make Women Fall In Love With Weight-Training
A workout starter guide for women to build the body they want, regardless of age
So full disclosure, I have tricked a lot of women in their 40s and 50s over the years.
Nothing sketchy don’t worry, I’m not sending them emails saying I’m a Nigerian prince... But I have needed to find ways of overcoming their reticence to lift weights to achieve the body shape changes they want.
I have now coached hundreds of women (mainly in their 40s and 50s) both in my local training studio and online for 15 years, so I understand what holds women back.
Lifting weights seems hardcore. “I’ll get bulky”. The lifts look difficult. It seems like too steep a learning curve…
“Best stick to the treadmill where it’s safe…”
But if you’re a woman, you can overcome this, and let me tell you:
- the power and confidence you get from becoming stronger;
- that feeling you develop of being bulletproof, and capable; and
- the fact you look great in clothes
is addictive.
And because of these benefits, I always try to sneak weight-training into my female coaching clients’ lives. If you’re open and willing, I’d like to help YOU sneak it into your life too, with a super-effective yet doable approach to getting started.
The Non-Sensible Reasons For Women To Lift Weights
You’ll be aware of the grown-up, logical reasons for lifting weights:
- Avoiding arthritis and osteoporosis as you get older;
- Helping you cope with the knock-on effects of the menopause on your body-weight and -shape;
- Keeps you strong and mobile, bulletproof as you age;
- Empowering, you can do the grunt-work, the lugging around stuff yourself (if you want!)*
*You would be shocked how many times a female client has proudly told me how easy they now find it to deal with air travel. They can shove and lift their own luggage wherever they need to.*
But that’s all pretty generic and obvious — those are the common reasons you ‘should’ include resistance and weight training in your life as a woman.
For me though, by far the greatest benefit for women from lifting weights is…
You will look f-ing awesome.
You see if you don’t include some form of resistance training in your weekly workouts, your body shape sorta just… happens. It is what it is. Without much lean body mass (muscle) the excess body weight you may be carrying just hangs.
But by challenging your muscles, not only can you fight the effects of gravity as you get a little older, you also develop:
- ‘toned’ arms that you want to show off in tank tops, sleeveless dresses and t-shirts;
- great definition through your shoulders and upper back;
- shapely glutes and, let’s face it, legs you know look great in shorts.
I’m a 47-year-old Dad of 3. I freely admit that the aesthetic benefits of lifting weights are what have kept me turning up and working out for over 30 years. All those other sensible benefits are just extremely welcome side effects!
So assuming you’re now fully sold on lifting weights, you’re possibly still unsure about the WHAT. What the hell do you actually ‘do’ when you decide to include weight training in your weekly schedule?
So What’s A Girl To DO in Your Workouts?
Here’s my free MomBod Overhaul workout program for starters, but let me explain how to build your own weight lifting plan that works for YOU.
First things first, you are much stronger than you think.
Think about all your years of lugging sh*t around, whether that’s kids car seats, actual kids, strollers, house moves/furniture. That’s built real strength!
It always amazes me how women will easily carry a 40lb kid around while running errands. But when they’re in the gym they think they need to stick with those wee purple 3lb dumbbells.
So you are certainly not some weak damsel in distress, but of course you’ll need to prepare yourself for a bit of trial and error to begin with.
You need to find your ‘starting weight’ in various exercises, AND you may feel a bit useless at the exercises themselves. This will pass.
You have already aced a lotta things in your life, and this will eventually be another thing to add to that list.
Spend any time online researching weight training and you’ll see plenty of folks working in the Big Lifts. These are barbell exercises like Bench Press, Deadlifts, and Squats.
These are great exercises for sure, working many different muscles at the same time but… you really don’t have to ever do them if you’d rather not.
There are a lot fewer rules around exercise choice than the online gurus would have you believe. But the main rule to follow is this:
You DO need to push yourself a little each time to beat your last High Score.
If you did 10 reps last time, aim for 11–12 this time. If you lifted 20lbs for 12 reps, aim for 25lbs for 8 reps this time.
Incremental progress leads to enormous body shape, strength and fitness improvements over time. Now let’s look at an actual workout program…
Building A Simple, Doable But Effective Program
There are no Women’s Workouts and Men’s Workouts. No Women’s Exercises and Men’s Exercises — we all need to train the same way if we have the same goals.
So here is what is still the go-to plan for me (even after 30 years of training), and most of my clients, male and female:
- 3 full body workouts per week lasting 40–50 minutes;
- involving 7 exercises per workout (1 per main body part),
- Completing 3 sets of each exercise,
- Taking a 1-minute break between sets.
In terms of exercise choice, you would pick and exercise for the:
- front of legs (squats or lunges variations)
- the back of legs/glutes
- your chest or shoulders
- you upper back
- your lower back
- your arms (triceps or biceps)
- the abdominals.
That program is super simple, and can be followed in any gym or even at home with a couple of dumbbells. AND most importantly it is extremely effective for transforming a woman’s body within months.
Beginner Exercise Choices
Getting started in the gym is daunting enough, without getting anxious about whether your form is perfect or trying to learn technically difficult barbell lifts straight away.
So let’s just get our feet wet, and start with dumbbell exercises or gym machines you’re comfortable with (EXRX is a great resource for understanding how to do every exercise ever invented).
You have years to learn the more complicated stuff, the most important thing is to build the workout habit first. So let’s not make that more difficult than it needs to be.
Choosing the right weight on each exercise.
Essentially you should aim to do 3 sets of each exercise for 8–12 repetitions.
So when you are getting started, find a weight you can lift for 3 sets of 8, where the last couple of reps on the last set are a bit nasty-looking and awkward because the target muscle is starting to scream at you.
Nice — we have found your Starting Weight — note that down on your phone or a notebook.
Remember our incremental progress rule?
Well next time on that exercise you’ll use the same weight, but now you’re aiming for 3 sets of 9 or even 10. And guess what — you’ll probably fail… and this is Good.
Because failure means you are pushing your body beyond what it’s capable of, so it needs to adapt, come back stronger and change your body shape for the better in the process.
Once you can do 3 sets of 12 reps, increase the weight a little next time and you’re back to shooting for 3 sets of 8 in the following workout with that exercise.
So Are You Sold?
Weight lifting isn’t for guys, it’s for everyone, and it’s most definitely for women in their 40s and 50s who are wondering if they just need to accept what’s happening to their body shapes and fitness. You do not.
You are already stronger than you think AND you can still get even stronger, building a stronger, more bulletproof, great-looking body.
If you can start lifting weights for a couple of hours each week, then within a few months you’ll:
- transform your body shape
- feel much more empowered, capable and independent
- be prepared for whatever your no-doubt crazy life throws at you in the coming decades…
… AND have great-lookin’ arms in the process ;-)
I’m a fitness & lifestyle coach for the frazzled over-40s. Grab that MomBod Overhaul program for free right here, as well as all sorts of other 40+ friendly programs.
