Benefits of Strength Training for Women: What It Does for You
If strength training for women brings to mind a female Hulk, don't fret. It would take extraordinary efforts and medical intervention for a woman to bulk up like that.
Rather, strength training (ST) slims down females. Perform an ST routine 3 times a week and don't cut a calorie out of your diet, and you can lose four pounds or more a year. Is that all? Well, no. Lean muscles weigh more than fat, so you will have lost a lot more fat than the scale alone will reveal. Your clothing size will go down.
Better news -- ST creates a long-term influence on your metabolic rate and calorie consumption. People who perform an ST program have a higher metabolism for the rest of the day than if they had spent the same amount of time in aerobic exercise. It adds up to roughly 100 calories a day, over 350,000 calories in a year (10 + pounds) -- for doing nothing! Additionally, if you replace 10 pounds of body fat with 10 pounds of lean muscular tissue, you will use up 7 to 10 times as many calories per pound. Fat consumes 5 calories per hour while lean muscle requires 35-50 calories per hour. ST not only diminishes your bulk, it makes it way easier to keep it off!
Another really valuable pretty much women-only advantage is the benefits in fending off osteoporosis. ST builds up muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones. All of these work against the hazards caused by bone loss. Should you tumble-- and the balance gotten by ST will lower that probability-- your more powerful body parts will help protect against the often disabling effects of such a fall.
OK-- ST can be done in several ways. What way is best? Beginners may prefer to use just their body for the weight they lift, but not too far into your project, you need more. The most traditional equipment has been dumbbells and barbells, but resistance bands/tubes and exercise machines, too, can be used.
If you use dumbbells or barbells, you will need them in increasing weights to keep your program on track. To prevent "accommodation", where your body ceases using as much energy to do the same work, you have to change what you are doing every three weeks. Health clubs have large sets of both the hand-held dumbbells and the larger barbells. If you are exercising at home or at your workplace, you would like something less cumbersome. A great alternative for women are the Bowflex SelectTech 552 dumbbells. A twist of a knob is all that's needed to adjust the weight from 5 through 52 pounds, all most individuals will ever need. They take barely more room than a single pair of regular dumbbells.
Elastic bands or tubes work great and take a small amount of space. The darker the color, the more resistance the bands give, so you will want a whole rainbow at some point.
Alternating lifting your own weight, pulling on bands, and lifting dumbbells can provide years of strength training for a woman.
About the Author
For more information on strength training, visit http://www.selecttechbowflex.com/strength-training/ Learn more about Bowflex SelectTech 552 dumbbells at http://www.selecttechbowflex.com/bowflex-selecttech-552-dumbbells/ Thomas Christopher is a Colorado-based public speaker.
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