Women, weights are not just for men.
Men, weights are not just for bodybuilders.
Don’t be afraid to lift weights to get effective weight loss results, or build lean muscle.
Lifting weights has many other advantages too, not just about aesthetics.
Welcome to part 6 of 6: The worst things to do if you want to improve your health, performance and body composition
Mistake Number 6 – Women (And Men) Avoiding Weights
There are a lot of myths surrounding weight lifting and whether you should do it. Can I take this opportunity to assure you that lifting weights is good for you.
For your primary weight loss and lean muscle goals lifting weights is extremely effective!
It is a myth that women will bulk up. Body builders have extremely committed nutrition and training with the sole purpose of muscle building hypertrophy and bulking up, and they have a really hard time doing so.
In addition, men have significantly more testosterone in their body than women, making bulking up for women even more of a challenge.
Rest assured, you won’t get bulky by lifting weights if you don’t specifically train for this.
By lifting weights you’ll feel an improved perception of body image wellbeing and self confidence. You’ll increase your bone density and offset osteoporosis (particularly important for women).
You’ll improve your mood, improve your self image, improve your body composition, and create a fat-burning furnace in your body that will continue to burn calories even after your workout – at rest. Plus you will look great of course!
Sports people will not become sluggish by using weights. You don’t have to be a ‘meat-head’ to use the free weights section in the gym.
Use free weights properly to experience lean muscle gain, injury prevention, amazing body composition changes and physique, gain height as your posture improves, gain confidence outside the gym too.
Benefits Of Lifting Weights
- Experience lean muscle gain
- Injury prevention
- Body composition
- Physique
- Gain height as your posture improves (reduce excessive spinal curvature)
- Gain confidence
- Self image will improve
- Sports performance
- Injury prevention
- Stronger joints
- Stronger bones
- Stress busting
- Improved blood lipids
- The list goes on!
Free weights are not to be avoided if you want effective weight loss, performance and health benefits.
They are a very effective tool to use with body weight exercises and HIIT. You don’t need weights machines though just a few basic bits of kit such as a barbell and dumbbells, or even a water butt or buckets of sand.
If you have any questions regarding this or you want to share your training routines, or if you are struggling for inspiration please do ask your questions and share below.
Happy training.
Nico.
Discover The Rest Of This 6 Part Series
Jump To Part 1
Jump To Part 2
Jump To Part 3
Jump To Part 4
Jump To Part 5
Jump To Part 6
Further Resources
You might also like to read this ultimate weight loss guide. This is an in depth guide on what makes great nutrition and the elements that we need to focus on in our lives that will result in better health, performance and body composition. The guide includes actionable steps that you can implement into your life easily. As a supplement to the guide comes the weight loss cheat sheet which is a great start to improved eating habits. You can access it below this article.
In addition to these free resources I offer online personal training services. If you feel ready to take the next step towards consistently exercising well, and would like the confidence to know that you’re following a professionally designed and well considered training plan then online personal training is a great next step.
If your’re struggling with consistently eating well and you feel that this is really holding back your progress, then online nutrition coaching may be your next step. You can learn more about online weight loss coaching and how it can help you to build a better relationship with food and achieve better health, lose weight and perform at your best.