In this article I want to talk about exercise for women. I’m not going to say “do this particular exercise and not that one”. This isn’t my goal. I want to give you general guidelines to follow in order to make your workouts more effective. The goal is to help you burn more fat, tone your body faster, and get fitter and stronger.
The reason I’m writing this article specifically for women is that I sense that a lot of women simply don’t know how to workout correctly. They are either misinformed about how they need to exercise or they suffer from “paralysis by analysis”: they do very little because they’re afraid of making a mistake.
By the time you finish reading this post you’ll have a much better understanding of how you need to train in order to get the best looking body you can have.
Let’s go over some exercise tips for women…
1. Reduce Cardio, Increase Strength
If you wander through the cardio section of the gym, you will find more women there than men. Women simply love cardio. They think it’s the best way for them to lose weight without adding “unwanted” muscle mass.
Well, take it from a guy who loves cardio, this is a mistake. Cardio can help you burn calories and it can help you lose weight. However, it is not more effective than strength training is. In fact, strength training can lead to much faster results.
The reason for this is that it is much easier to create diversity in your workouts with strength exercises than it is with cardio. As I recently learned from my interview with Flavia Del Monte, a woman’s body quickly adapts to exercise so you need a lot of diversity in your workouts in order to continue seeing results.
In addition, strength training adds muscle to your body. This helps you to get a high metabolism which means that your body is using up calories at a faster pace. Perfect for fat loss.
Some women are afraid that lifting weights and doing strength training will make them bulky. It’s unlikely to happen. As John Barban explained to me, women simply don’t have the necessary hormones for massive muscle growth as men do. If this still concerns you, read this article on how to lift weights without bulking up.
So, if you’re spending nearly all your time doing cardio, you should incorporate more strength exercises into your routine. You will see faster results.
2. Train More Like Men Do
Some women who do make their way to the strength section of the gym tend to train in a low-medium intensity. This is probably due to a belief that women should life low weights for high reps while men should lift heavy.
Let me point one thing out: you can’t change your body without a real effort. For men and women, calories are burned when your body makes an effort. So, why should women train at a low intensity? It makes no sense.
You need to train more like men do: give it all you got. You should lift heavy, you should sweat. Grunting is optional, as I don’t like to hear this kind of noise in the gym from men or from women. It’s bad gym etiquette. What I do want to see is an all out effort.
You need to push yourself hard during each and every workout. This is how you lose a lot of weight and get very lean.
3. Train Your Entire Body
We all have body parts which we want to tone more than others. For women, with their fear of bulking up, this can change the way they workout.
You need to engage more muscles in your workouts. The more muscles you train, the harder your body works and the more calories you burn. In addition, remember how I told you that the more muscle you have the higher your metabolism gets? If you’re not training all your body, you will have less muscle.
You don’t have to train your entire body on every workout. Some exercise plans for women, such as the Flavilicious Fitness program, focus on different body parts on each workout. However, you do train all your muscles in your general routine. Nothing is left out.
You should also remember that you can’t tone a specific body part by training it. This is known as the spot reduction myth and it’s one of the most common fitness misconceptions people have. You need to work your entire body.
4. Use Free Weights
If you believe that weights are for men while machines are for women, you’re not making the most out of your workouts. Strength machines do have their place, especially when you’re just learning how to do a specific exercise. However, they don’t offer the same experience as free weights do.
Working with free weights requires more from your body as you’re forced to stabilize the weights. You’re simply using more muscles to do so. This is, of course, better for fat burning.
5. Do the Right Cardio Workouts
While a lot of women do too much cardio at the expense of strength exercises, this doesn’t mean that cardio is all bad. One of the best workout tips I can give you is to make sure you’re doing the right cardio workouts, the ones which are more intense by nature.
I love running, aerobic classes, rowing and high resistance recumbent bike workouts. I feel that they’re more intense than using the elliptical, which seems to be the favorite cardio machine among women. However, any sort of cardio is better than none at all.
Final Note
The general rule about exercising for women, and men too, is that your workouts need to be intense in order to produce fast results. So, whenever you’re training make sure that you’re making a real effort. Don’t let yourself off easy. The way to a smoking figure passes through effort and will power.