Females and Strength Training

There is no topic in the strength training community laden with more misinformation than that of women and strength training. My goal, my sole purpose in life, is to rid the community of these fallacies. Data dump all of what your cousin’s best-friend’s niece, who used to be a trainer for one summer, told you about strength training. I’m here to set the record straight.

1. Women and muscle gain.

   Why is it that EVERY one of my female client’s first words to me are “I don’t want to gain too much muscle”. Long story short - it’s not going to happen. I blame this one on the glorious sport (for lack of a better word) of female bodybuilding. Next time you’re at a bookstore, take a look in any of the bodybuilding rags… I mean mags. Specifically, look for photos of female bodybuilding competitors. Notice anything unusual? If it wasn’t for the bikini tops that the females have to wear, you might confuse some of the women for men. The heavier the weight class (more muscle mass) the females compete in, the more masculine they appear. The reason they appear so masculine is due to the copious amounts of anabolic steroids they’re taking. On average, women have 10-12 times LESS testosterone than men and it’s testosterone that’s mostly responsible for muscle. Plus, women have to deal with estrogen, which makes muscle gain difficult. Keep in mind that a pound of fat is approximately the size of your clenched fist, while a pound of muscle is about the size of a 50 cent piece. So, even if you lost fat and gained muscle on exactly a one-to-one ratio (which you won’t) and the scale weight stayed the same, you’d still be a “smaller,” slimmer version of yourself.

   

   Guess which one is the female bodybuilder and which one is the Olympic athlete?

2. Osteoporosis

   Osteoporosis is now said to be a teenage disease that manifest throughout life. Unfortunately, most women turn to milk and calcium supplements as a preventative, which is about as practical as walking in a full body cast for the rest of your life. Current research demonstrates that strength training can increase spinal bone mineral density by 13% in six months. Wolff’s law (a German anatomist and surgeon) states that bone will adapt to the loads it is placed under. If loading on a particular bone increases, the bone will remodel itself over time to become stronger to resist that sort of loading. What does this mean to you? It means that if you lift heavy weights, in the form of different exercises, all your bones will get bigger and stronger. This is one case where being big boned is a good thing.

   

   This is what occurs after a lifetime of lifting pink dumbbells.

3. Aerobics is for fat loss.

   One of the cornerstones of exercise science is the SAID principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand). It’s a fancy way of saying that your body adapts physiologically to any activity you throw its way. Knowing this, let’s say you start performing aerobic activity for weight loss three times a week for 30 minutes each session. You notice some weight loss for the first few weeks but then it begins to taper. In response, you then increase your aerobic activity to 40 minutes a session. You just increased your aerobic sessions by 10 minutes, to get the same results you USED to get at 30 minutes. That’s the SAID principle at work. Your body has adapted to the stimulus (30 minutes) and now an additional amount is needed to get the same results. This vicious cycle continues and continues, with no end in sight. To make matters worse, our daily activities are only responsible for burning up approximately 15-30% of our daily energy expenditure. Whereas, our resting metabolic rate (RMR), which is the amount of energy required to keep the body functioning, makes up to 60-75% of our total energy expenditure. So, obviously, building muscle and increasing the RMR, is one of the most important keys to losing fat and keeping it off.

   Here are some other interesting facts about aerobic training:

   • Aerobic training increases oxidative stress, which accelerates aging.
   • Aerobic training increases adrenal stress, which makes you FATTER.
   • Aerobic training lowers your testosterone/cortisol (stress hormone) ratio, which makes fat loss very difficult.

   Read the following books to get a more thorough understanding:

   The Schwarzbein Principle II, Dr. Diane Schwarzbein
   Adrenal Fatigue-The 21st. Century Stress Syndrome, Dr. James Wilson

   Marathon Runners

   

   Sprinters

   

   Who would you rather look like?

   So, what do you do for fat loss? ANAEROBIC activity (high-intensity training). Anaerobic activity is any strenuous activity that causes the muscles being exercised to have insufficient oxygen to meet the demands of the activity. This causes your body to rely on alternative, non-oxygen dependent processes to produce energy.
   Words don’t do it justice, so you’ll have to experience anaerobic activity yourself to fully appreciate it. Head outdoors and sprint at full speed for 30 seconds, take 45 seconds rest and repeat until you pass out. That’s anaerobic activity. What’s so special about it?

   Excess Post-exercise Oxygen consumption (EPOC). EPOC describes the increase in the metabolic rate after high-intensity training. There will be an increased period of oxygen uptake and an elevated RMR for up to 36 hours!

   So what? This means you’ll continue to burn additional calories after training while you’re at work, at home reading my website and while you’re sleeping. With aerobic activity, once you stop moving, you quit burning calories. How many more calories will you continue to burn with anaerobic training? Depends, but some studies have shown an additional 400 calories burned with 20 minutes of anaerobic activity, over 60 minutes of aerobic activity.

   Let’s recap:

   • You’ll spend less time exercising
   • You’ll burn more fat
   • You won’t age prematurely

   How can you lose? Sounds like a good deal to me.

4. Cardio becomes more important as we age.

   Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Visit any nursing home and you’ll quickly notice that the majority of the people are there because they don’t have the strength to perform every day normal tasks. Whether it’s getting in and out of bed, the shower or even out of a chair, they need assistance. Why? As we get older we lose muscle, specifically the Type II fibers. Think of Type II fibers as the big boys, they’re the strongest ones, but they tire quickly. Sprinters are blessed with mostly Type II fibers. Type I fibers, are the endurance fibers, they’re not as strong, but have great endurance capabilities. Marathon runners are blessed/cursed with Type I fibers. The repetition range needed to train the Type I and II fibers are depend on how long you have been resistance training, but generally, repetitions of 12 and above, work the Type I fibers. Repetitions of 8 and less primarily work the Type II fibers. What amount of repetition does 99.9% of the female population perform? That’s right, usually nothing less than 12 repetitions. These women, who continually work in this repetition range, are training their Type II fibers to take on Type I characteristics. They’re making themselves weaker! So, if we know we’re going to lose Type II fibers due to aging, wouldn’t it make sense to build them up and try to keep as many as possible? So, do yourself a favor and drop the pink vinyl coated weights and lift something heavy. Building the Type II fibers will go a long way towards ensuring a higher quality of life as we age.

5. Toning and lengthening a muscle.

   Finally, we get to my all time favorite misconceptions in the female strength training field. When clients speak of wanting to tone and lengthen their muscles, I know they’ve been staying up late and watching infomercials. The truth is that there’s only ONE way to lengthen a muscle (I know, I saw the same Pilates infomercial and they’re wrong) and that’s to detach the tendons from bone, stretch the muscle and then reattach the tendons. Not quite what you were expecting? Tone is often confused with resting muscle tonus. Tonus is a partial activation of a muscle, making your muscles look dense even at rest, to keep it ready to perform work. Tonus is improved by both heavy and explosive lifting. People incorrectly use these terms for having a low enough body fat percentage where the muscle can be seen, giving it a “toned” and “lengthened” appearance.

   

   Division I College Athlete’s legs built up with low repetitions and heavy weights. Don’t these legs look toned and lengthened?

   Hopefully, I have given you some food for thought and have you seriously considering strength training. There are many more benefits that I didn’t cover, but lift something heavy and find them out for yourself.