How to Start Lifting Weights for Females

I am sure everyone is interested in strength training for various reasons that are obvious to some people. But if you are a female and don’t know what strength training is, you should take the chance to read this comprehensive guide on How to Start Lifting Weights for Females. It is one of the healthy lifestyles that I recommend to women to achieve a fit and healthy body.

What is Strength Training?

This is definitely a kind of exercise that helps to improve the skeletal muscles in terms of size and strength. It also plays a very big role in ensuring that the muscles can be able to endure anaerobic periods. This is done by inducing repeated muscle contractions. It has been shown to be very important in women and therefore I recommend every woman to try it and endure to achieve results which are ultimately a strong and healthy body.

Lifting weights for females is important in that it will help you become attractive and have that kind of shape that you have always desired. It is known that most males are attracted to body shapes which have a narrow waist and broad shoulders. Therefore, why shouldn’t you try lifting weights? It has also been shown to help in improving the general health of women which is a key factor and also helping to derive pleasure from such an activity. There are various levels of training that will be described below.

Levels of Strength training

Beginners

The beginners’ level usually ranges from zero up to one year of training. Therefore, even the kind of training for you to achieve a healthy body varies from the rest of the levels. I will describe how you should approach your training as a beginner. First, you have to start lifting weights.

This one requires one to be able to plan her time and therefore the recommended number of times that a beginner should do weight-lifting should be around three to five times a week. The next very important step is to organize how you will be tackling various body work-outs to help in achieving a strong and fit body.

I recommend that you should be able to divide your workout depending on whether it is the lower body or upper body muscles you want to train in various sessions. Therefore, you should ensure that you do at least two lower body and two upper body training per week. For lower body training always aim to start with the hips. This helps to strengthen the gluteal muscles and the hamstrings.

Some of the exercises you can do with this include the Glute Bridge and deadlift.

Then the next thing you should know is about the lower body exercises. These usually involve movement around the knee joint and some of the examples include the dumbbell, the reverse lunge, and the walking lunge.

Then as you do your upper body training in order to achieve a healthy and strong body it is important that you ensure that you focus on the horizontal pull and horizontal push exercises. Other important movement patterns will be the vertical pull and vertical push.

Furthermore, this training will also require some protein supplementation for you to achieve the best results.

Intermediate level

A person who is at the intermediate level of strength training is usually a person who has been lifting weights for some time usually between one and three years. There are certain routines that you will need to follow when you are at this level.

When you are at this level you should also be able to do various exercises that relate to various muscle groups and have achieved a firm grasp of your muscles. Another important feature at this level is that you should be able to understand how different exercises affect various muscles.

When a person is at the intermediate level, I usually advise that she should practice what we call pyramiding. This usually involves alternating various pieces of training after some weeks. While in this level it is important that you follow some guidelines which include ensuring that for every exercise you do you put in an intensity of greater than 50%.

Another aspect is to ensure that you hydrate your body. This is important in that water plays a very crucial role in various metabolism processes. You should also ensure that you maintain a good breathing pattern. This is very important because it helps in ensuring that the muscle cells get a good supply of oxygen.

Understanding how exercises are performed is also very important because it ensures that you finally get the desired results from training. There are various exercise types that are performed in the intermediate level and they include Barbell bent over rows, Standing barbell curls and many others.

Advanced level

Women who have achieved an advanced level of strength training are those who have done more intense exercise for some time, usually, more than three years. For this one, I recommend it for those who want to have lean muscle and want intense exercise.

You can approach it through various programs whereby you can be able to choose between three, four or five-day programs. For each session, you choose the number of exercises that you will do. Some of the exercises in this level include deadlifts, chin-ups, cable crossovers, parallel dips, lateral raise and many others that you will be able to choose from in your journey to achieving a strong and a fit body.

Periodization

What does the term periodization really mean? This refers to the periods within the training session that help to achieve various goals. It usually helps in determining and planning various training intensities.

Periodization is very important in that it helps in ensuring that you follow various steps to achieve various goals such as a healthy and fit body but at the same time it helps to ensure that you are not in high risk of getting injuries. This is the importance of periodization in training.

Periodization helps you to be able to manage such aspects as recovery, and how fatigued you get. It also helps in governing how prepared you will be for any sport. It also helps in ensuring that you keep on improving your performance over time.

Endurance

This is a period of periodization which usually involves lifting weights to ensure that you have attained what we call endurance. This usually involves the act of ensuring that the aerobic system is well trained rather than focusing on anaerobic system. It is very important when you are training to ensure that you do your best to have high performance.

How does your body enhance endurance during training? First, you need to understand the major factors that determine the performance of the heart and endurance. The proper function of the cardiovascular system will mainly depend on certain factors such as the stroke volume, the heart rate, and contractility. These factors usually help to improve the blood flow to the cardiac muscle.

One factor that determines these factors include the level of aerobic training that you will do. You will wonder how this occurs. As you will be training, the muscle’s contraction will help in propelling the blood flow through the veins. This process is very important in ensuring that the training process will eventually lead into a strong body.

Hypertrophy

This is a very important process in lifting weights and it will ensure that you finally reach your target of having a fit and healthy body. Hypertrophy leads to the enlargement of your muscles and also increases the strength.

This occurs due to an increase in the size of individual cells in the muscle. This is different from the process of an increase in the number of muscle cells. One reason that will make your muscles strong is the process of training your muscles. This is because there will be an increase in contractile proteins. Also, the numbers of myofibrils also increase in number. Finally, there is an increase in connective tissue density.

Strength

Strength is the ultimate result of lifting weights. After leading a healthy lifestyle of training you will get the results you want of having a fit body with strong tense muscles. This leads to a situation where muscles are physically fit and have a firm grasp. Therefore, you need to understand how various processes finally lead to a strong and fit body

Primary movement patterns

There are various patterns that you will practice when lifting weights. These patterns will be described for you.

First, we have the squat pattern. It includes various types that you can try when in the process of achieving a fit and a strong body.

One type is called the body weight squat. Then we have the body-weight jump squat. It involves jumping and when you get down you squat. The other type of squat is the pistol squat. This is usually done when you have your arm stretched in front of your shoulder and then bend down and then move up. We also have wide-stance barbell squat, barbell siff squat, braced squat, dumbbell split squat and goblet squat.

There’s also the lunge movement pattern which involves the forward movement of the body at the same time your arm is outstretched. We also have the hip hinge which targets the muscles of the butt and also the hamstrings. The examples of the exercises using this pattern include the Glute Bridge, the deadlift, and kettlebell swing.

Then, there is a horizontal press pattern. This mainly is for the upper body training. There are various examples of the horizontal press which include press-ups.

Another pattern which will mainly help to focus on upper body muscle includes the horizontal pull. Examples of exercise that you can do here include arm row, seated row, and inverted row.

Another pattern that you will use in strength training is called the vertical press. It is very important in that it helps in training muscles of the upper body. Some of the examples are seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press, Shoulder Press machine, and barbell shoulder press.

We also have vertical pull patterns and some of the examples of the exercises that include this pattern include Wide-Grip lat pull-down, and band-assisted pull-ups.

Exercise selection

I will explain to you briefly about how you will select the preferred type of exercise when in the process of strength training to achieve a fit body.

First, you will choose the type of success depending on your goals, your experience level or even injuries. Also, when selecting an exercise you will need to consider whether the exercise will affect more than one body part which happens to be more effective.

There are various programs that you can choose for strength training. For example, you can train for three to four days in a week. What I will recommend is that you should choose to have about 5-7 exercises per workout and start with the most complex one. This will help you to achieve a strong and a fit body.

Design methods in lifting weights

Lifting weights is very important as it will help you to achieve the strong body you need. However, to achieve the best results, you will be required to classify the activities you do into various sets. I will be explaining them briefly for you.

First, we have the straight set. This one requires you to do a number of various sets but you should ensure you use the same weight and repeat it several times.

We also have pyramid training. This one will require you to use various weights and then later progress to another level.

We also have drop sets. You are required to use this method to ensure that you build your muscle and make them strong if that is your aim.

You can also use a super set which will include doing paired exercises.

There is also a compound set which involves performing two exercises without rest in between and usually done back to back.

Then, there is also a complex set which uses several exercises to work out the whole body.

We also have a circuit set which involves having several exercises arranged in series.

Lastly, we have the cluster set which is demanding since it has a lot of intensity. It involves using short periods of training with rest in between.

Thank you for reading my comprehensive guide on How to Start Lifting Weights for Females. If all this seems to you as too much information, do not hesitate to contact me and I can provide you with all the necessary information to get you started with lifting weights.