Girls Lifting Weights: 9 Reasons Why Women Should Lift

Women often skip straight past the weights at the gym out of fear of ripping muscles like an amazon woman. But girls lifting weights experience the same benefits as women who practice cardio or yoga, possibly more!

Here are 9 reasons why women should lift weights regularly!

1. Muscle Burns Fat

The muscle you want to avoid building burns the fat that you want to lose!

How?

Some of the important functions of skeletal muscle include movement, blood cell production, and heat production in the body. In fact, according to a skeletal muscle medical publication, our muscles produce almost 85% of our body heat from contracting!

Anybody who pays an energy bill can tell you that heat production requires energy. So, within each of our muscle cells, little powerhouses called mitochondria constantly work to keep them functioning. This makes muscle cells natural energy consumers.

If you lift, you grow and increase the number of muscle cells, which in turn need more energy to participate in bodily functions, thus increasing your metabolic rate, even while you rest. Meaning, you burn more calories. One pound of fat equals 3,500 calories, so when you burn more calories than you consume, your body will resort to breaking down the fat stores for the extra energy needed to fuel your muscles.

Fat Burning Tip

Don’t starve yourself! This is counterproductive; not providing your body the energy it needs will result in it breaking down muscle for fuel, which will lower your metabolism.

Instead, eat small, frequent, nutritious meals to keep your muscles energized!

2. Girls Who Lift Weights Tone, Not Bulk

When girls lift weights, they tend to tone up, not bulk out.To Understand why let’s take a look at the reason bodybuilders use anabolic steroids.

Steroids release synthetic testosterone, a predominately male hormone, into the bloodstream, tricking the body to think it’s going through puberty and triggering muscle growth. Even a man who does not use steroids to bulk produces 20 times more testosterone, the hormone greatly responsible for bulking up the muscles, than the average woman.

So, A girl who lifts weights simply cannot bulk like a man. Her hormones allow her to tone while maintaining that womanly shape.

Toning Tip

Lift a smaller amount of weight with more sets and repetitions to tone and lean out. Doing so recruits more muscle units rather than building more muscle cells, and creates a leaner, more toned appearance.

3. Lifting Builds Your Buns

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, women are spending on average, over $4,800 for surgically enhanced buns! What they do not want you to know, is that you can lift your buns and implant them with muscle at the cost of your gym membership.

The surgical implantation enhances the glutes, a muscle group that weights can plump up.

Buns Building Tip

Don’t only do squats to build your buns. To round out your bottom, you need to work an entire group of muscles. With your barbell squats, also do weighted lunges and deadlifts to build that apple bottom you crave.

4. Girls Lifting Weights Build Bone Strength

The National Osteoporosis Foundation reported that 80% of the estimated 10 million Americans with osteoporosis are women. Luckily, weight-bearing activities strengthen compact bone.

Meaning, women, and weights belong together. Weightlifting protects girls against both osteoporosis and bone fractures.

Bone Building Tip

Do weighted squats regularly. This exercise bears weight onto almost all of your bones, therefore helping you protect them all in one exercise.

5. Lifting Gives You Heart

Aside from building character to give you heart, lifting literally gives you your heart for longer by keeping it healthy, according to research. This makes it especially important for girls to lift weights because, as the CDC revealed, heart disease causes about 1 in 4 female deaths and is the leading cause of death for women in the US.

Heart Healthy Tip

Throw a cardio strength training routine into your workout. Research suggests that mixing the two helps your hears, as they affect your blood vessels in different ways. So, regularly pick up those dumbbells and get your heart pumping for a half hour at a time!

6. Weights Lift Your Confidence

Weightlifting builds confidence because when you look better, you feel better about yourself. But there’s more!

Weightlifting also pushes people to consistently improve. The nature of the lift is to always push yourself to lift a little more than last time, add more reps, improve your form, and/or to try a more difficult lift.

Each time you improve, you build your self-efficacy.

Confidence Lifting Tip

Always go to the gym with a personal lifting goal. Set one that’s challenging but reachable. This will help you to always feel a sense of accomplishment to further build your confidence. Ask your personal trainer to help you stay accountable!

7. Lifting Prevents Injuries

If you train properly, you can reduce your risk of injury by stabilizing your joints and strengthening your ligaments. But if you are injured, it is best to contact experienced lawyers dealing with insurance after an auto accident to get the compensation for the injuries and damages caused.

Safety Tip

Always have somebody there to spot you and make sure that you are lifting properly so that you continue to protect yourself from injury rather than injure yourself. Join a fantastic program that will guide you!

8. It Lifts Your Mood

Lifting triggers the release of chemicals, called endorphins, in your body. Dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine work in your brain to make you feel happier and to help reduce your sensation of pain. Essentially, lifting gives you a natural high.

Mood-Boosting Tip

Research shows that music also makes people happier. Science also says that positivity is contagious. So, to maximize the happiness factor in your lifting session, throw on some energizing jams and work out with other positive people.

9. Lifting Helps You Survive

Think, survival of the fittest! Chances are, with today’s technology, you will not starve if you’re not strong. However, you will suffer from aches and pains from the simple things.

Lifting weights will help you mom more easily and reach things in difficult places without hurting yourself. Everyday life requires some degree of strength, and the more you have, the easier life will feel.

Furthermore, it will help you be better in any athletics you enjoy. Soccer, softball, kayaking, water-skiing… they all require muscle strength.

Survival Tip

Always switch up your routines. If you only workout your quads and back or only workout your core, then you are not setting yourself up for optimum living. Fitness programs ensure that your workouts hit all of your muscle groups, to keep you balanced.

Join A Lifting Program Today!

Women need strength. Girls lifting weights strengthen all areas of their life! Schedule an appointment to join a program that will help you lift your way to a happier and healthier life.