Welcome to the Optima blog, and my latest instalment looking at
training considerations for females.
During my time as a Personal Trainer, the two goals I find most
prevalent, regardless of sex, are the desire to lose weight and
tone-up. What is interesting though is that males and females seem
to go about achieving these goals in very different ways; males
typically prefer to lift weights whilst females generally tend to
prefer using such cardiovascular (CV) machines as the
cross-trainer, or attending aerobic classes. Bearing in mind that
the goals are the same, should males and females be training
differently? The short answer is yes, but the real question is how
should the training programmes differ? In this blog, I am
going to look at specific training considerations for females and
provide some tips to help you get the most out of your
programme.
Do you want to lose weight?
One of the main differences between males and females is that
females are approximately 40% more energy-efficient. This stems
from the fact that females are designed to carry a developing
foetus for nine months in what, throughout history, could have been
very unpredictable environments. Unfortunately this
energy-efficiency is not a good thing when you want to lose weight
- you want the body to be as inefficient as possible, burning up
huge amounts of energy! Many feel that the best way to lose weight
is to regularly attend the aerobics class at the local gym or
religiously log high amounts of time on a piece of CV equipment.
Initially, most notice a small or moderate change in their body
shape with this form of exercise. However, once the initial period
is over, say 2 or 3 weeks, the body has begun to adapt to the
specific stress of whatever exercise you were doing, therefore
becoming even more efficient. This means that you will be burning
progressively fewer and fewer calories the more you do that
exercise! It is for this exact reason that it is very common to see
the same people on the same machines or in the same classes month
after month and their body shape rarely ever changes!
The most effective way to ensure you get the most from your
programme is to incorporate resistance training, in particular,
free weights. This ensures that your programme has enough variety
so that your body is constantly being challenged and therefore
burning far greater amounts of energy. Also, free-weight exercises,
as opposed to machine exercises, require activation of your
stabiliser muscles which further increases the energy requirement
of the exercise, whilst helping to maintain a more functional body.
An exercise such as the squat literally activates pretty much every
muscle in your body - I have trained many female clients who do one
set out of 10 repetitions and are more out of breath than if they
had just done 20 minutes on the cross-trainer!
Won't I get big if I lift weights?
This is a very common fear for females when contemplating
resistance training, though it is completely unfounded. Females
typically have 10 times less testosterone (the muscle-building
hormone) in their blood stream than males, and much higher levels
oestrogen. The women on the front of body-building magazines have a
very hard time putting on muscle and this is after lifting very
heavy weights for as much as five hours each day, coupled with
comprehensive nutritional modifications and supplements.
Of course, it is very important to seek professional advice when
beginning a resistance training programme to ensure that you
perform exercises with the proper technique.
Join me for Part 2, in which I will take a look at postural and
nutritional considerations for females.