by Ethan Holmes

Created on: February 20, 2009

Women & Weights

Truth & Myth

I've been a trainer for a long time and I've trained many women in that time; some with great success. Invariably the number one goal of most of those ladies was to lose weight. It's very rare that a female client walks up and announces that she wants to be a bodybuilder or enter the Ms. Fitness America contest.

Long ago most of them gave up any form of regular exercise program and many had spent at least the last few years eating more than they should while slowly falling into a more sedentary lifestyle. Then one day they look down at the scale or struggle unsuccessfully to zip up that favorite pair of jeans they have had for years and finally decide it's time to do something.

Whatever the motivation, it is important to decide to do something about it. The next most important thing is to decide what to do about it. Third, (this is where I come in,) it is important to seek professional consultation about what to do.

It's at this point that most females express utter consternation at my insistence on incorporating strength training, i.e., weight lifting into their exercise routines. Often times the client will actually become briefly upset and say things like, "Oh my god, I don't want to be big! I want to slim down, not get big." or "It hurts when I left weights. Why can't I just do cardio?"

In order to dispel these and other myths and educate you about strength and weight training let's examine the life of my fictitious client, Jane. (No offense intended to anyone actually named Jane.)

Jane is a forty year old woman who is very contemplative about this milestone in life. This milestone is a media-created, media driven event in which Jane is convinced that momentous things are about to happen in her life because she has just reached middle ageaack!

Frankly I believe that to be a bunch of mule fritters. Let's say Jane would like to live to be ninety years old, which is not unreasonable in this modern era. That means Jane is not even half way through her life. But the media would have Jane believe that her life is about to run amuck; her hormones are going to go nuts, her hair will turn snow white, wrinkles are setting in and she is going to gain at least fifty pounds. Never mind that Jane is already forty pounds overweight thanks to her sedentary office job and those dam M&M's on the desk.

Jane went from being 5' 6" tall and weighing 125 pounds at the age of twenty to 165 pounds twenty years later. She blames children, her job,

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