Seven Weight Training Myths Women Must Avoid

When it comes to Weight Training, we women continually hear wrong information about strength and weight workouts.  Much of the misinformation stems from peoples’ general discomfort with women performing traditional “male” sports and workouts.  While most of us realize that lifting weights will not give us big, bulky, unfeminine muscles, we are nevertheless subjected to myths disguised as truths.  Here are several you may have heard, and certainly want to avoid.

Myth #1: No Pain, No Gain

Let the body building macho men shriek in agony and guzzle Ibuprofen while you stick to a sensible strength training routine. Occasional soreness is common, but too much pain means you’re either not using proper form, or you are overtraining, either one can cause injury and stall your fitness program for weeks if not months.

Myth #2: Only Unfit Women Sweat Profusely During Workouts

Women who sweat during workouts are quite likely to be fit and, according to many men, sexy.  Sweating is the body’s way of cooling itself during intense workouts: the more you workout, the more efficient your body becomes at releasing the heat generated during intense exercise sessions.

Myth #3: Personal Trainers Are A Waste Of Money

I’ve only had one trainer who was a waste of my money. Session after session, he put me on the same machines, at the same levels of resistance, to do the same number of reps. until I finally fired his muscle-bound behind.

Good trainers will work you through a variety of strength training sessions using Swiss balls, athletic balls, free weights, pull-up bars, and the like.  More importantly, they’ll teach you proper form so you can avoid injury. My current trainer, for example, has shown me how to push through my heels when doing squats so I don’t blow out my knees.

Trainers are your guides, teachers, and motivators so be sure the one you hire has a personality and outlook similar to your own.  Humor is important to me, and not a session goes by when one of us are not overcome with the giggles.

Myth #4: Women Should Use Machines and Avoid Free Weights

Machines are limiting; you move the weight along a preset pathway engaging only a few muscle groups. Free weights are more versatile. With a simple set of dumbbells, for example, you can perform reps with your palms facing forward, backward, and sideways, and work your muscles in three different ways.

Free weights will help you develop better balance, which is the key to strengthening your core muscles and avoiding injury. Machines require no balance at all – you sit down, strap yourself in, and push or pull.

Free-weight exercises closely match the movement patterns you’re likely to need for specific sports such as quads and hamstrings for mountain biking, or the stabilizing muscles needed to maintain balance when rock climbing.

Weight Training Myths For Women Include Myth #5 More Reps, Less Weight Burns More Body Fat

Weight Training Myths For Women Include Myth #5 More Reps, Less Weight Burns More Body Fat

Myth #5: More Reps, Less Weight Burns More Body Fat

Completing more repetitions with lighter weights does not burn more body fat than doing fewer reps with heavier weights!  (As a writer I hate using the exclamation point, but I’ll do so here because this myth is so pervasive and so wrong!)

Your body needs 20 to 30 minutes of continuous exercise to begin burning fat.  Ten extra reps in your strength training routines are not significant enough to burn extra fat, especially if the intensity or weight is too low to build your muscles – which leads to the next myth.

Myth #6 – Women Should Work on Toning Rather Than Building Muscles

Muscle can only do one of three things – grow, shrink, or maintain. To build muscles, you need to use progressively heavier weights during your workouts.  To keep muscles the same size, simply train with the same weights, and to make the muscles small, simply don’t workout at all.

“Toned” muscles are simply the result of increased muscle size and low body fat.  Therefore, the way to achieve muscle definition is to decrease the amount of body fat through cardio while building your muscles through weight training.

Myth #7: You Must Work Your Fat Into Muscle

Just as you can’t turn apples into oranges, you cannot turn fat into muscle or vise versa.  Muscle and fat are two entirely different compounds; fat is made up of triglycerides and muscle is made up of amino acids.

However, building muscle will in turn help you burn fat. The more muscles you develop, the more calories your body will burn even while at rest.  Muscles require a lot of energy – a pound of muscle burns 60 calories a day.

To gain five pounds of muscle, your body will need an extra 300 calories a day to maintain your new physique.  I can definitely live with that.