Lean Muscle Workouts For Women Good Or Bad

Shaping And Toning Or Lean Muscle Building

We have talked about women and muscle building before, but it seems from some of the questions I get it's still a concern. As you have seen lately I have been posting a lot of lean muscle workouts. And with good reason.

To get the ultimate in fitness, fat loss, health and having the body of your dreams it all starts with gaining lean muscle.

But still the question from women often is.......

Should Women Do Shaping And Toning Exercises Or Lean Muscle Workouts?

Remember This:

*** Adding lean muscle is what gives you the toned lean look you’re after.

Muscle is what gives your body shape. You can lose all the fat you want but if you don’t have any muscle to show then you won’t have any real shape to show ***

Lean Muscle Building And Shaping And Toning Is The Same Thing

Okay that being said I am going to hand off the rest of today's post to Flavia Del Monte. It is my hope that hearing it from another women who does lean muscle workouts will convince you,

Women Should Do Lean Muscle Workouts

Expressing fear of building muscle and looking like a man by merely lifting some weights is like me saying "I don't want to play golf because I'm afraid I'll turn pro..." Nothing just happens – including building muscle!

If your body was destined to look like a man, than you would probably already know it! Genetics don’t change over night...

Unless you have a river of testosterone flowing in your blood, the fear of getting big is unfounded! Competitive female bodybuilders train at least three hours a day and perform 20-30 sets PER body part with their women fitness programs in hopes of getting a fraction of the size of their male counterparts.

GETTING BIG IS NO EASY TASK FOR A FEMALE... and if it were than you would see Jane swinging from the vines and swimming with the alligators, not Tarzan!

Simply put, this myth has no scientific backbone. It is very hard for most men to build muscle; let alone women.

I hear of men who are eating thousands of calories and lifting heavy weight but don’t put a pound of lean muscle mass on their bodies. Yet, females are afraid that lifting anything more than 8-lb dumbbells will make them look like a man!

Little-Known FACT Not only lifting weight, but lifting HEAVY weight will give you definition and that toned look that is desired from EVERY female all over the world.

 YOU CANNOT LOOK LIKE A MAN FROM LIFTING HEAVY WEIGHTS, UNLESS YOU TRY (REALLY HARD) TO DO SO, INJECT TESTOSTERONE INTO YOUR BUTT, OR ARE A GENETIC FREAK!

First off, men have 10 to 30 times higher levels of testosterone than females.

 Women do not have a large testosterone production in their body, making it impossible to build muscle at the same intensity as a male.

A male is made up of a lot more muscle than women. 23% of a women's weight is muscle, compared to 40% of a male’s weight. Women simply do not have the genetics to build muscle and the women that have done so, have done so by genetically altering their bodies.

I can take a guess that most women want a TONED look.

When your muscles look etched, it is because of a low percentage of fat around that muscle. Shaping and Toning and lean muscle building is one in the same!

There are 3 ways growth occurs in muscles:

* during resistance training (followed with precise nutrition)

* natural growth period (such as puberty)

* during pregnancy In order to build lean mass, you must have an excess of calories: *energy in is greater than energy out*

That said, in order build muscle, you MUST tailor your diet for muscle building.

And that applies to women who want to "TONE". You have to first BUILD the muscle in order to have a toned look.

Increase in CALORIES + lifting heavy = muscle mass There are three different body types:

* ectomorph (naturally thin)

* mesomorph (naturally muscular)

* endomorph (naturally broad and thick)

All three different body types need to eat and train a certain way in order to build muscle and lose fat.

The issue here is that there is only so much storage in a muscle. You need to lift heavy weight in order to increase the size of your muscle.

If the unlikely chance of too much muscle being built, all you would need to do is drop the weight, and take in less calories.

THE SKINNY Resistance training is essential to a balanced and effective training program. You need to lift heavy in order to build muscle.

You cannot change your genetics to the degree to look like a man if you are a women unless you are "trying" to do so by working out at least 2-3 hours a day and lifting 20-30 sets per body part.

I'm guessing you don't do that?

I didn't think so... so flush that fear down the toilet.

–Flavia Del Monte R.N., C.P.T., PN Certified

Here is the bottom line ladies:

*** If you want the body of your dreams it starts with heavy resistance training.

*** You will Not and can Not build big bulky muscles

*** Heavy resistance training and firm healthy eating plan mixing in interval training is the path to having that head turning body

Intervals And Resistance Training Cardio

Metabolic Resistance Training And Interval Training The Fastest Fat Loss

9 times faster fat loss? A bold claim for sure. And we hear these claims all the time the new wonder drug, fad diet whatever.

 But today we are going based on scientific studies done on the effects of resistance training cardio and interval training.

In my last post I talked to you about  slow cardio to lose body fat quickly and began to briefly talk about  the benefits of something much more effective – short duration, high intensity interval training exercise.

Simply put, if you are looking for the quickest way to lose body fat, high intensity exercise is a MUST.

Short duration, high intensity exercise comes in two major forms: metabolic resistance training (MRT) or resistance training cardio (as I like to call it) and interval training. Today, I want to take a DEEP look into the benefits of each.

1 -  Metabolic Resistance Training:

As mentioned in my previous post, metabolic resistance training is simply “cardio with weights” or as I call it resistance training cardio and when speaking of the most effective form of exercise for the fastest possible fat loss, this is it.

Before we really get crankin here is a quick example of a resitance training cardio example exercise.

 A couple of studies to support this that Alwyn Cosgrove dug up:

Schuenke MD, Mikat RP, McBride JM.
Effect of an acute period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: implications for body mass management.
Eur J Appl Physiol. 2002 Mar;86(5):411-7. Epub 2002 Jan 29.

In this study a 30-minute circuit style metabolic resistance training session was put to the test. The result was a 38 hour increase in metabolism – massive AFTERBURN.

Let’s put this in perspective: Say that you worked out at 8AM on Friday. By way of  resistance training cardio, you’d still be burning calories from that workout while out at the movies on Saturday night.

You want to burn calories by watching Wolverine? Now you can.

Here’s another:

Kramer, Volek et al.
Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.
Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 31, No. 9, pp. 1320-1329, 1999.

This study showed that those who added metabolic resistance training to a reduced calorie diet burned up to 44% more fat than those who dieted alone.

Don’t get me wrong, diet is the NUMBER ONE component of the fat loss puzzle, but once you’ve got that down, resistance training cardio or MRT can really take your results to a whole new level.

And here’s one more:

Bryner RW, Ullrich IH, Sauers J, Donley D, Hornsby G, Kolar M, Yeater R.
Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate.
J Am Coll Nutr. 1999 Apr;18(2):115-21.

This study compared “slow-go” aerobic exercise to resistance training cardio and found that the resistance group lost significantly more fat without losing ANY lean muscle even at an extremely low calorie intake (not so for the aerobic group).

In fact, believe it or not, while the aerobic group experienced a decrease in metabolism (and lost muscle), the resistance training group actually increased overall metabolic rate.

THAT’S the power of metabolic resistance training.

Convinced that metabolic resistance training cardio  WORKS? Good. 

 Interval Training:

Interval training is simply a form of high intensity cardio in which you alternate back and forth between periods of high effort and periods of active recovery.

Here is a short video demo of a beginners Interval training workout.

For example, you may run very hard for a period of one minute and then follow it up with walking for one minute, repeating 8-10 times for a less-than-20-minute workout.

Does it work?

Tremblay A, Simoneau JA, Bouchard C.
Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism.
Metabolism. 1994 Jul;43(7):814-8

You want to know what happened when this research group compared 20 weeks of endurance training vs. 15 weeks of interval training?

While the aerobic/endurance group actually managed to burn more total calories during exercise, the interval training group lost NINE TIMES more body fat. NINE TIMES.

Nine times more fat loss in half the time? The clear choice for fat loss is interval training.

And it all comes down to elevated metabolism after your workout is completed – the afterburn.

Are you experiencing the afterburn

Fat Burning Workouts