Strength training helps women develop their muscles, with results usually noticeable within several months. Most women attain a toned look that stops short of appearing bulked-up and discover greater ease in everyday tasks involving lifting or climbing stairs. You can devise an appropriate strength training program for your goals and available time.
Effects
Women who lift two or three times a week, like most men, increase their strength between 20 percent and 40 percent after a few months of training. A typical woman will gain 1.75 lbs of muscle and lose 3.5 lbs of fat in two months, according to a Wayne L. Westcott, fitness research director for the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Types
With strength training, you can focus on lifting heavy weights for a few reps or you can lift lighter weights for more reps. A rep, or repetition, refers to one lifting motion with the weight. Lifting lighter weights for more reps helps women tone their bodies. For best results, choose lifting exercises that target all areas, including upper body, lower body, and core. Women have an advantage when it comes to core work, because women are more likely to lose abdomen fat than men are from resistance training, according to a study published in 2002 by Gary R. Hunter of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Considerations
Develop your own strength-training program and do it two or three times a week. Pick five to seven exercises and be sure to target your arms, chest, shoulder, back, legs, abs and butt. Chose weights or machines that you can that you can do three sets of 15 reps. You should not be flying through each set easily, but you also should not be struggling after five lifts.
Benefits
Besides the obvious benefits of gaining muscle and losing fat, strength training increases athletic performance, improves mood, reduces blood pressure, slows aging and reduces risk of injury, back pain, osteoporosis, illness, heart disease and arthritis, writes Sarah Richards in Fitness magazine. Plus, the extra strength will ease daily activities such as carrying groceries.
Expert Insight
Strength training leads to fat loss because increased muscle leads to increased calories burned. Adding a pound of muscle will burn between 30 and 50 extra calories a day, Westcott says. This means over the course of a year, adding a pound of muscle burns between 4 and 5 lbs. William Kraemer, researcher and professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, says strength training slows aging because it helps you maintain lean muscle tissue.
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