In addition to arm and leg strength, women may want to focus on building muscular strength in their hips, core and upper body. Women tend to peak in upper-body strength shortly after puberty, according to the National Children and Youth Fitness Study. Many women's sports, such as tennis, golf, volleyball and softball require significant hip and core rotation. Women can improve their muscular strength and endurance using a variety of equipment, exercises and workouts.
Limit-Strength Program
Lifting heavy weights or otherwise creating strong resistance against your muscles through exercise machines, resistance bands or body-weight exercises damages muscle, with the resultant repair process making your muscles bigger. This process is known as hypertrophy. To build large muscles, you can create a workout program that emphasizes lifting close to your maximum weight and performing fewer repetitions. To build upper body strength, use exercises such as biceps curls and chest presses, emphasizing eccentric muscle contraction. These contractions occur when you lengthen a muscle, such as lowering a weight during a curl or raising a weight during a press. Don't let gravity drop your weights down during curls, and don't use momentum to propel your weight upward during a press. Use muscle effort to perform each eccentric contraction for the best workout, recommends fitness expert and author Dr. Gabe Mirkin. Perform three to five repetitions of each exercise, performing five sets of each exercise: start with two warm-up sets of 60 and 80 percent of your max, finishing with three sets at your max.
Core Strength Program
Performing ab exercises that have you completely stretched out or sitting up after each crunch is not as effective as using exercises that keep constant tension in your muscles. For example, with sit-ups, you start on your back with no tension in your stomach muscles and end up in that position after each sit-up. Crunches, on the other hand, have you start with your shoulders off the ground, requiring your muscles to contract; you return to this position after each crunch, keeping your muscle tense during the entire set of exercises. Perform core workouts using exercises that require you to use your muscles the entire time.
Body-Weight Program
Push-ups, pull-ups and chin-ups are difficult for many women because of the upper-body strength they require. The average 18-year-old female tested in the National Children and Youth Fitness Study was only able to do one pull up. Even if you cannot perform a pull-up, chin-up or push-up, the effort you expend trying to do them will create beneficial isometric muscle contractions. An isometric muscle contraction occurs when your muscle is resisted but does not move, such as when you push against a wall. The more you do them, the more muscle you will build. Eventually, you should be able to perform these exercises. Increase their benefit by performing the eccentric muscle contractions with muscular effort. This means that when you lower yourself after you pull yourself up for a chin-up or pull-up, you should not let gravity drop you--lower yourself slowly with your muscles.
Muscular Endurance Program
In addition to muscle building through limit-strength workouts, you can build muscular endurance and increase muscle size--though to a lesser extent--lifting lighter weights and performing more repetitions. Use dumbbells, resistance bands or a low resistance setting on a home gym to perform approximately 10 repetitions of an exercise before moving on to the next. Use 40 to 70 percent of your maximum weight during a circuit-training workout. Take only one minute between sets of exercises to keep your metabolism and heart rate up during a 30-minute workout to build endurance.
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