As we approach the New Year, many of us are already coming up with our resolutions for 2012: to be healthier, lose 10 pounds, make this year the one where we finally feel good in our clothes. How about combining all those goals together into one? Be stronger.
In the sometimes overwhelming world of fitness, strength training is an often underemphasized element for being at our best, especially for women. Turn on the television or flip through a women’s magazine and it doesn’t take long to see that cardio or working with light weights are frequently purported as the most effective forms of exercise for women. We want to look slim but firm, without bulking up and losing our femininity right?
Well thankfully, as women we can reap all the benefits that come from strength training without having to go up a pant size from a new, hulking frame; in fact quite the opposite if you keep your diet straight! An adult male has ten times more testosterone on average than a female – this is the key to why you cannot build huge muscles even if you train the same way a male does. Also, lots of muscle requires lots of calories to maintain. If you’re eating at a caloric deficit to stick to your New Year’s resolution, or even at maintenance, your body will physically be unable to build bulking muscles. Take a look at USA Weightlifting’s Sarah Bertram for a good example of this. At a weight of 152lbs, her best competition snatch is 196lbs and best clean and jerk is 240lbs!
So why should you strength train? What are some of the healthy benefits? One of the biggest issues for women as we age (starting as early as our thirties!) is the loss of bone density and osteoporosis. This is a big concern, particularly for post-menopausal women, but strength training can help stall and even reverse the process. Continually putting heavy loads on our bones signals to our body that we need to keep them dense and strong. In a similar vein, as we age we lose muscle mass, which applies equally to men and to women. But as with bone density, if we put our muscles under progressively heavier loads our body will adapt in order to withstand them by building and retaining muscle, keeping us strong and independent well into the golden years.
Then of course there is the most obvious benefit of strength training – being strong! This doesn’t just apply to being able to use the bigger dumbbells in the gym; it can be little things that we take for granted. For instance, when I was a senior in college I lived on the fourth floor of my apartment complex that conveniently had no elevators. I stocked up on groceries about once a month (the luxury of being single with no children!) and would come home with at least ten completely stuffed bags and carry them all up in one trip, something I probably wouldn’t have been able to do if I didn’t strength train regularly. Being able to pick up your child with ease, walking your dog with total control, not having to wait for someone else to come home to help you move the television – little things like that can increase our quality of life and instill a feeling of empowerment.
And then there’s the unexpected changes that accompany being strong. A new confidence sneaks up on you; it comes when you realize just how capable your body is of doing amazing things. When you know that your body can squat 150 pounds, you start to see it in a new light. Rather than seeing its flaws, you see its beauty. And while you’ll still be sticking to your resolution and losing those ten pounds, in the meantime, you can appreciate your body for what it can DO.
And if you already know all of this, why not make a resolution to share this with the other women in your life? Together we can create a new generation of strong, empowered women.
Kat Whitfield B.S. NASM-CPT
