Why Every Woman Should Lift Weights
Strength training is an intimidating workout for women who are novices. It can be awkward and uncomfortable to be in the weight room where it’s predominantly men who are grunting and dropping weights that make the ground shake. Sometimes you can even feel embarrassed and anxious because it feels like everyone is watching you.
Here’s why women should lift weights
But once you get past the awkwardness and make it part of your daily workouts lifting weights provides incredible benefits that doing hours of cardio cannot match.
It’s not just about looking good in pictures and on Instagram.
Aside from eating a healthy diet, adding a weight lifting program to your workouts can be the next life-changing habit you create that will transform your life. It’s the one addition that can make the biggest impact on the quality of your life and happiness for years to come.
Having strong, shapely curves is just a bonus compared to the lifetime of additional benefits that come with weight lifting. Here are 4 reasons every woman should lift weights besides looking good.
Reason #1 – Beat Sarcopenia
Sarcopenia is a natural process in which the amount of muscle you have starts to waste away and starts when you’re around 30 years old. You will naturally start losing muscle if you’re not doing some form of resistance training.
When we start losing healthy muscle tissue we are more prone to feeling tired, experience muscle weakness, and our stamina decreases.
If don’t use and challenge your muscles your body will break them down because they cost a lot of energy to maintain. If you fail to use it you will lose it. This is why we must incorporate strength training into our regular workout routine. You want to get ahead of sarcopenia as you start to age.
The more muscle you have to begin with the more you’ll have the older you get.
Reason #2 – Live Independently
Most of us look forward to enjoying our retirement with plans to travel, start new hobbies and devote time to relationships that we neglected because of work.
Getting the most out of our last decades on Earth means you want to stay out of retirement homes and hospitals for as long as possible.
To do that you must remain healthy and be able to live independently. Having healthy muscle mass contributes to that. It makes daily tasks much easier because we are stronger. Muscles also prevent future injuries by helping to keep us balanced and coordinated so we don’t fall.
Palliative nurse Bronnie Ware spent eight years caring for terminally ill patients and wrote a memoir documenting the top regrets of dying patients. She concluded that “health brings a freedom very few realize until they no longer have it.”
Having increased muscle mass also contributes to higher bone density.
For women, this is especially crucial as we hit menopause because as estrogen levels plummet so does bone density. This puts us at risk for osteoporosis and bone fractures that can put us in the hospital.
Strength training slows down bone loss and increases bone density because it’s a stimulus that puts stress on our bones stimulating the formation of bone-forming cells. The stress from tugging and pushing on the bone that happens when we do any form of resistance training exercises contributes to stronger, denser bones.
Reason #3 – Build Body Confidence
Social media is full of opinions on how we should look in the mirror and we are negatively influenced by their marketing.
They set the standards on how we should be dressed, on the shape of our bodies, and what are the standards for being desirable look like. With filters and photo altering software, we are misled by what a real body looks like.
This causes us to be increasingly self-conscious leading us to feel unhappy and uncomfortable with our bodies.
Strength training will change all of that and boost your confidence in all areas of your life.
When you’re lifting, you no longer concern yourself with how you look in the mirror. It transitions from you versus other women to becoming you versus the weights.
Were you able to pick up the weight and do multiple reps with it?
Were you able to add more weight than you did last week?
Did you feel the burn and experience muscle soreness the next day?
You build enormous body confidence through lifting and this confidence changes your relationships with everyone including yourself. You possess the confidence to try new things and step outside of your comfort zone. You seek out new people and build relationships that lead to life-changing opportunities and it leads to a richer life that is more fulfilling and happier.
The changes in body confidence from lifting weights will positively impact all areas of your life.
Reason #4 – You Build Resilience
Working out in the gym is painful as many can attest when they experience delayed onset muscle soreness after working out. You get stiff and sore but you get back out there and keep going, you keep lifting and keep making progress to your goals.
This attitude and mental strength are what make people successful. It’s not about the failures, it’s about how many times do you keep going after you have failed.
In the weight room, it’s between you and the weight.
Do you struggle to get in one last rep or do you call it a workout and exit?
Are you challenging yourself and going past the burn to increase your reps or do you stop short?
It’s these little moments that build and transform your resiliency.
Over time it does become easier but you have to put in the work to get stronger both mentally and physically. When you’re consistent you’re not only building discipline for your workouts but you’re building discipline for the real world.
How hard you struggle and give it you’re all in the weight room mirrors your behavior outside of the gym. When you push yourself to complete every workout no matter how challenging, you develop a mindset that tells you that you can get through any challenging problem you have in life.
This attitude builds inner strength and resilience to never give up.
Wrap Up
To say that weight lifting transforms your body and your mind is a truthful claim to make.
I assure you that when you stick to weight lifting on a consistent basis you will reap all of these benefits and much more! That’s exactly why every woman should lift weights.
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