How Much Weight A Woman Should Lift
Wanna start working out, huh?
And by “working out”, I mean having the audacity to step into your gym’s weight room instead of remaining in the cardio section where we all know you belong. Maybe you saw something about how lifting makes women feel empowered. Whatever the reason, you now have this silly idea in your head to become yet another woman intruding on what should be an exclusively male domain.
Good for you, toots.1Hip, hip, hooray for feminism!
*slow golf clap*
But how much weight should a woman lift? Like, when you’re in the weight room forcing everybody with a penis to pretend acceptance of you being there, what’s the amount of weight that your dainty woman hands should pick up?
Well, if you listen to some people, it’s not much!
Tracy Anderson says that no woman should ever lift more than three pound weights. She’s a celebrity trainer whose clientele includes the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow. Yes, that Gwyneth Paltrow! Yes, the actress who very much looks like working out has given her the type of defined and curvy body that all pencils and flat objects should be envious of!!!
So given Tracy Anderson’s bona fides and Gwyneth Paltrow’s defined and curvy body exhibiting the proof of her applied knowledge, only a chauvinist man who finds it beneath him to credit a woman as intelligent would dare tell you that this one is utterly stupid.
Well, look no further because I’m that chauvinist man telling you that Tracy Anderson is a stupid woman. And while I do indeed find it beneath me to credit a woman as intelligent, she’s not stupid solely by virtue of her gender. She’s stupid because she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about!
There’s no reason in the world for a woman to only ever lift pink, yellow, purple, or whatever other lady colored dumbbells there are that are light as fuck! Instead, while you’re in the weight room annoying everyone with your mere presence, you might as well annoy them even more by using the big, heavy black dumbbells and making them wait for you to finish before they can use them too!!!
Why?! What’s the reason?!?!
Oops, hold on!
I’m making a strong assumption here that why you drag your ass to the gym when you don’t even want to is because you want a defined and curvy body. A defined and curvy body is what you want, right?
Okay, since a defined and curvy body is what just came out of your own mouth as what you want, that means that you need muscle.2Yeah, that’s right!
What’s responsible for the definition and curves you just said you wanted is muscle, a much reviled word to your lady ears.
Muscle and fat are what give the body its shape. Muscle is denser and firmer than fat, so adding more of it makes the body shapelier and firmer. Compare that to fat, which gives the body a soft look, and a lack of muscle, which gives the body a stick figure aesthetic when combined with a low body fat level. That’s one of the reasons why you should lift weights and muscle building should be your primary objective. Secondly, performing certain weight training exercises helps define the shape of muscle to make it more pronounced. Together, curves are produced and the body takes on a curvier appearance. For example, by adding size and shape to your upper back, shoulders, and glutes, you create curves in those areas and the overall illusion of a small waist, helping to make you look like an hourglass from the front and someone I’d like to get to know better from the side.
As for definition, that involves stripping the body of the fat covering it to better reveal what’s underneath. This is kinda where building muscle comes into play so there’s actually something beneath the layers of fat, which should result in you looking sculpted.
Well, the only way to build muscle is to stress the body, forcing it to grow bigger and stronger muscles in response. And toots, 3 lbs just isn’t going to produce enough stress to prompt growth!
Well, maybe it will in the beginning.
If you’ve never curled anything heavier than 3 lbs in your life, for example, then 3 lbs dumbbells may be enough weight to cause such substantial microtrauma to the biceps that the body has to repair and rebuild them to make them bigger and stronger so they’re better able to withstand the stress the next time they’re exposed to it. The thing is that the more often you lift those same 3 lbs dumbbells workout after workout, the more the biceps become used to dealing with that load. As such, less damage gets done to the biceps and there’s less impetus for your arms to grow in size and shape.
So how much weight should you lift then?!
Not as much as you probably think!
With me telling you that you have to lift heavy, you probably think that I’m telling you to lift heavy weights like a big, bad bodybuilder.
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.
What I’m saying is that you have to lift something that’s heavy enough to prompt muscle growth, something that 3 lbs dumbbells don’t do. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to lift hundreds of pounds, though!
See, there are two types of muscle fibers in the body. There are type I slow-twitch fibers and type II fast-twitch fibers.3There are two types of type II fibers: type IIa and type IIx. They both have separate functions, but I’m not going to get into them here. When you perform an activity, like lifting weights, the type I fibers get recruited first. If those don’t provide enough force to meet the demand, then the larger and stronger type II fibers get recruited. The type II fibers respond more to training than type I fibers, and they’re the ones you have to activate if you want your muscles to grow. That, however, can only happen once you get past recruitment of the type I fibers. One way to do that is the most obvious, which is by lifting heavy. Performing 8 to 12 reps per set to failure with 75 to 90 percent of your one-rep max is enough to do the job. There is another way that doesn’t require as much effort, though. That way is via fatigue of the type I fibers, which you can accomplish by lifting 30 to 50 percent of your one-rep max for 20 to 25 reps per set to failure.4Research suggests that you’ll build the same amount of muscle with both training methods. The only difference between the two is strength, with the heavier approach producing more of it.
Now, to figure out your starting weight, let’s say you’re supposed to perform a dumbbell bench press. You perform the exercise with two 5 lbs dumbbells for one rep, which you do with little effort. Because it’s too easy, you pick up two 10 lbs dumbbells and repeat again. This time, you’re able to perform the one rep but it’s considerably harder but still doable. The two 15 lbs dumbbells that you pick up next present even more of a challenge, which you’re able to meet with great difficulty. Next, you grab two 20 pounders and barely complete the exercise for the desired rep. This means that 40 lbs total is your one-rep max for the dumbbell bench press. Upon doing the math of what 30 and 50 percent of 40 is, your starting weight should be 10 or 12 lbs dumbbells, which you’ll do the dumbbell bench press with for 20 to 25 reps.
After a few sessions, you find that you can perform the dumbbell bench press with a pair of 10 lbs dumbbells for all 25 reps with no problem. In fact, you can bust out 30 reps. Once this occurs that you can do 1 or 2 more reps than your target rep number, increase the weight by no more than 10 percent. So start using the 12 lbs dumbbells! This is an example of progressive overload, the act of introducing muscle to more stress for it to overcome so it has a reason to continue growing.
Once again, unless you’ve NEVER picked anything up in your life, 3 lbs isn’t 30 to 50 percent of your one-rep max for any exercise!
There, you now know how much weight you should lift.
Because we live in a society where folks desire to put forth as little effort as possible for maximum results, it must’ve pained you mightily when I told you that you had to lift more than 3 lbs dumbbells to get the body you wanted. That smile didn’t stay upside down for too long, though! Nope, you were soon pleased to find out that you can lift heavier than 3 lbs and not only still lift relatively light weights but also get closer to your shallow dreams.
But even if you did want to lift heavier, go ahead!
Oh, you say, but you don’t want gobs of muscle because you don’t want to look any manlier than you already do!
Well, I’ve heard about you taking things up your bottom but unless you plan on shooting male hormones up there too, there’s nothing to worry about because women don’t produce enough testosterone, the hormone responsible for men looking like men.
So either way, pick up something heavier, you!!!
Glossary: arms, bodybuilder, biceps, cardio, dumbbell, exercise, fat, glutes, gym, hormones, muscle, one-rep max, reps, weight room, work out, workout
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