Woman and Weights: Santa Monica Fitness Instructors Debunk 8 Myths That Could Be Keeping You From Your Goals, PART 3

Welcome to the third installment of our four-part article series on the myths surrounding women and weights. Could your reluctance to incorporate weight lifting into your circuit training routine be keeping you from achieving maximum results at the gym? “Probably,” say many Los Angeles Gyms instructors.

Previously, in Part 2, we debunked the following myths:

3.  Weight lifting leaves you stiff and inflexible: If you warm up, stretch, exercise correctly and perform the weight lifting movements as shown to you by your instructor, it should actually increase muscular flexibility.

4.  Stopping weight lifting can allow muscle to turn into fat: Definitely not. Fat and muscle are two different kinds of tissue. One cannot become the other. If you stop exercising and increase your intake of calories, you will likely increase your body fat percentage.

Let’s take a look at some more myths:

Women and Weight Lifting Myth # 5: You Can Eat Anything You Like, So Long As You Train With Weights

    The ability to eat anything you want, when you want, has far more to do with your unique metabolism than it does with exercise. There are some people who can literally eat chocolate cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner and still be as skinny as a rail, although they won’t be healthy. Then there are other people who have to exercise every day and eat a calorie-controlled diet in order to prevent themselves from putting on weight.

    The rate at which the body burns calories when at rest is something that varies from person to person and will have a far greater bearing on how liberal you can be with your diet. Working out at the gym and doing exercises such as circuit training and Interval Training do help you to burn off a lot more calories, thereby making it possible for you to eat more without putting on weight. But to say that weight training allows you to eat what you want is a dangerous myth that, while it may work for you, may not work for others with a lower metabolism.

Women and Weight Lifting Myth # 6: Women Only Really Require Cardio Exercises and Very Light Weights to Stay Fit and in Shape.

 

    “Cardiovascular exercise is necessary for both men and women; it’s what makes our bodies fit and our hearts healthy,” explains a Los Angeles gym instructor. “But to say that women only require cardio exercise is absolute nonsense. Weight training builds muscle mass and compels the body to burn fat, while cardio tends to burn both fat AND muscle. Following a circuit training routine therefore increases fitness, burns fat and strengthens and builds muscle throughout the body.”

     As for using lighter weights, again, this is a myth. Your muscles respond to resistance. The heavier the weights, the more the muscle fibers have to tense and strain to lift it (and the more calories you’ll burn), which explains why people with bulging muscles are strong. If you only make use of light weights, your muscles won’t really need to do much work to lift them and your body won’t change because it’s not being challenged.

     “Remember, women don’t produce enough testosterone to build the kind of muscle bulk that men can, so you don’t need to worry about looking masculine if you incorporate weight training into your circuit training routine,” says a female personal trainer in Los Angeles.

Stay Tuned for Part 4, Coming Next Week!

We’ll be exploring the following final myths:

# 7: It’s Dangerous For Women to Lift Weights

# 8: Being Lean is the Ultimate Goal of Exercise