Average Weight For Women

The benefits of lifting weights, also known as weight training, strength training or resistance training, include stronger muscles, a stronger heart, a leaner physique, and a body better able to support your everyday needs and activities. However despite its many benefits women, still tend to shy away from this beneficial form of exercise because of a misplaced fear that they will “bulk” up and become like an overly muscular body builder.
It seems to be many a man’s dream to have big, bulky muscles. So why is it that men, whose bodies naturally contain much greater amounts of testosterone and growth hormones, can lift weights, yet never achieve those “Terminator” like muscles? Well, unless they are supplementing with dangerous and unhealthful steroids or similar substances, most men do not naturally bulk up by lifting weights, and neither will most women. The idea that women get big, ugly muscles from weight training is a misconception.
The fact of the matter is that women must lift weights in order to achieve the lean, sculpted bodies they desire. If a woman does happen to have the genetic disposition to bulk up quickly, there are easy ways to alter a workout to prevent too much muscle gain, while still increasing strength and rapidly burning fat.
The idea that weightlifting causes insanely huge muscle buildup is largely a creation of the media. It’s true that some female weightlifters take steroids, and these hormones do make them look very masculine, and women who take performance-enhancing drugs should expect to develop deeper voices and more masculine bodies, because these are the known side-effects, after all anabolic steroids contain elevated amounts of testosterone, the male hormone.
The average woman who weight trains, however, will simply achieve a slim, healthy body without adding unwanted muscle mass. In fact, this is how boxers, wrestlers, and other athletes who need a lot of strength without a lot of extra weight (muscle mass) train to stay in shape.
The process of weight training involves controlled lifting and working out with weights. Two basic terms related to weightlifting are “reps” and “sets”. A rep describes the complete act of raising and lowering a weight during a single act of exercise. A set describes the number of times a particular rep is performed. For example, when a person does five reps of a squat, they squat down and stand up five times, continuously, before stopping and either moving on to another exercise or finishing their workout. Those five squats would equal one set. A balanced weight-training session will include several sets of different exercises.
A more advanced weight-training method would be to perform exercises of only 6 or fewer reps, per exercise. This would make the time under tension very short and primarily train your nervous system, which would allow you to gain strength without building much muscle. This technique should be done using the maximal weight you can lift without losing perfect form for no more than 6 repetitions. Doing more than 6 reps allows for greater muscle development, presumably something women generally do not want to achieve.
Another method that has been around for a long time is performing as many repetitions as possible, with the idea of toning your muscles. Well, like a lot of uninformed ideas, this concept is false. You will build stamina and endurance within a muscle through multiple repetitions, but it will not shape or tone your muscles. If your goal is to build stamina without gaining muscle mass, perform anywhere from 15 to 30-plus repetitions of a single exercise.
These two solid principles will help you benefit from weight training without bulking up. Although, as stated in the beginning, chances are that no matter how much weight you lift, you will never have the problem of building too much muscle mass. It is always possible for you to gain fat, and with it a little additional muscle, so you will feel bigger, but remember, that is mostly the result of the fat, and I guarantee that once you lose the fat, you also will lose the feeling of bulkiness.
Ladies, I encourage you: Let go of your preconceived ideas about weight training. Do not fear it. Embrace your weightlifting potential! Your body and overall health will benefit so much more from it than from spending hours on the treadmill.

Weights for Women â?? Donâ??t Worry About the Weight!

Although weight training has traditionally been thought of as a male activity, research over the past 35 years has provided information that supports and refutes many of the previously held beliefs about the male/female differentiation in physiological performance.  In spite of all the research, many of the questions asked all those years ago, are still being asked today.

Women, on the average, are about 65% as strong as men.  Very few dispute this assertion due to obvious physical differences in males vs. females.  On the other hand, when other factors are taken into consideration, there are great variations from one part of the body to another, and in various movements of the same body part.  For example, even when body size is taken into consideration, men are as much as 60 â?? 65% stronger than women, in upper â??body strength. Conversely, in terms of lean body mass, women are generally stronger than men in lower body strength. 

As to the question of possible skeletal muscle differentiation between men and women, the actual muscle fibers are identical, although research suggests that there are subtle differences in the total makeup of muscle mass.

Researchers have seen that the cross-sectional area of muscle fibers is smaller in women, and there may be a difference in the number of fibers per specific muscle, versus men.

Generally, women have more Type I (slow twitch fibers) and men have more Type 2 (fast twitch) fibers.  Type 2 fibers tend to get larger (hypertrophy), so males have a head start when it comes to increasing muscles mass.

Women sometimes avoid resistance training for fear of looking too muscular, and less than feminine.  Society, traditionally, have expected men to appear muscular, and women to be leaner.  Physiologically, it is difficult for women to add excessive muscular mass.  Without supplementation, resistance training, for women, typically results in a reduction of the amount of fat over the existing musculature, with a moderate increase in muscle size.  The resultant effect is more muscle definition.  Certainly, a low-fat, lean-muscled female shape is not a negative.  In the unlikely event of a resultant level of muscle hypertrophy that is unwelcome, program modifications will reduce that effect. 

Although ancient by this time, the term muscle-bound continued to find life in some literature.  Properly performed resistance training, far from decreasing flexibility, can actually increase average flexibility.  There is no need for women to avoid strength training for fear of limiting flexibility.  A pre-workout stretching regimen can not only increase flexibility, but may decrease the possibility of injury.

Although a traditional strength training program will have little, if any effect, on cardiovascular endurance, a circuit-training program has shown a beneficial cardio effect, in some studies.  Generally, there should be no difference in the cardiovascular effect of strength training, between men and women.

Because of individual differences, standardized programs do not provide uniform change.  Although women may not start at the same strength level as men, they have the ability to gain strength at the same rate as men.

Resistance training is equally valuable for both men and women.