Healthy Lifestyle

Strength training is an important component of fitness. Women can benefit from strength training in their exercise routines and everyday life.

What is strength training?

You have probably heard it before, “do strength training activities” or “lift weights 4 times a week.” What does it all mean? Strength training is exercise where you are working your muscles with some type of resistance with the goal of making you stronger. That could be your own body weight or it could be a pair of dumbbells. Strength training, like aerobic exercise, is another important component of the exercise recommendations. 

What is the strength training recommendation?

The strength training recommendation is muscle-building activity: 

• At least moderate intensity
• At least 2 times a week training all major muscle groups
• No specific amount of time is recommended like the aerobic exercise recommendation
• 2-3 sets of 8-12 reps of each exercise in a routine is a general rule for improving or maintaining muscle strength

A rep is the number of times you complete a specific movement. 1 rep = 1 pushup. 10 reps = 10 pushups. A set is the number of times you do the specified number of reps. 1 set of 10 pushups = 10 pushups 1 time. 3 sets of 10 pushups, squats, and deadbugs = 10 pushups, 10 squats, and 10 deadbugs repeated 3 times.

The major muscle groups are:

• Chest
• Back
• Arms
• Shoulders
• Core – abdominals, lower back
• Glutes and hips
• Thighs
• Lower legs

You may have seen some workouts where you train all your major muscle groups in one workout. But you can also break up the strength training by body part (often called a split routine) where you train your upper body on one day and your lower body on another day. With a split routine, remember that to meet the recommendation, you’ll still need to train all muscle groups twice in a week. If you did a split routine of upper body exercises on one day and lower body exercises on a different day, you would do strength training work 4 times a week. Two days of upper body workouts and 2 days of lower body workouts.

What counts as strength training?

So many things, which is nice. Following the recommendation of at least moderate intensity and using some kind of resistance, you can be doing strength training mopping your house, bringing groceries into the house, and yard work. You can also do strength training by doing squats and pushups during a 10 minute work break. Strength training can also be more structured where you follow a specific program. EffiFit will be offering such a program soon, so get excited! You may work with a personal trainer or follow a workout plan or online class. All of these are great ways to get in strength training to help you meet the recommendation. In an upcoming post, we’ll be talking in more detail about ways to get in strength training to meet the recommendation. 

Why it’s important to meet the recommendation

Increased strength. By working your muscles with resistance, your muscles become stronger. Because your muscles become stronger, you become stronger. Strength training is a great way to get strong and stay strong both mentally and physically.

Improvements to bone health. By adding resistance and performing exercises that are weight bearing, we improve and maintain bone health. This is important especially for us women because as we age, our bone density decreases. Having strong bones allows us to have independence longer.

Increased and maintenance of muscle mass. Every decade starting in our 30s, we start to lose 3-8% of our muscle mass (also known as sarcopenia). Strength training is a great way to maintain muscle mass and increase it.

Increased independence. As someone who is highly independent, this is probably my favorite benefit. Strength training allows for greater independence because your body is strong and moves well. But also, you can carry and move stuff with ease like putting your suitcase overhead on the plane or carrying a heavy box of stuff up to your apartment. Or my personal favorite, bringing all the groceries in on one trip (even though that may not be best from a posture and alignment perspective).

Empowering/ increasing confidence. I find strength training to be very empowering because it shows what your body is capable of doing. I hope that you find the same benefit in strength training too. 

Teaches persistence when things get tough. Strength training and regular exercise is another great way to increase mental toughness. When we don’t want to continue on, we find a way. Not only is that beneficial to our workouts, but it’s beneficial to life in general. Some days will be better than others but there will be those days when we have to push through (in our workouts or at work).

Benefits to your aerobic training. Those stronger bones and muscles that you build because of strength training have major benefits to your aerobic training. Walking, running, biking, swimming, you name it, all benefit from stronger muscles and bones. You may notice that some aerobic exercise feels easier and less demanding of your joints. Strength training helps decrease your risk of injury during aerobic exercise, yes!

Move through your day with ease. With stronger bones and muscles comes easier movement and more movement with less pain. This together makes moving about easier. So those quick trips to the store or to get something from your car become less demanding. That makes for one less thing to worry about during the day.

Next steps

Create a plan to work in 2 days a week for strengthening for all your major muscle groups. You can do strength training on different days than aerobic training or on the same days. In an upcoming post, we’ll talk more specifically about structuring regular strength training into your life.

Until next time! – Atim