6 reasons why women should lift weights

Any woman who works out with weights will likely wax lyrical about it.

Weight-lifting brings tangible results and is hugely satisfying. It’s becoming increasingly popular amongst women, but many still fear they’ll soon resemble body-builders, rather than create the lean physique they desire.

Gradually, general consensus is shifting though, with more and more women trying resistance training - be that with weights or just their own bodies - and never looking back.

One female personal trainer even told The Independent she can eat eight times as much as she used to when doing purely cardio.

But if that’s not incentive enough, we spoke to personal trainer Tom Mans to find out exactly why lifting weights is such a good idea for women.

“When it comes to fat loss, the single most important factor is making sure you burn off more calories than you consume on a day-to-day basis,” Mans explained to The Independent.

By weight training, you build lean muscle, and muscle is a metabolically active tissue where carbohydrates and body fat are burned and used as energy. The more muscle you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate, so the more calories you’ll burn over the course of a day.

Many people think slogging it out on a cardio machine or pounding the pavements are the keys to fat loss, but cardio like running or cycling puts strain on your muscles (which can lead to injuries) and won’t build muscle, according to Mans.

Plus with weight training, there are practically endless exercises you can do, so unlike with cardio you’ll never get bored.

“I completely understand why women think weight training makes you bulky and muscly,” says Mans, adding that it can make you bulky, but only if you do specific training with a strict diet to match.

Plus women are built differently to men, and Mans says we won’t become bulky because of our basic biology: “On average, testosterone levels in men are about seven to eight times as great as in women. And testosterone is the main hormone that builds muscles.”

“When our bones are put under stress from the force of resistance training over a long period of time, they grow stronger and increase in density to withstand the extra load and force,” Mans says.

“Resistance training increases bone density and therefore decreases the chances of women and men developing osteoporosis later on in life.”

Studies have shown that both aerobic exercise and resistance training help strengthen our bones’ ability to bear weight, but resistance training is more effective.

Every time your work out with weights, you become stronger, and so next time you’ll be able to lift more, which is both incredibly satisfying and motivating.

“Unlike fat loss, which takes a lot of time and patience, strength in the gym can increase on a week-by-week basis,” Mans says, “Especially in the first five to six months of training.”

Plus, it just feels awesome to feel strong: “My female clients get a massive confidence boost when they know they are can lift more than most men of the same age in the gym,” Mans says.

Everyone wants to look toned and sculpted, and weight training is the way to achieve this. But it’ll also improve your abilities in other sports.

“I have trained a range of athletes in the past - from professional rugby players to tri-athletes to motorcycle racing drivers,” Mans says. “Having a solid strength base helps improve many other elements of athleticism, including power, speed, agility, endurance and muscle mass gains.

“Strength training and weight training will help the body adapt to the forces it will face during sport and through everyday life.”

Weights machines can be daunting so put people off. But all you have to do is ask someone how to use them once, and then you’ll be good to go.

And if you don’t have access to a gym, it’s easy to find at-home resistance-based workouts using stretchy bands, dumbbells or even cans of beans (or bottles of alcohol, depending on your priorities).

Once you start working out with weights, chances are you’ll never look back. And then you’ll be one of the ones waxing lyrical (and smashing the men at arm-wrestling).