Results That Women Want!

What's Motivates Women?

It is unfortunate however, that many fitness center staff are also caught up in the quick-fix mentality and undereducated in the best types of exercise programs for females: women suffer more orthopedic injury than men in almost every sport in which them both participate. A chronic lack of strength and function in the lower abdominals & pelvic floor muscles is evident in the 47.5% of females at an average age of only 38.5 years who suffer from incontinence . Both these problems can often be helped with the correct exercise program.

Mostly, women are inspired to exercise for esthetic reasons – weight loss, muscle toning, re-shaping of thighs, butt, stomach, arms and so on. One of the rewarding aspects of being a fitness professional is knowing that along with these results, you can also provide positive health benefits and improved function for your members. But, and this is a big but, an exercise program can just as easily break a person as build them up, especially women.

So what are the best types of exercises to help women reach their goals and also improve health and function at the same time?

Perfect Posture Makes Perfect

Unfortunately social pressure also contributes to poor posture. High heels, breast enhancements and the seated workplace are all culprits. The best exercises to improve posture are those that activate postural and stabilizer muscles. Swiss ball exercises are ideal to to enhance posture

Muscle Burns Calories

Although cardio machines burn calories, the body also becomes progressively more efficient at cardio exercise. The result is more miles to the gallon when the aim is actually to become less fuel-efficient with fewer miles to the gallon. Aerobic exercise has also been shown to be associated with increased levels of glucocorticoids, hormones which are catabolic in nature and so do not favor increasing muscle mass; the very muscle you need to burn fat!

Even men have a hard time building muscle yet they have ten-times the amount of muscle building testosterone than woman. Combine the catabolic response of aerobic exercise with the naturally lower hormone, and you can see why few women get the results they are looking for with large amounts of cardio training.

This is why resistance training performed with acute exercise variables suitable for bodybuilding is good for females. Exercises performed at an 8-12 rep intensity, slow tempos, and short rest periods (1 minute) stimulate muscle growth and protein synthesis.

Hormones that step-up metabolism such as testosterone and growth hormone, are known to be more prevalent in the blood stream after exposure to body building protocols. This results in increased caloric consumption, often for some time after resistance training is completed. In fact, fit people always metabolize more fat, and can metabolize fat at higher intensities than the unfit. Suggested acute variable for resistance training are given in Table 1.

Table 1

Acute variables for Resistance Training

Interestingly, Australian researcher Robby Parker showed that after performing resistance training, obese pre-menopausal women used 50% more fat, even though total metabolic rate did not change. He also noted that resistance training appears better for reducing abdominal fat than aerobic exercise.

Free Weight Training

A soon as the body is stabilized during any resistance exercise (i.e. sitting or lying on a machine), activation of the centrally generated recruitment patterns needed to activate postural and stabilizer muscles is reduced to almost nothing. This is not good if you want to burn fat! In addition it also means that you are increasing strength in prime movers without increasing the strength of the smaller postural and stabilizer muscles. Over time this can lead to postural problems, injuries and pain – none of which bode well for good retention figures for your club!

This does not mean that females should not use machines, it simply means that their program should contain 50% or greater of free weight exercises. Females should also perform their free weight training prior to machine training exercises, thus allowing more neural energy for activation of postural and stabilizer muscles.

Most females choose machines over free weights for fear of GETTING BIG! Here are several reasons why this is more myth than reality:

ü      Females have about ten times less testosterone and far greater levels of estrogen in their blood stream than males at all times.

ü      Studies on hypertrophy using muscle-building protocols also show that females do not achieve the same hypertrophic responses in fast twitch fibers that males do.

Stereotyped Weight Training

If your female members are sure that they are gaining size when on a weight training program, then prove to them that they are not. Take circumference measurements at the mid-point of the upper arms, chest, waist, and mid-thighs. Every four weeks, re-measure. If your clients truly are putting on more muscle than they want, you can make the following changes to their program.

• Reduce the number of sets and/or exercises targeting the area of concern
  
  
• If using a station training approach (not circuit training), increase the rest time between sets to between 2:30 and 3:30
  
  
• Lower the intensity of the exercise to the point that they can perform 20 repetitions each set and then only perform 12-15 reps with that load, for a toning, not body-building response.
  
  
• Perform aerobic exercise after resistance training to encourage aerobic adaptation, which will retard anaerobic adaptation, reducing their chances of putting on muscle mass.
  
  
• Perform the exercises targeting the muscle(s) of concern no more than one time each six days
• Mix free weight training with short bursts of aerobic exercise in a circuit format, keeping the heart rate elevated, work volume high and lift intensity around 50-60% 1RM. This can be added 1-2 times a week along with 1-2 station training workouts, if desired.

Aerobic, Free weights, or Boty?

If You Want to Do Both…

• Keep aerobics classes (particularly those with complex dance moves) separate from free-weight training and machine training.
  
  
• If members demand both on the same day, perform two free weight lifts, two machine exercises and / or exercises targeting one region of the abdominals, followed by an aerobic activity. To prevent injury, the aerobic activity performed after resistance training should be low in complexity, for example rowing, cycling, steppers and step mills, or elliptical trainers.
  
  
• Due to stabilizer fatigue and potential joint instability, any form of running should be avoided after performing leg exercises such as lunges, squats, box step-ups or dead lifts.

TABLE 2

Combining Resistance Training and Aerobics for Time Efficiency

TABLE 3.

Separating Resistance and Aerobic Training for Optimal Training Effects

Note: The same exercise sequencing as above may be used with aerobic exercise being performed on the days indicated.

Bone Health

Clinically, I have treated many aerobicisers and distance running females for stress fractures secondary to the very same things. In fact, studies on soldiers indicated that females are 5-10 times more likely to develop a stress fracture than males, and often develop them earlier under the same conditions. To have healthy bones, females need to do two things:

1. Follow a healthy eating plan – I recommend The Metabolic Typing Diet by William Wolcott and Trish Fahey, as a good starting point.
   
   
2. Use exercises loading the long bones of the body. Exercises that do this very well are exercises like squatting, lunging, bench press, and the dead lift. To avoid over-exposure to these exercises, it is best to only do each of these exercises no more than two times per week. For those with more lifting experience performing these lifts above 80% intensity, one time every 4-5 days should allow your muscles and bones to recover effectively.

Conclusion

Use of compound exercises that load the long bones of the body and activate stabilizer muscles will help with increased bone mineral density and improve joint stability and posture.

Finally, be very aware of the latest quick fix diets and fad exercise programs, so you can discourage your female clients and members from using these and encourage them to adopt an exercise program that will truly enhance both their esthetics and their health.

About Paul Chek

He is a prominent expert in the field of holistic health and corrective and high-performance exercise. For over twenty years, Paul's unique, holistic approach to treatment and education has changed the lives of many. By treating the body as a whole system and finding the root cause of a problem, he has successfully coached clients toward complete resolution of their health and performance challenges. Paul is the founder of the C.H.E.K Institute, based in California. Visit www.chekinstitute.com .

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