By Warren Williams of Intergrative Health Coaching

The fact is that many women think that weight training is in fact body building, and because of this assumption, many women shy away from using weights as a part of exercise routine.

How many times have you seen a woman come in the gym and spend an hour on the treadmill, 30 minutes on the bike, and then either go home or, if they do use weights they use the lightest dumbbells they can find, and spend 10 minutes using them.

The point here is that although this is not an accurate example for all women, it is something that must be addressed, so that all women integrate weights in their lifestyle.

There are four myths that surround weight training and the effect it has on women, lets address each, and set the record straight.
Myth one- weight training makes you bulky:
While making you stronger by strengthening connective tissues such as ligaments, and tendons, weight training protects the joints from injury.
It strengthens the muscles by activating dormant fibres of actin and myosin filaments; these are the fibres contained in each muscle group.
Think about it like this, a normal untrained muscle has only 35-55% of its filaments active, when you weight train, you activate up to 85% of these, making you stronger not bigger.
You are not building muscles you are activating them, look at a female ice skater who can lift twice her body weight and is very slim, or a female pole vault exponent next time you think that weights make you bulky.   

Myth two-weights make you put on weight
Ok, this not absolutely wrong, weight training does make you put on weight, but as stated above, it does not make you bulky.
You see, muscle weighs more than fat but, muscle take’s up less space than fat because its more compact.
Think about it like this, what would take up more space, 5lbs of feathers or 5lbs of gold? 5lbs of feathers right! This is because gold is very solid.
Fact, if you had a woman who weighs 9 stone and she is 100% fat with no muscle (which is impossible) and she stood next to the same woman of 9 stone (a clone) who was 100% muscle (which is almost possible) the women who is 100% muscle would look almost half her size, because muscle is more compact.
Women get so hung up on what they weigh, so much so that if they put on weight they immediately assume they have got bigger. 
Would it matter what you weigh, if you were the size and shape you wanted to be?
Think Denise Lewis, or Laila Ali, not Fatima Whitbread.

Myth three- weight training is only for men
This myth is what makes women stay away from free weights in the gym, only using cardiovascular machines.
Because many women believe the two myths above, they tend to stay away from weight training.
The fact is that women need to weight train more than men do, because 1 in 40 men suffer from Osteoporosis (brittle bones) while only 1 in 7 women suffer from this!
Weight training can strengthen bones by increasing bone density by up to 40% thereby offset Osteoporosis in women.
This is only possible if you lift a minimum of 100 tones annually,
The Osteoporosis society actually recommends women weight train for this reason.
 
Myth four- cardio burns fat
While you may have heard this myth for years, it is not as true as you may think.
 In order for you to burn 1lb of fat by doing cardiovascular exercise only, you need to expend 3,500 calories in your workout.
Most women that I talk to seem to think that by sweating in their workout they are burning fat?
If this where true then surely all you really need to do is sit in the sauna for an hour or two, I am sure you will sweat more than jogging on a treadmill for the same time?
The fact is that cardio is good for strengthening the heart and lungs, and good for general fitness.
But, the more efficient you are at cardio the slower you burn calories, not faster!
 Look at it like this, imagine you have two cars, one is a 4 litre Land rover ( or a sprint athlete) and the other is a 1.0 litre Nissan Micra ( aerobic instructor), if you filled both with 5 litres of petrol, which would travel further? The Micra right! That’s because it has a smaller engine and burns fuel (or calories) slower.

Now in a true sense you would want to be a Land rover burning calories quickly, the problem with aerobic cardio, is that your body gets better at storing fat, not burning it, so as to allow you to run longer and longer distances and times.
The average body fat of a weight training instructor is 12%, while the average body fat of an aerobics instructor is 30%

 Weight training increase lean muscle making you burn calories 4 times faster whilst weight training and for up to 4 times after you weight train, it also makes you burn calories faster 24 hours a day by being leaner (having low body fat)

For more information or to book a consultation visit www.warrenwilliamscoaching.com or call Warren Williams Personally on 07947 588 102