8 Benefits of Strength Training for Women
You may be surprised to learn that strength training can help women reach their fitness goals faster than cardio alone.
Image via: United Strength
It’s a common misconception that weight lifting makes women bulky, it’s dangerous, bad for their joints, etc. Unfortunately, these stereotypes keep many women from experiencing the benefits of strength training. In fact, when you list out your fitness goals, you may be surprised to learn that strength training will not only help you reach them but reach them faster than with cardio alone. We’ve put together eight of the major benefits of strength training for women.
8 Major Benefits of Strength Training for Women:
1. More effective for burning fat
Strength training is better at helping people lose belly fat compared with cardio because while aerobic exercise burns both fat and muscle, weight lifting burns almost exclusively fat.
2. The more (lean) muscle you have, the more calories you burn at rest.
The reason we burn more calories at rest when we have more lean muscle is that lean muscle requires more energy to maintain than fat. Therefore, the energy expenditure will be greater the more lean mass you have.
3. Gain strength
There are a tremendous amount of benefits to reap the more strength you gain. To name a few, joint flexibility, bone strength, and balance.
4. Increased energy
Weight training elevates your heart rate, pumps fresh blood and oxygen throughout your body, and gets muscle tissues working. All of this has a positive effect on your body and energy levels. In addition, exercise has been shown to increase focus and concentration throughout the day.
5. Bone health
Our bones take quite the beating as we get older, but weight training is one of the best ways to combat this. According to Harvard Health, weight training not only increases muscle mass but also creates stronger bones. This means you’re less likely to experience fractures and other bone-related injuries with age.
6. Better sleep quality
We’ve known for a while that physical activity is associated with better sleep. But a recent medical study performed in 2020 showed that any muscle-strengthening exercise had a positive effect on sleep quality. The associations were strongest for those who specifically had the poorest sleep quality to begin with.
7. Stress relief
For many years, studies focused on the correlation between stress relief and aerobic exercises. However, in the last three years, regular weight training has been shown in studies to substantially reduce feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression.
8. Injury prevention
With increased flexibility and strengthening of your muscles, joints, ligaments, bones, and tendons, your risk of injury is massively decreased. This proves especially important for those involved in sports. The British Journal of Sports Medicine found that increasing strength training volume and intensity were associated with sports injury risk reduction.
If you have more questions, please reach out to our coach Jenna Farkas. She will set you up with a free fitness assessment to help get you one step closer to your goals!
