Girl put in work - Why females should lift heavy

If you are wondering about the title, it is from The Morning by the The Weeknd. If you are unfamiliar with The Weeknd, you are missing out on literally the greatest sexy-time music created. He definitely wasn't singing about lifting, but I don't care, it's an absolute tune.

This one will be old hat to anyone that has talked to me for any amount of time on the subjects of health, fitness, physique and looking jacked and tan. My thoughts are pretty straightforward - if you are an adult without any debilitating medical conditions, you should be lifting or at the very least performing some sort of anaerobic exercise on a fairly regular basis. This tends to be an easy message to convey to guys; most fellas want to look significantly more like Arnold and less like themselves and thusly will realise that they should be lifting more and generally being less shit than they currently are. Whether they follow through on these thoughts is entirely up to the mental/testicular fortitude of said male, but at least most know that lifting is the unsurpassed means to the ends of a better body.

No hetero

The fairer sex, on the other hand, present a different challenge. Whilst some females are now warming to the weight room and the idea of women lifting is becoming more mainstream, many woman are stuck in the misguided "weights for men, cardio for women" mindset. What I plan to present here, with my usual semi-factual, highly opinionated, sometimes funny, always obnoxious style, is my treatise on why the world would be a better place if all women lifted weights. If you are reading this and happen to be the proud owner of a cock and balls, then it goes without saying that you might not gain a whole lot from the process, but feel free to pass my arguments on to any and all females in your life, that is assuming you want them to become significantly more awesome in every way.

Men can also stick around for more of this sort of thing

Most females find themselves exercising, whether inside the consecrated ground of the temple of iron or in some lesser venue, with the aim of losing some fat and 'firming', 'toning' or 'tightening'. Firstly a minor aside; the phenomena that are supposedly described by those last 3 words don't mean anything in a physiological sense, they are buzz words, created by advertisers and thrown around by people that don't know their HIIT from their tit. When it comes to changing your physique, there are two process that you need to concern yourself with, the loss of fat and the gain of muscle. That is all; as far as you are concerned, one of these processes should always be your goal. 'Firming' is not the body's response to resistance training, muscle building is; 'tightening' of the midsection will not be the product of endless sit-ups, however fat loss will occur with hard training and proper diet. Minor diatribe over and back to the original programme, if fat loss is your goal, you may mistakenly think that hours and hours of steady state cardio, pounding the treadmill or revolving your life away on the elliptical is the best route to a leaner you. The truth, as you may have guessed, is that weight training, specifically lifting heavy using large compound movements (such as the squat, deadlift and overhead press) is in fact the most efficient use of your time and effort in your quest to lose some wobble.

Take heed.

A weight lifting session will cause 'micro-trauma' to your muscles, this may sound a bit terrifying, however this is a good thing as your body will go about repairing these tiny tears in your muscle fibres and in the process making the muscle slightly bigger and stronger. You might now think this has precisely dick all to do with fat loss, however hold your proverbial horses as we delve a little deeper. This repair of micro-trauma requires an energy input, this means that for a period of around 24-72 hours your rate of energy expenditure (i.e. metabolism) will be significantly increased. This depends on the volume and intensity of your workout with studies showing that heavier weights (in the 6-8 rep range) are the most beneficial.  This essentially means that the day(s) after a hard workout, you are burning fat whilst you are out buying handbags and tampons (or whatever girls do in their free time, I don't know). Another factor to consider is that the new muscle tissue that you will be building is highly metabolically active, with each extra kilo of muscle raising your basal metabolic rate by around 80 calories a day. Over the long term these increases add up, leading to a leaner, hotter you.

I'm not a big fan of Crossfit, but I am a big fan of Crossfit girls

Whilst aerobic cardio training has it place, and can be effectively used for weight loss, the result is tends to be just that: the loss of weight, from both fat and lean tissue. It should go without saying that this is not a favourable situation as the hours of time invested in the treadmill lead to you becoming a smaller version of yourself; you may weigh less but there will likely be no significant improvement in body composition, with all the jiggly bits you didn't like probably remaining jiggly. This mainly comes down to hormones; low intensity long duration exercise gives little to no boost (or even drops) to endogenous testosterone and growth hormone levels. As previously explained, these hormones are vital, even for females, if looking lean and sexy is your goal; this is because these hormones promote the growth of lean tissue and the burning of fat. To add insult to injury, long duration aerobic activity causes a large increase in your bodies cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stress hormone which serves to break down tissue, this includes fat, which of is nice, but also includes lean muscle tissue and as we all know, there is nothing more tragic than the loss of sweet, sweet gains. It also causes an increase in appetite, so the fat loss effects might well be negated if you succumb to the cravings for delicious, sweet, comforting carbs that tend to hit as the product of excessive cardio exercise.

If there's two things I love...

Anaerobic exercise (i.e. lifting or high intensity work such as sprints), on the other hand, promotes the specific loss of fat and gain/sparing of lean muscle tissue. This is because, as previously mentioned, there is a large calorie burn effect on the hours post-exercise (which isn't achieved with aerobic exercise) but also importantly because of the hormonal milieu that is created in your body. When it comes to changing your body composition, you cannot think of the body as purely a calorie in vs. calorie out 'furnace', hormones are highly important as they essentially signal to your body what tissue should be broken down and what tissue should be built. High intensity weight training will not raise cortisol as much as extended duration cardio, as such the environment which leads to breakdown of muscle tissue is not reached. As I have written in past articles, heavy weight training will serve to increase your testosterone and growth hormone levels, which are key to a lean, muscular, 'tight' physique, rather than the small soft physique which is regularly the product of endless hamster wheel aerobic training.

This photo of a hot girl standing near a barbell totally proves my point

So we have established that weight training is a hugely beneficial route to losing fat and keeping it off, but the reasons that damsels should get acquainted with the dumbells don't end there. To state the completely bloody obvious, lifting heavy weights will build muscle; to state the slightly less obvious, muscle building is something females should be looking to achieve. Now I know, I know, you aren't trying to be a bodybuilder, you don't want to get 'huge', you are scared of 'looking manly' and so on, so on. In truth, building muscle will add curves, make you look 'toned' and 'firm' (shoot me now for using those words) and add to a more feminine, shapely overall appearance. Legs, bums and tums end up looking far better from a diet of heavy squats deadlifts and hip thrusts than they ever will from hours on the elliptical; arms and shoulders will look much more shapely from diligent training of heavy presses and rows than they will from spending hours waving around 1kg dumbells in some terribly named aerobics class.  Instead, heavy weight training will force your muscles to adapt to the stresses you are imposing on them and grow stronger, denser and slightly larger, leading to a more firm, sculpted body.

As she's doing strongwoman, she undoubtedly lifts heavy as hell and damn is it doing good things.

World record holding powerlifter Caitlyn Trout lifts more than almost every guy you know.

If you are still worried about somehow getting too big, consider that no one has ever had a couple of weight sessions and suddenly realised they are fucking jacked; building muscle is a very slow process, so the chances of accidentally waking up one day and being 'too big' are about as likely as Rick Ross waking up with healthy blood pressure. Furthermore, as a female you have at least five times less testosterone than the most effete man, with typical values more like one tenth to one twentieth. This means that the muscle building potential for females is significantly less than that of men; women literally don't have the balls to get huge.

It's only fair to give the ladies something to look at.

There are also veritable ass-loads of peripheral health benefits that are the product of lifting (or the accompanying fat-loss and muscle gain), these might not be as sexy as the prospect of fat loss or building a great booty, but being a bit healthier is always nice. Lifting has been shown to decrease resting blood pressure and be cardio-protective as well as warding off type-II diabetes due to increasing glucose and triglyceride uptake by muscles. Heavy weight training also increases bone density and protects against osteoporosis, which is nice as it will stop you falling apart as you age. Furthermore, lifting leads to post-exercise endorphins releases which help combat stress, in addition to heavy lifting itself acting as a perfect venting mechanism for those that require a stress release. High stress levels can wreak havoc on your body so finding a way to combat stress is important; heavy lifting is pretty much like meditation for people that aren't hippies.

This is much cooler than listening to whale song.

An overlooked benefit of females taking up lifting is getting strong. Many girls might not have getting strong at the top of their 'to do' list, but being strong is awesome, whoever you are. Just think of all the jars you can open with your new-found strength! No need to call a man again. In all seriousness though, being fit, strong and muscular makes you a generally more useful person to yourself and others. Seeing yourself get stronger month-to-month is a great feeling, knowing that now you can throw around weights that you couldn't budge half a year ago is empowering and gives you a great boost in confidence. Not to mention that there is literally endless variation and progression possible once you get comfortable with the weight room, so you should always be able to keep moving on to bigger and better things. There are loads of reasons to lift, but personally, I'd say start lifting just because it is fun.

and because a girl lifting is super damn hot.

If my rambling has somehow convinced you to get under some iron, check out my free guides in the top right of this page.