Muscle Building For Women: 3 Tips To Finding Success

Gaining muscle is a whole different game for women than it is for men. While men are usually aiming for big, bulging muscles that require massive amounts of weight and a delicately-balanced diet of amino acids and carbs, women usually turn to muscle training to get a leg up on their weight loss plans and create a slim, toned appearance. Because their goals are different, and their bodies are different anyway, women must follow a different kind of muscle training program.

1 - Push it Good: Just because you aren't trying to bulk up doesn't mean you don't need to be exerting effort. Every set of weightlifting exercises should completely exhaust you. By the time you get to the last repetition of your set you shouldn't be able to do another. You will need a short break in order to do another set, which should be harder than the one before. During these reps, your muscles should burn, which indicates that lactic acid is building up in the muscles and encouraging them to grow. This doesn't mean that you should overwork yourself, though. Pushing yourself too hard can result in an increase in the hormone cortisol in your body which will inhibit the growth of muscles. Working beyond your limits can also cause irreparable damage to your body.

2 - Spread the Joy: Ideally, women should get at least 30 minutes of exercise daily, but this doesn't mean that you should lift weights every day. To give your muscles a chance to recuperate, you must have an entire day's rest between muscle-building exercise. This means that if you wish to workout five days a week, you should do weightlifting three days and cardio the other two in between. Cardio work is great for increasing heart health and burning fat, but it should not be combined with weightlifting. Because you should limit workouts that will include muscle building to an hour, trying to combine the two can mean that you aren't really focusing on either one and the benefits will be limited.

3 - Fuel the Machine: When it comes to diet, a woman trying to gain muscle should make sure she is eating enough calories to support the growth, while still avoiding fat gain. This means focusing on high-nutrition foods, especially protein which tends to be ignored by women. Don't subject yourself to extremely restricted calories or carbohydrates. Both are necessary to support a healthy body and gain muscle.

Once you have started adding muscle you will notice that your body looks completely different but that the number on the scale might not have budged...or may be going in the "wrong" direction. This is because adding muscle means adding weight but reducing inches. Muscle tissue burns calories all day which will encourage the loss of extra pounds and inches, but might actually make you weigh more. If you are combining muscle building and weight loss, it is important that you remember that it is how you look, and not the number on the scale, that matters.