I remember the first time I stepped into a weight room. It was freshman year of high school during a required Phys. Ed class, and I vividly recall feeling uncomfortable. I was an active teen, but for some unexplained reason the weight room felt like a place only the boys were allowed. You just simply never saw female sports teams (or any females for that matter) lifting weights to supplement their game, but you could always count on the boy's teams to be taking up space in the gym.
Mind you, I was a high schooler in the early 2000s when the conception of the gym was men "pumped iron" while women belonged on the cardio machines. It wasn't my coach's or the fellas' fault - we just didn't know then what we know now.
Now we know that heavy strength training is not only beneficial for all women, but a necessary prescription for both health span and life span. Life span being the amount of years of your life, health span being the quality of that life.
In this blog we will dive deeper into exactly why women should lift heavy too, including peri- and post-menopausal women.
"BUT I DON'T WANT TO GET BULKY!"
So will you look extremely muscular if you start strength training regularly? In short, absolutely not! Unless you are intentionally training and eating in a way to support increasing muscle size (hypertrophy training), then you will not "get bulky." Even then it is still very difficult to put on muscle size as a female, and you have to be extremely dialed into that goal. In addition, women's physiology is quite literally against us for "bulking up" due to hormone differences between males and females. Males have naturally higher testosterone levels than females, which is a hormone that plays a key role in helping the body build muscle tissue. With less testosterone, ladies just don't put on muscle size as easily or as quickly as males. So don't let a misinformed fear of "getting bulky" prevent you from building a life-fulfilling account of muscle tissue, which is the ultimate life hack!
BONE DENSITY
In certain ways, women need strength training more than men, and one way has to do with our bones. As women age, hormones start changing through a natural process called menopause. Once a woman enters the post-menopause state, or the time after the completion of menopause, there is a significant drop in estrogen. Estrogen is an important hormone for bone health due to its job of overseeing bone growth and inhibiting its breakdown. Without estrogen overseeing these important tasks, bone tissue is at risk for decline leading eventually to a disease called osteoporosis. Osteoporosis causes bones to be weak and/or brittle, which leaves them susceptible to fractures, pain, or even complete eventual disability.
Thankfully, we know with increasing certainty that weight bearing exercise like absolute (maximal) strength training and high velocity power training (plyometrics) are most effective for decreasing the risk for developing osteoporosis (Daly et al., 2019). The reason these training methods work as prevention is because they provide a "stress" to bone tissue that signals pathways to lay down more bone tissue. Denser bones equals strong bones that kick osteoporosis in the figurative teeth!
SARCOPENIA
Similarly, women (and men too!) start to lose muscle tissue through a natural process called Sarcopenia. Sarcopenia refers to age-related muscle loss and starts at approximately 30 years old, during which we lose muscle mass at a rate of 1-5% per year...
Unless you strength train to slow that process as much as possible. Similar to the spiel on bone tissue, muscle tissue works in much the same way. Strength training puts mechanical "stress" on skeletal soft tissue (muscles, tendons, ligaments) that signals growth to make them stronger and last longer. Not to mention, strength training also improves proprioception, which is just a fancy word for the process of knowing the body's position in space. This challenge to the neuromuscular system provides a nice cognitive benefit that will keep us ladies sharp and resilient.
As a note, if you're reading this and you are over the age of 30, I want you to know it's not too late. A meta-analysis conducted in 2022 found that even in elderly patients 65 and older already diagnosed with sarcopenia, strength training helped to improve grip strength, gait speed, and muscle mass (Zhou et al., 2022). It's never too late to start and the best time is right now.
CONCLUSION
Women need strength training just as much as men. Women are the most at risk for osteoporosis, which strength training and plyometric training is a proven prevention method for. Building muscle tissue with absolute (maximal) strength training to slow sarcopenia helps maintain strength to endure whatever life throws at us because having a strong, resilient body is the ultimate longevity hack.
CITATIONS
Daly RM, Dalla Via J, Duckham RL, Fraser SF, Helge EW. Exercise for the prevention of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women: an evidence-based guide to the optimal prescription. Braz J Phys Ther. 2019 Mar-Apr;23(2):170-180. doi: 10.1016/j.bjpt.2018.11.011. Epub 2018 Nov 22. PMID: 30503353; PMCID: PMC6429007.
Zhao H, Cheng R, Song G, Teng J, Shen S, Fu X, Yan Y, Liu C. The Effect of Resistance Training on the Rehabilitation of Elderly Patients with Sarcopenia: A Meta-Analysis. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Nov 22;19(23):15491. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192315491. PMID: 36497565; PMCID: PMC9739568.
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