Today I want to reveal some truth to you.Truth……. About your muscles!

Before we get to that, did you hear about our workshop coming up January 15th? It’s only $20 and it’s for women only. Click here to get signed up and learn more!

It’s important to be strong! So important in fact that it’s a matter of life and death. Several studies have taught us a few different things about the importance of being strong as we age. First, as a woman, when you get a bit older, the stronger you are, the less likely you are to die of heart disease. Pretty interesting right? I think most folks tend to think of strength training benefiting muscles of the skeleton and not the heart musculature. In another study done on women specifically, the weakest had a 1.65 times the risk of death from any cause, compared to the strongest women.

So, strength matters. Not necessarily how big your muscles are or how “toned” they look but how strong they are.

Did you know: women and men increase muscle and strength at roughly the same rate in the same training programs!!?? This DOES NOT mean a woman will gain as much muscle as a man, it means that her strength will improve by X% as a man’s would. For example, John and Sally have been training the same strength training program for 6 months. At the start of the program, Sally weighs 120lbs and John weighs 200lbs. Both increase their lean mass by 16%, most of this being muscle. John gains 16lbs of muscle and Sally gains 9lbs of muscle. John feels awesome because he’s starting to tighten the sleeves of his golf shirts and Sally, well she’s pumped too. Her arms are more firm and toned looking as are her thighs. Interestingly, Sally still weighs 120lbs. This is because due to decent nutrition and consistent training, her body fat dropped quite a bit as well. These numbers aren’t made up, well not entirely. They are based on norms in research studies comparing men and women and the most interesting part in the women in the studies: They gained that much muscle mass ( on average 2.5lbs per month) and their thigh girth measurements only increased a third of an inch!

In fact, when using a MRI machine to observe muscle gain and fat loss in women, we can see increases in muscle mass and decreases in fat mass without much change in size. In many cases, it’s almost as if fat was traded for muscle! We can’t spot reduce fat or choose where it comes and goes but, we can build muscle and lose fat and in several instances, women were able to do so at almost a 1 to 1 ratio!

What does this mean? Women can participate in regular strength training and WILL NOT GET BULKY! Yes it’s true! Unless you have the genetics of a gladiator, you will not get bulky from strength training. You will lose fat and gain muscle.Clothes will fit better, and you will be more fit!

Oh yeah, not to mention, as we did in the beginning of the blog, strength is kind of a matter of life and death too!

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to throw them in the comments below or email!