Resistance training provides a variety of health benefits and is as effective for obesity treatment as aerobics. This is a fact proven by multiple studies, as you can see here, here, and here. However, the idea that lifting weights is bad for women persists and is promoted by a variety of bigoted people and sources like some women’s magazines, which propagate the idea that bodybuilding makes women “too bulky”.
What is the truth? Should you start lifting weights or is it too much of a risk for your health?
The answer, as always, is somewhere in the middle. It’s true that resistance training carries some major risks along with the aforementioned health benefits. You’ll need to consider them carefully and find ways to make your personal resistance training plan safe if you want to get the perks this type of exercise offers.
Resistance Training Risks: What Is the Real Level of Danger You Face?
There is no denying the fact that resistance training, like any other type of exercise, can cause some injuries. The most common of them are:
- Muscle strain
- Back pain and accompanying nerve damage
- Herniated disc
- Tear to the rotator cuff
- Shoulder impingement syndrome
- Patellar tendonitis
Those injuries mostly occur due to poor technique. However, there is a far bigger danger associated with resistance training. That danger comes from overworking your body due to excessive strength-building exercise. Unfortunately, this happens quite often due to people becoming too enthusiastic or even “obsessed” with bodybuilding.
Health problems that this kind of overload might cause include but aren’t limited to lower immunity, weakened cardiovascular system, and, for women in particular, damaged muscles of the pelvic floor. This kind of damage can become extremely serious or even permanent. The immunity, for example, can be restored by reverting to a healthy lifestyle and letting your body recover. However, you might need to undergo specialized therapy to restore pelvic floor muscles and it might be impossible to undo the detrimental effects of routine overexertion on your heart. The good news is that some research indicates that stopping with the exercise should help your heart recover on its own in many cases.
You need to be aware, however, that all existing reviews come to the conclusion that the benefits of resistance exercise severely outweigh its possible dangers. In fact, those dangers are the same you would expect from any type of physical exercise. And you can minimize them simply by working out under the supervision of a professional who will train you in the proper technique and help develop a workout plan that won’t overstrain you.
What About Being “Bulky”? Will Weight Lifting Turn You into a Meat Tank?
It’s a fact that bodybuilding has the power to make you bulk up. In fact, the majority of people who start to actively engage in resistance training do it for the exact purpose of bulking up.
However, this doesn’t mean that doing a strength-building workout with weights every other day will turn you into this. In order to bulk up to the point where you’ll be able to break down doors with your shoulders, you’ll need to work out for a very long time. Moreover, you will need to develop a personal training program designed to achieve that specific goal. And that program will need to be brutal and borderline dangerous.
If you only stick to reasonable workouts and keep them at a set level after you achieve your fitness goals, there won’t be any threat of bulking up. You will, however, need to put in some effort to maintain your form. Never forget that muscles require regular exercise in order to stay toned.
Final Thoughts: Should Women Lift Weights?
Women definitely should do some weight lifting regularly because resistance training, when done right, is extremely good for your health. It’s a challenging type of exercise and it will require careful planning and precision in order to reduce its health risks. However, once you develop a suitable training regimen and learn how exactly to perform the many exercises, you will be able to boost your health as well as reshape your body into something stunning.
But you shouldn’t forget that too much of a good thing creates a problem. That’s why you should never overwork yourself with resistance training, or any other exercise. Even if you feel like you are going too slow with your weight loss at the moment, you shouldn’t rush. Resistance training makes you grow more muscles, and they burn calories most efficiently. Therefore, you should lift weights at a healthy rate and let your body work on changing its shape at a sedate pace. The results of this approach will last much longer.