Peculiarities of women's training, or girls, do not be afraid of weight bars and dumbbells!

Girls, like boys, do not know what, how and why to create the body of their dreams. That's why we rely on coaches more often. Well, if the trainer is really a TRAINER who is competent in all matters related to his field of activity, but very often, especially in large fitness clubs, all beginners are given some absolutely standardized program, and both men and women are the same.

Even if girls rely only on themselves and look for a program on the Internet, they often "watch" a program that is completely inappropriate for them, so I offer this article about the differences in women's training.

So why isn't a classic men's training program suitable for women? Let's start with the fact that the female body, although the same, is different. Everyone understands this, but to name certain differences, except for the differences in the appearance of the genitals and breasts, I wonder if everyone will meet.

Skeletal structure

Women have, on average, a skeleton 7% shorter and 8% narrower, as well as different proportions of body parts - women have much shorter legs and arms, but a longer torso and narrower shoulders, which means that this condition must also be observed during exercise and whether either the technique must be adjusted or an exercise must be abandoned. For women, because their center of gravity is lower, it is easier to perform exercises that require balance, but it is more difficult, for example, to run fast, jump, and so on.

Muscles

Although women have exactly the same muscle structure as men and can develop just as much strength, women do, on average, perform worse than 40% on strength tests. This is due to the anatomy - from the beginning, women do not have a large amount of muscle mass from the beginning (on average it is 35% from a woman's weight, but for men it is around 45%). The skeleton of men is larger, which means that their limbs also form longer arms, which allows them to work more efficiently when lifting weights.

Women have an increased fat mass compared to men. This is due to purely genetic traits, as women have a different hormonal background, less muscle that consumes energy, which also makes them more susceptible to subcutaneous fat accumulation (women generally have a slower metabolism - each kilogram of a woman's body consumes less energy than each kilogram of the male body). By comparison, if 16% of subcutaneous fat is considered normal for a man between the ages of 20 and 30 without health problems (for an arithmetic average man who is not very active), it is around 25% for a woman. A woman's body has a much greater tendency to accumulate than a man's, because women are the ones who give birth, so from the very beginning the body has a much more developed accumulation function, so that when it is needed, there is enough energy for both herself and the baby. development.

Internal organs

Of course, if the body is smaller, then the internal organs are also smaller, and since they have to provide much less activity of the body, they also work at a lower intensity. For example, a woman's heart at rest is 10 cubic centimeters smaller than a man's. At the same time, at rest, the number of heartbeats per minute is higher for a woman, and so on. All this only means that women, in general, despite having specific cases, have much less functional training opportunities than men (on average 40% less).

As you can see, the differences are significant and quite a lot, but we have not yet come to the seemingly main and most visible condition influencing the training process, namely the menstrual cycle. Men can do their training program on the principle of "Take heavier, lift more" and work happily from month to month and even progress very well. For women, their physical condition and ability to work vary depending on the phase of the cycle.

In order not to get caught up in the very long description of the training theory, because in this case everything is determined by the individual menstrual cycle length, I can only add that in order to plan a proper training program, the classic scheme of a week is a microcycle. etc., which is relevant to men, is not suitable. When planning women's training, it should be assumed that the mesocycle is one menstrual cycle, but microcycles are each stage of the menstrual cycle - menstrual, postmenstrual, ovulatory, postovulatory and premenstrual. And if we are talking about really large-scale workouts, such as many / many usually imagine in the weight room, then they should be planned in the postmenstrual and post-ovulatory period, when the body receives about 80% of the total monthly load. The other three phases, each individually, carry out a workload of approximately 7% per month and are of a general nature.

Peculiarities of women's training

Now, in terms of the workout itself. What do girls usually do in the gym? No, I'm not talking about those who only torture themselves with cardio machines, but about those who at least understand what and how to do it. Legs, buttocks, press, in some cases shoulders and arms are trained, but in order to talk about a proportionate and healthy body, the whole body (individual muscle hypertrophy and increased tone, with weak other muscles does not promote health).

As for the whole body, it should also be understood here that women with lower levels of muscle-building hormones than men do not make sense of some of the worst splits. At least in the beginning, it is absolutely necessary to train on a "full body" basis. It is possible that later, when there is a better level of general training, you can move to a system of upper / lower body or pull / push, which can actually be a variation of a “full body” program that is only divided by either the target group or the target movement. In any case, it is not useful for girls to get used to training one or two muscle groups in one workout, using many isolation exercises.

It should also be noted that, precisely because of all the peculiarities of the body mentioned at the beginning of the article, it makes no sense to work with women with heavy weights and few repetitions (it already makes sense to solve specific tasks), because studies show that the body responds best to stress ( aiming for muscle hypertrophy) with 12-15 reps, ie twice as much as usual during periods of heavy training (6-8 reps). This is due to the fact that women have less muscle fiber, as well as the fact that the body is much better able to accumulate glycogen in the muscles. That's why training should be LARGE. Yes, yes, not the way many think that girls should train less, but vice versa. Often the total amount of work a lady does in training exceeds the workload of the average male.

What will be called here: "Hello, pink dumbbells!", Ie with the idea that when working in this mode, the weights themselves will be very small. This may be the case in the beginning, but like men, women need to follow the progression of the load / weight and make sure that it is 12-15 times the maximum she can do. However, there is another difference - due to hormonal differences, a woman cannot train "until refused" (if she does not use artificial hormones), she simply will not be able to, because she will stop a few more reps before the theoretically possible maximum of repetitions. BUT she doesn't need it either.

Here, too, I would very much like to say a few words about 'scrambling', which many women cite as one of the reasons why they do not go to the gym or work in the gym under some incomprehensible system.

As mentioned above, a woman's body is not physiologically designed for significant muscle growth - low testosterone, less muscle fiber, and so on. It should also be understood that women usually come to the grass to make their figure more expressive, which usually means slimming. Slimming, on the other hand, means limiting the amount of calories consumed to a certain deficit. To grow muscle, you need extra calories because you need to provide your body with energy and extra energy to build muscle. When there is a lack of calories, even serious male athletes who use pharmacology, subordinate their entire daily rhythm to training and getting in shape, etc., do not get to grow muscles, so a girl who goes to the gym three times a week is NOT threatened.

If someone immediately puts out the bodybuilders of the IFBB PRO league, then I can reassure you - if you do not intend to dedicate your whole life to getting this shape, then nothing will happen to you, even if you want to, because they are exceptions. Women have been training for decades, using pharmacological means, as they say, for buckets, adjusting their lifestyle to a few cm of muscle growth, and so on. It can only be tolerated / achieved even with great desire, it cannot be done ACCIDENTALLY.

I can remember countless cases where girls say they don't want to be bodybuilders but want to do fitness. By and large, fitness, if we look at it as an approach to training, the same bodybuilding alone is, only the end result is not so serious, ie bodybuilding is the highest level of fitness and exists ONLY at a professional level. Everything else is fitness.

It is to be understood that it is the muscles that make up most of the body's shape and 'roundness' (excluding the breasts, as they form fat). If a girl wants to change her figure, she has to build muscle or reduce the amount of subcutaneous fat to highlight the existing muscles.

That is also all I wanted to say in this article. The main idea that should remain with the readers after reading this article is that women should not be afraid of weight loss medicine, they just need to train PROPERLY and the results will not be missed.