Tag: Weight Lifting

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Why Every Woman Should be Using the Weights Area

I am a firm believer that everyone should use resistance training in their day-to-day regime. Even more so for women, as a lot of us females still seem unsure of the weight area.

It’s not surprising either, it can be a pretty intimidating place and if you aren’t sure on technique, you’re probably even less likely to venture into these new territories.

This results in way to many women spending hours in the cardio areas of the gym. The treadmills, steppers, cross-trainers and bikes are always going flat out, but is this giving you the body you want? The chances are the answer is no. This is for a number of reasons. Although you may be burning those calories on the machine, is your nutrition matching your goals?

Furthermore, cardio won’t do much in terms of changing your physique. A reduction in fat will occur if you’re in a deficit, but if you are really looking to change how your body looks and your proportions then you need to be encorporating weight training.

Here’s why I want every women to be in the weights area in the gym:

1. To build muscle and your physique

I’d like to think the whole illusion about having muscle makes you ‘bulky’. There’s a huge amount of fitness instagrammers now who have legitimately built their body through weight-training and nothing about them looks bulky or masculin.

In fact, if your fitness goal is to improve your physique then weight training is going to get you that result. By training for muscular hypertrophy (the growth in muscle mass), you will start to see your body changing so long as you follow the correct nutritional guidance to align with your goals.

When training for hypertrophy, rep ranges of 6-12 should be performed with the last set reaching failure or almost failure. In addition to this, a suitable load should be adopted to aid the increase in muscle mass. For beginners, load is not as important. Form and technique should be nailed and perfected first before increasing weight.

2. Improve proportions or the illusion of your proportions

I’m sure the idea of bigger shoulders or a wider upper back probably sounds off-putting for some women. However, this will help you achieve that ‘hourglass’ figure a lot of women are seeking. Bigger lats, delts and glutes will help give the illusion of a smaller waist.

3. Improve metabolism

A cardio workout and a high intensity weight workout will probably burn around the same calories by the end of the session. However, weight training will have a greater effect on our EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption). This is essentially like an ‘afterburn’ effect, where our bodies will still be working to burn calories even up to 36 hours after our training session. We still get this after a tough cardio session, but pushing ourselves in a weight training session will really elevate this. Thus, improving metabolism and allowing us to burn more fat, or, even better, increase our food intake!!

4. Get stronger

This is the best thing about lifting. I think a lot of women get into strength training in order to improve their physique. However, being able to perform lifts you never thought you could is an incredibly rewarding, motivating and empowering feeling. Not only does being strong and being able to put a number (in kgs) on it feel good, it is incredibly beneficial to our bodies. Improving strength means we are not only building a body we want just now, but we are forming a body that will carry us through life. Sounds deep, but it’s amazing!

5. Improve confidence

You may get an improvement in confidence through a physical change in your body, but the empowering feeling of weight training will definetely factor in. We all know we get good endorphins from exercising, and these positive feelings have such a huge impact on mental health. If you are feeling more positive in your mind, you will feel more confident not just in the gym, but transfer it to other parts of life.

I don’t want this to be ALL about how we look – but that’s the reason the majority of people are in the gym right? Therefore, that’s why I feel the need to highlight the benefits of this style of training. I honestly could not think of anything worse than dragging myself to the gym to perform endless sessions on the cardio machines. Cardio has so many benefits and it is important to keep your fitness levels up to improve cardiovascular health. However, a change in body composition will be achieved a lot more effectively by encorporating weight training.

If you are eager to get started with learning some new styles of training to reap all these benefits, my Ladies Lifting class is the perfect place to start!

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Best Exercises for Growing your Glutes

Thanks to insta we are all after that fuller booty. There are some instagrammers out there who are uber fit and will vouch that the best way to naturally build your glutes is to lift. HEAVY. However, there are still some accounts telling us that to grow glutes we should be using resistance bands, strange leg kick things on the stepper and body weight squats.

If you enjoy these kind of exercises and they get you moving, then that’s a start! But don’t be dissapointed if months down the line your glutes haven’t changed much.

To put it simply – our muscles grow by us overloading them. By lifting more substantial loads, our muscles have to repair themselves. In this repairing and recovery process (so long as suitable nutrition is in place) they will grow. This is called hypertrophy, the enlargement of the cells in our muscles.

Therefore, if we want our glutes to grow, we’ve got to put some load on those muscles!

Here’s my favourite exercises to help grow those glutes!

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Sumo Deadlifts

By encorporating a wider footstance on the deadlift, our glutes take on more of the load. As the deadlift is a compound movement (uses a large number of muscle groups), we can lift heavier than we would be able to do on isolation movements (targetting one muscle or muscle group).

Hip Thrusts

Largely regarded as the King (or Queen) of glute exercises. Make sure your feet are placed to allow a right angle in the legs whilst at the top of the movement, as this ensures the hamstrings don’t take over too much. Make sure you squeeze and the top of the movement and make sure your plevis tilts up to full extension. This is a movement which is easy to lift super heavy in due to the small range of motion and momentum used. However, I tend to find it a lot more effective to chose a load to which I can perform a 12-15 rep range. I feel the mind-muscle connection a lot more this way and get a much better burn. Furthermore, use a resistance band above the knees. That extra abduction creates better contact with the glutes.

Squats

Squats are obvsiously widely percieved as a good glute exercise. For me, in order to target my glutes more in the squat and stop my quads from completely taking over, I need to establish a good mind-muscle connection. I do this by squeezing my glutes hard at the top of the movement as this engages them in the squat. Furthermore, much like the sumo deadlift, taking a wider stance (sumo squat) will put more of the load on the glutes.

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Lunges and Walking Lunges

Load up with either a bar on the back or two dumbells held either side. Make sure you reach the full range of motion. I ensure I lightly tap my knee on the ground with each step. Don’t be afraid to go heavy here!

Bulgarian Split Squat

This is one of my favourite accessory movements I have been using since I started training. Again, to make sure I get the full range of motion, I will push my back knee (leg propped on the bench) back and until I feel the stretch down that quad. Again, go heavy on this one and if you want to increase the intensity even further, add a pause at the bottom of the movement!

Other accessory exercises I use on glute days are more as ‘finishers’ to ‘burn-out’ or fatigue the glutes after the compound and heavier movements. I go for hyper extensions, cable kickbacks, kettlebell swings, crab walks and one-leg raised glute bridges. These accessories would all be performed with lower weights but much higher reps.

So if building a bigger butt is what you’re going for, slam in some of these glute-focused exercises on your next leg day! For any questions on form, load, or rep ranges feel free to drop me a message!

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120g of Protein on a Vegetarian Diet

The importance of protein

When I first started tracking my food, I was shocked at how little protein I was actually getting in my day-to-day diet. By this point I was a few months into a weight training programme and realised I really needed to pay more attention to my nutrition to compliment my training. I was unsatisfied with the slim, but not toned look I had achieved by doing a year of cardio training. It’s impossible to avoid someone in the fitness industry banging on about the importance of protein. They have reason for it, though. Protein is essential to muscle growth and recovery due to the breakdown into amino acids by our digestive system.

You may have read that if we are training, it is advised we should have around 1g of protein per lb of bodyweight. Therefore, I tend to weigh around 57kg (125lbs) so would therefore try to aim for 125g of protein per day.

To someone consuming meat, this is a very achievable target, without having to get your protein from sources like whey (shakes, bars etc). However, I found that on a vegetarian diet, it was a lot harder to consume that much so I had to make a very concious effort to make sure I did get sufficient levels of protein in my day.

I would love to be able to get all my protein from plant based/natural sources without any extras. But at this point, I need a little extra help to hit that 100g+.

My top sources in my day-to-day diet are:

  • Whey Protein Powder (20g per scoop) (I use the MyProtein Whey Impact in the Chocolate Smooth or the Sticky Toffee Pudding flavour)
  • Eggs (13g for a medium egg)
  • Greek Yoghurt (10g per 100g of Fage Total 0%)
  • Quorn Pieces (13g per 100g)
  • Quorn Mince (14g per 100g)
  • Tofu (10g per 100g)
  • Baked beans (9g per 200g)
  • Chick peas (7g per 100g)
  • Kidney beans (8g per 100g)
  • Protein bar (most are around 20g. Grenade Carb Killa are my faves!)

I became a vegetarian for ethical reasons rather than for taste, so I eat A LOT of quorn because I just enjoy the taste. Quorn isn’t the best for macros and calories, however it is reasonable inexpensive and very versatile. I really enjoy cooking with tofu but sometimes it is less time effective and a wee bit more expensive.

So for all you plant based people out there- get those beans and pulses in! Not only do they have decent amounts of protein, they are obviously packed with fantastic micronutrients too.

My typical day of eating would be:

Breakfast – Protein Oats (25g whey, 50g oats and perhaps a banana/tangerine/grapes)

Lunch – either eggs on toast, beans on toast, or protein pancakes (25g whey, 25g flour, 1 egg, almond milk served with fruit)

Dinner – A base carb (rice, pasta, potato or noodles), a protein (tofu or quorn), and a PILE of veg including beans or pulses (chickpeas/kidney beans/black beans/mixed beans, pepper, onion, aubergine, courgete, cherry tomatoes). I cook these all together in a different sauce each day to mix it up. Sometimes I’ll make it more like a curry, or more oriental with soy or hoison, or with BBQ, or a tomato based sauce. A dollop of hummus on the side gives a little extra protein too!

Snacks – Greek yogurt and fruit, cereal (right now I’m enjoying the chocolate wheetabix protein crunch), hummus and veg or tortilla chips, protein shake. My new find for a nice sweet snack whilst I’m cutting is an ice lolly! Most fruit ice lollies you find in supermarkets are around 40 cals! Amazing 🙂

I hope this post was helpful, as it took me a while to get into a routine of what worked in my diet and what was feesable time and cost wise for me.

So if you are getting into weight training and are looking to change your body a bit more, get that protein in!