Women's Fitness: Weight Training for Muscle Toning and Weight Loss

Check out the photo on the left of the lovely Sarah Scott, an up-and coming figure competitor. If you were wondering how she trains to get that tight and toned body of hers, I'll give you a hint, she trains with weights and some damn-heavy ones too! She obviously has not gotten too muscluar and has arguably the "perfect" body with nice tight and toned muscles that are neither too large to nor too ripped.

A common misconception in the fitness field is that women must avoid training with heavy weights in order to prevent gaining too much muscle. This is understandable, as you only have to look at what the larger, more muscular guys in the gym are doing to gain all that muscle; they train with heavy weights. The muscle magazines also feature women bodybuilders who look like they are in the process of getting their gender changed, with huge ripped muscle, low body fat and that not-so aesthetically pleasing square jaw-line. Hell, if I were a women who wanted begin weight training as part of a weight loss program, one look at the typical high level women bodybuilder might keep me from ever seeing the inside of the gym for anything but cardio. Then again, looking at picture above, who wouldn't want to look like that? While men generally want to become ripped and muscular, it is generally agreed that this is not all that desirable for a women. Women generally desire to “tone” their muscles without necessarily building muscle mass. Weight training with all but the lightest of weights is generally avoided, which is even recommended by many ill-informed personal fitness trainers.

The truth is that most all women simply do not have the hormones to build a large amount of muscle mass. Men are typically larger and more muscular because they have much higher testosterone levels then women. In fact, male bodybuilders take testosterone and other steroids to build more muscle mass. The male bodybuilders who are typically featured in the pages of most muscle magazines are on large amounts of steroids, growth hormone, and other anabolics. The same situation applies to womens bodybuilding; those ripped, muscular women bodybuilders would not be able to achieve their look without some "chemical help". With the excpetion of the one-and a million "freak of nature" women can't get that ripped and musclar naturally; steroids are needed. Steroid use by these women also causes that not-so attractive masculine-look that so many upper-level female bodybuilders have.
Muscle gains do not come easily; both guys and girls spend years weight training in the gym to reach their potential. In the absense of steroids, women (who are not using anabolics) respond differently to weight training than men- their muscles do not become larger by a significant amount, but become tighter and more toned.
You may look at Sarah Scott's picture above and wonder how the hell she was able to sculpt her body like that..... The truth is that she trains very hard with relatively heavy weights (for the appropriate rep-range)- her workouts are not all that dissimilar from what a male bodybuilder would do, but obviously the results are different. If you are a women and are beginning an exercise and diet program for weight loss and muscle-tone, you cannot afford not to do weight training workouts- only then will you be able to burn that last bit if stubborn body fat and sculpt the body you've always wanted.