Women need to do resistance training! Here are 13 reasons why:

1. It burns more fat! When you lift weights or take part in a resistance training program, your metabolism will stay elevated and will continue to burn fat for you several hours after your workout. During regular cardio exercise, you may burn more calories in the hour or so that you are working out, but you will stop burning fat shortly after that workout.

2. It changes your body’s shape. You just don’t want to shrink your body size, you want to rid yourself of excess fat and get those lean sexy curves. Resistance training is your ticket to this, as it can slim you down, and create new curves.

3. It boosts your metabolism. The less muscle you have, the slower your metabolism will be. As women age, they lose muscle at increasing rates, especially after the age of 40. When you diet without doing resistance training, up to 25% of the weight loss may be muscle loss (and that is bad in the long term). Resistance training while dieting can help you preserve and even rebuild muscle fibers. The more lean mass you have, the higher your metabolism will be and the more calories you’ll burn all day long.

At bootcamp, I measure your basal metabolic rate and your metabolic age. The slower your metabolism, the older your metabolic age. In effect, the more calories, your body needs to maintain your body weight is one of the factors that determines your metabolic age!

Muscle is 25x more metabolically active than fat, which means it burns 25x more the amount of calories when you are at rest lying by the pool with your pool boy named Javier (inside joke).

4. It increases strength and confidence. Your functional fitness is improved, which makes it way easier to do everyday tasks. Not to mention, knowing and being strong is the best, and this fortifies your emotional strength by boosting self-esteem and confidence.

5. It builds strong bones. Weight bearing exercise helps build and maintain bone mass, and prevents osteoporosis.

6. It fights depression. Endorphins are released during and after your workouts and will leave you high on the work you achieved and leave depression in the dust.

7. It improves sports fitness. The stronger you are, the easier you move. Thus resistance training will equate to better sports performance whether that be a day on the links or a weekend on the slopes.

8. It reduces injuries and arthritis. Joint stability is key to reducing the chance of injury. Keeping joints strong and mobile is always beneficial, as it makes daily movements easier. But don’t step in any potholes!!!! (another inside joke).

9. It helps your heart by lowering blood pressure. Resistance training also benefits the heart by increasing your “good” (HDL) cholesterol and decreasing your “bad” (LDL) cholesterol.

10. It guards against type 2 diabetes. The more lean mass you have, the more efficient your body is at removing glucose from the blood.

11. You can’t build muscle from cardio, so skip those long, slow, boring cardio days.

12. Muscle is denser than fat, and remember 1lb of muscle does not weigh more than 1lb of fat (because they are both 1lb). But that 1lb of muscle will take up less space and give you that leaner sexier look.

Keep Rocking,
Josh Saunders
White Rock Bootcamp Solution