3 reasons women should gain lean muscle

At Genesis Gym, education is one of the most important things that we try to help clients with. Education leads to better compliance to the program, and thus better results.

One of the main areas of education we need to work on with our female clients is to help them overcome the "fear" of having more muscle.

This is a reasonable fear since women have the commonly portrayed image of female bodybuilders and their bulging, steroid fueled physiques running through their minds when they think of lifting weights.

What ladies do get in fact is a firm, lean, athletic physique. Any "big arms" are due to bad food choices much more often than too much resistance training.

Here are three big reasons its great for ladies to do resistance training to build lean muscle.

1. It makes you more resistant to illness.

Resistance training boosts lean muscle mass and bone density and mass. This is great news because bone and muscle are the main stores of the nutrients you need to boost your immune system.

Also, the nutrient stores in your bone and muscle are where you body turns to in times of excess acidity. This is important, because being more alkaline helps with immunity, stress management, brain function and detoxification.

2. It makes you leaner

Having more lean muscle boosts metabolism. This is hard to measure but most nutrition experts guess this to be about 100 calories per day per kg of muscle.

Also, resistance training makes your muscles more "insulin sensitive". What this means in simple terms is that nutrients will be attracted into your muscle cells, rather than your fat cells. Which means less fat, and lower blood sugar and diabetes risk. (As a side note, long cardio does not give you this benefit)

These two factors make having lean muscle a great benefit for ladies who want to burn fat (isn't that almost everyone!)

3. It makes you live longer

A Tuft's university study found that the amount of lean muscle you have is a far better predictor of long life than cholesterol levels and blood pressure!

So the greater lean mass you keep for life, the more likely that life is going to be long.

The 2nd more important factor for long life, was closely related. It is how strong you are. Resistance training is also called strength training because it certainly helps here too.

Conclusion

So ladies, if you want to stay illness-free, burn fat efficiently, and live healthy and long, resistance training is critical. Ideally you do four sessions a week of at least 40 mins for best results combined with some form of stretching and light activity like walks with your friends or family.

I wish I could give a two-minute workout you can do in your office that can equal those results, but such a workout does not exist (except on late night infomercials!).

For the best fitness boot camp program, ExpressFIT program in the CBD, and personal training in Singapore visit www.genesisgym.com.sg or the Genesis Gym facebook page. Or visit Coach Jonathan's homepage and blog at www.coachjon.com