What kind of workout program is efficient for women?
Question:
I’m 25 year old woman who has practiced aerobics and dancing throughout my life. Now I have decided to start working out at the gym and I have three days a week available for it. Aerobics and dancing lessons are four times a week. I would be interested to hear suggestions for the workout program. I’m keen to get more strength to my whole body, not just to get big biceps, big back muscles or anything like that, just a bit better looking body and a bit more strength. I have exercised before at the gym, so the different exercises aren’t that unfamiliar to me.
Answer:
Getting more strength to your muscles, will undoubtedly give more energy to your dancing and aerobics hobby. First I have to say though, that many women seem to be afraid of exercising at the gym, they are afraid that they will get those huge manly backs or biceps and you might even be afraid that you would end up with too much muscle mass, which would start hurting your dancing exercising. I’m no dancer myself, but I’m confident that you will not get so big muscles that would start affecting your dancing hobby in a bad way.
Now, again, I try to get you all women more informed about the weight exercising. You will not get big muscles overnight, no matter what you do. If at any point you would notice that you are getting too big muscles, you can always do exercises with lighter weights, but as I said, gaining muscles won’t happen overnight. To get more muscle mass, you need to exercise regularly and to eat in an optimal way. Strong and well working muscles will help in almost any sport and will also give better posture and better and healthier looking figure to your body.
You are aiming to workout three times a week at the gym, this is a nice amount of exercising which I think is enough for us non professional exercisers. You can do either full body workouts, so that you workout your whole body in one exercise session or you can divide your exercising for certain body parts to certain days.
First of all, when you go to gym and start exercising, start with a 10 – 15 minutes of warm up. Use exercise bike, jump ropes, use treadmill, what ever you like to do to get warmed up. Make sure your back and pelvic area are also well warmed up.
If you choose to do different body parts on separate days I suggest following, first day exercise chest, shoulders and arms, on the second day your legs and on the third day exercise your back, glutes and abdominals.
For your chest, try incline bench bench press with barbell, this same exercise can be done also with a smith machine. The purpose of this exercise is to lift your upper chest.
Second exercise for chest you could try either dumbbell flyes or cable crossover.
For the shoulders try standing low pulley deltoid raise, this is for the sides of your shoulders. For the front of the shoulders try dumbbell raise to front. You can also do dumbbell raise to get a bit workout for the back of your shoulders.
For your triceps try lying dumbbell triceps extension and if you feel you need more workout to your triceps do also triceps extension with high pulley machine.
For your legs, try Dumbbell lunges and Dumbbell squat, for the back of your hamstrings lying leg curls and for calves standing dumbbell raise.
For the back muscles do barbell row and for lower back try lower back extensions.
For your biceps Barbell curls and preacher curls
For abdominal exercises, choose 2 – 3 different ab exercises from ab exercises site.
Do 12 – 15 repetition sets and three sets of each exercise.
A suggestion for 4 day body part training:
Monday: Arms and chest.
Tuesday: Back and abdominals.
Wednesday: Legs
Thursday: -
Friday: Shoulders, glutes
Saturday:-
Sunday:-
Make sure that you have at least one, preferably two, days in a week for recovery with no heavy training.