On my journey to get fit this year I’ve discovered a lot of really interesting things, most of all weight lifting! Like the majority of girls I used to be so scared of weights, I assumed that using them would make me look like a body builder. I was totally wrong though! A friend of mine showed me how awesome weights are and how much they help increase your strength and tone your body. Since then I’ve been doing a PT session every week focused solely on weights and I’ve seen amazing results – I can now do a pull up all on my own, which I’m very proud of! It’s very empowering feeling your body getting stronger, I love it. It’s also helped my yoga hugely as I’m now strong enough to get into so many new postures, including inversions and arm balances, which has made my practice so much more fun. So I wanted to encourage anyone else who wants to feel stronger but is scared of weights to try them! To inspire you I asked the amazing Shona Vertue to shed a little light on why weight lifting is awesome – I follow her on Instagram and have been so inspired by her with my own fitness, that I thought she’d be the perfect person to inspire you guys. So, over to Shona…
I have been a personal trainer for over 5 years and the more women I talk to about their experiences in the gym and their exercise habits the more I find that they have a similar story to me when I started. During my first year of training I would hurry to the gym on my lunch break and, on arrival, beeline straight to the floor space where I felt safest. I would do some stretching or yoga there first, then throw in some treadmill time (you know, to burn fat and get skinny), do a few reps of the kick back machine and a few on the adductor machine for inner thighs (without making eye contact of course), scurry back to my safe spot on the floor for some crunches (to get a tummy like a Victoria’s Secret model), do a final stretch and then out. At all costs I avoided that area in the back with the racks of heavy metal and the huddle of huge men looking at themselves in the mirror. It seemed like a foreign world and a bit of a scary one. I associated the dumbbells with the guy’s huge muscles and thought that if I ever picked up those weights myself, I would probably end up looking something like them. Eew. So I dutifully did my routine every day for an hour and waited for the results… which never came.
If this in any way sounds similar to your workout programme and if on top of that you’ve been dieting like a maniac but aren’t seeing the results you would like than this post is for you. I was fortunate, back then, in getting some time with a personal trainer in Sydney, where I’m from, who explained the error of my ways and had the patience to show me otherwise. In my very first workout he told me that my glutes were weak (his polite way of saying I had a flat butt!), that my hip flexors were tight, my lower abs were non existent and that all this was the cause of my lower back pain. He put me onto a programme that consisted of no treadmills, no machines, and no ankle weights, just straight up free-weights (nothing less than 8kg Dumbbells and no less than 20kg Barbells). After 12 weeks – I saw amazing results, I became ‘toned’, I finally had abs and booty, and most importantly I felt empowered. I was well and truly hooked. I actually became a Personal Trainer because of it – and have made it my mission to help women connect to their inner power through lifting weight (and of course doing yoga too).
So, here’s how it works (put as simply as possible):
Lifting weights has shown to burn more fat than steady state cardio because of the metabolic demand it causes on the body – this works through a fancy term called ‘excess post-exercise oxygen consumption’. When you perform cardio you will be burning calories only while you perform it, during high rep strength training you will be burning calories both during and post work out. So you work just as hard and get twice the results. Winning! Women always want to get ‘toned’, but cardio doesn’t build new muscle, in fact it can actually shrink muscle. Want to be skinny and flabby anyone? Didn’t think so. Lifting weights and putting on some muscle will help you get lean and stay lean – why? A larger engine burns more fuel and nothing burns food like muscles. I’m not saying you should aim to look like a female version of Arnold Schwarzenegger (which, by the way is impossible for women to do without steroids), but by putting on more muscle your metabolism will become more efficient. Above all of this, and possibly the most motivating factor of all is that you will feel like Superwoman. Pull-ups, chin-ups, squats and dead lifts are some of the most empowering movements – when you feel empowered you will train more. When you train more, you will look and feel so much better. Steady state cardio just doesn’t invoke that sense of power – it’s draining.
So – who’s ready to lift some weight?
If you’ve never lifted before, please don’t start flinging around a 30kg dumbbell by yourself. I recommend finding a good quality personal trainer to help you and show you the correct form, even if you just buy a couple of sessions – you won’t look back, except to check out your own strong booty in the mirror! 
from Deliciously Ella http://deliciouslyella.com/fitness-why-weight-lifting-is-awesome/
via Free Spiritual Marketing
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