The Benefits of Strength Training for Women
If you're new to strength training or curious about getting started, I’m breaking down the powerful benefits of building muscle—one of the most important factors in supporting longevity, especially for women. It is a non-negotiable pillar in my weekly exercise routine. I also share expert insights from one of the leading voices in women’s exercise physiology and nutrition.
What is Strength Training?
Strength training (aka resistance training) is a form of physical exercise designed to improve muscular strength and endurance by making your muscles work against a resistance. This resistance can come from:
Free weights (like dumbbells or barbells)
Resistance bands
Weight machines
Your own body weight (like in push-ups, squats, or planks)
The goal is to STRESS THE MUSCLES enough to cause microscopic damage, which the body then repairs and strengthens over time—leading to increased muscle mass, stronger bones, improved metabolism, and increased longevity.
The Main Types of Strength Training
Muscular hypertrophy:
This term is used for building muscle, and you use moderate-to-heavy weights to enhance muscle growth.
Maximum strength:
Alongside muscular hypertrophy, maximum strength is where you push your muscles as hard as they can go. It usually involves lower repetitions using heavier weights.
When you grip heavier weights and engage in heavier exercise, form is crucial. Take time to learn proper form using body weight or low weight before you attempt to reach for a heavier one. Always practice caution with heavier weights by asking for a personal trainer to demonstrate the exercise or asking a friend to assist you.
Muscular endurance:
This refers to your muscles’ ability to withstand pressure and exercise for a given period of time. In order to have higher muscular endurance, it involves prioritizing higher repetitions of using lighter weights or just using body weight.
Circuit training:
Circuit training typically involves a series of strength training exercises designed in a sequence to target full-body conditioning. You focus on one series or exercise for a duration of time and cycle through the rest of the sequence with little to no rest in between. Because of the short amount of time in between each exercise, it allows for your heart rate to increase more than if you were to take longer breaks, engaging in cardiovascular movement.
Strength Training Equipment
Depending on your goal with either muscle maintenance or muscle building, here are common strength training equipment (or none at all):
Body weight:
You don’t need to have a gym membership to build muscle! Using your own body weight for resistance training can be done at home or when traveling and having limited access to a gym. A big hack from me is to find workout videos on YouTube that you can follow!
Resistance bands:
These are rubber bands that vary in length and resistance but when stretched, provide extra resistance in comparison to just doing body weight or no weight exercises.
Free weights:
This category of equipment includes dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, and medicine balls. They are not tied to anything and vary in size and weight.
Weight machines:
Most commonly found at a gym, think cable machines, squat racks/squat machines, machine back extension, machine overhead and chess press, and seated leg press to name a few. These machines are all adjustable in weight. At most gyms, there are personal trainers walking around and are able to assist you in showing you how to use the equipment.
Suspension equipment:
Suspension equipment includes ropes or straps (like TRX)that are anchored to a point and allow you to use your body weight and gravity to perform various exercises.
Strength Training Benefits
Women tend to shy away from strength training and commonly prefer cardio-based workouts. In fact, a study reported that only 1 in 5 women in the U.S. engage in regular resistance training. But, besides building muscle, strength training also provides benefits such as burning calories more efficiently, lowering the risk of injury and disease, improving heart health, helping support stable blood sugar levels, promoting greater mobility and flexibility, and improving mental health and mood.
Burning calories more efficiently:
To state it simply, muscle burns more calories than fat! Therefore, the more muscle you have, the more fat you burn. Your basal metabolic rate (BMR)--the number of calories your body needs to function at rest–increases in the following days after a strength workout. Because of this, it is vital to make sure you are fueling properly before and after a strength training workout to replenish your muscles.
Lowers the risk of injury and prevents disease:
As women get older, it becomes more and more important to strengthen your joints to protect against the risk of injury and disease. A 2019 study found that osteoporosis, a disease that weakens bones and increases the risk of fractures, is more prevalent in women than men. Other conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis are also more commonly diagnosed for women.
Regularly strengthening the muscles around your joints means you will have better shock absorbency, and when paired with regular stretching, it will prevent the risk of injury. Engaging in regular exercise increases the blood flow and fluid that helps keep your joints lubricated while bringing in oxygen and nutrients to decrease inflammation.
Improves heart health:
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Americans. Although cardiovascular exercises such as walking, running, cycling, swimming, and dancing have been synonymous with heart health, doing regular strength training also improves the health of your heart. A study measuring the association between resistance exercise and cardiovascular disease risk in women found that women had a lower CVD (cardiovascular disease risk) at any age when engaging in regular resistance training.
Helps support stable blood sugar levels:
The previous study that measured the association of resistance training to cardiovascular health in women also found that women had lower fasting glucose when they did resistance training. A lower fasting glucose tends to indicate you are less insulin resistant and able to regulate blood sugar better! Other research has agreed that strength training may increase insulin sensitivity, decreasing your risk of diabetes. In fact, a 2021 study found that resistance training reduced the risk of developing diabetes by 30% in comparison to those who did not engage in regular strength training. Check out my blog post on managing blood sugar levels here.
Improves mental health and boosts mood
Being active in any capacity improves your mental health and boosts your mood. It reduces your body’s levels of stress hormones, adrenaline, and cortisol while stimulating the production of endorphins (natural mood elevators). The sense of accomplishment that exercise brings has been proven to reduce anxiety, depression, and negative thought patterns. It improves self-esteem, cognitive function, and confidence in daily life.
Improves Bone Density
Strength training is highly beneficial for bone density because it places stress on the bones through resistance and impact, stimulating the body to strengthen the skeletal system. When muscles contract against bones during resistance exercises, they send signals that trigger osteoblast activity—cells responsible for building bone. Over time, this process helps maintain or even increase bone mass, reducing the risk of osteoporosis and fractures, especially as we age.
What Does a Women’s Strength Training Expert Say?
Coining the phrase, “Women are not small men,” Stacy Sims is a leading health expert in the field of women's strength training. An author and speaker, she has dedicated her career to supporting women in building and maintaining lean muscle for longevity and teaching them about their bodies. Because she has countless words of wisdom on this topic, I wanted to break down a few main points to maybe help change the way you have viewed strength training.
“Women are not small men”
Dr. Sims emphasizes that many health studies are conducted on men and do not include how it affects women. Because men's and women’s bodies are so different, including muscle structure, muscle fibers, metabolism, hormones, and brain and body feedback mechanisms, men are able to lose weight and put on muscle much faster. Because of this, she describes that many health trends such as fasting before a workout are not recommended for women, although the scientific literature that used men as participants reports great results from fasting workouts. Women’s bodies are very different from men’s, so we need to train and fuel differently!
Eat breakfast before a morning workout and reduce cortisol
Dr. Stacy Sims is a huge advocate for women eating (even something light) before a workout. Cortisol is a stress hormone and our bodies fight or flight response to stressful situations. About half an hour after women wake up, there’s a spike in cortisol and when we don’t have food in the morning, we’re not able to bring cortisol down. This heightened stress state continues to rise when we engage in exercise, which is considered stress (good stress) on the body. Over a long period of our bodies in a continued fight or flight state will lead to our bodies holding on to fat instead of using it for energy. Eating a small breakfast is a great first step in supporting your hormones and body!
Becoming stress resilient
Exercising, and particularly strength training over time teaches our body how to handle stress, overcome it, and get stronger in the process. When we become more resilient to stress we are able to remain calm in externally stressful life situations! Strength training supports longevity. Alongside having a leaner body with a decreased chance of disease, women are able to have more confidence and feel strong in their bodies.
“I want every woman to know that they have a right in every place and every gym and every situation. To be strong and powered and to feel positive about the space they are in.” -Dr. Stacy Sims