Fitness Tips Interview Question #6

As a female trainer are there any exercises you feel women over or under train in?

I see women do cardio and then when they go to strength train they only do like crunches or leg exercises or a couple of choice machines and they completely ignore certain muscle groups. This type of training can lead to imbalances and injury. You need to train every major muscle group in order to reap the benefits of strength training.

Another thing they’ll do is come in daily and do the same thing day in and day out. Like I just said, your muscle needs time to recuperate between workouts. So, you should never train the same muscle group two days in a row.

You could do total body workouts every other day or upper body one day and lower body the next or something like that. Variety is important, too. You don’t want to do the same thing every time you come to the gym. Your body will adapt and stop progressing.

Also, most women will use very light weight with very high reps and perform them way too quickly in poor form. You will not get much out of these exercises performed in this manner. You need to do a heavy enough weight that the last two reps in the set are very challenging yet still doable in good form.

Slow it down, go with a rep range of 8-12 unless you are elderly or arthritic, which you may then want to do 12-15. Do a couple of sets of each exercise with about 30-60 seconds rest between sets, according to your goals. You may try alternating workouts with less rest between sets on one workout and longer rests between sets at the next one.

I also think many women could benefit by throwing in some interval training into their cardio routines. If your fitness level allows, you’d be surprised how much this would really help burn some fat off.

For instance, try switch out a 45-minute to hour session with a 30-minute HIT (high intensity training) session where you warm up for 5 minutes, walk a minute/run a minute interval for about 15-20 intervals and cool down for 5 minutes to total 30 minutes. You can do those intervals any way you want.

You can also do it like on an elliptical by warming up for 5 minutes, then go all out as hard as you can for 15 seconds and then 45 seconds moderate pace to catch your breath and repeat that interval about 15 times and then cool down for 5 to total 30 minutes. It’s truly intense. Pace it according to your fitness level, but switch things up like that instead of becoming a treadmill zombie.

Interval training is the bomb! You need to work yourself up to it and give it a try.

You may still want to do your long duration cardio too, but throw in a couple of HIT sessions if you can.