Ladies be honest, everytime you get close to the weight’s area of the gym you get a little anxious that even a whiff of lifting will cause you to morph into a mini, female version of Schwarzenegger. I will keep this very plain and simple ok? You won’t! Far from it in fact. Whenever, you glance at a picture of any lady who is rocking a toned, curvaceous, feminine figure in a magazine the chances are she lifts.

To ‘’lift’’ doesn’t mean to train like the current Mr Olympia, doing spilt routines and so on. Lifting weights simply means just that. The format or system you choose to use is entirely up to you. Having said that there are certainly some fundamentals I would strongly recommend you stick to if you want to be leaner, more toned and look like those girls who litter the pages of fitness magazines with their amazing figures.

Before I get into what and why, I want to firmly reassure you of my above points – looking masculine won’t be something you need to concern yourself with. I don’t expect you to take my word for it so I am going to offer a 3 pronged explanation as to why it won’t happen so listen up.

1. Testosterone

Mention the word testosterone to a lady and they will freak out. Men are able to build muscle more easily because they have approximately ten times the amount of testosterone us ladies do. That’s the first thing you need to remember. “But what about those over muscled ladies I see?’’ I hear you ask. In the competitive world of on stage competing there are indeed both male and female examples of ‘’muscle freaks’’ but you don’t need to worry about that. These extreme examples use synthetic hormones to break human boundaries. Again, not relevant to you.

This is the first real point I wanted to get across as to why physiologically when you lift weight you can’t gain muscle like men would, or those ‘’super freaks’’ you see from time to time.

What’s more we actually want testosterone (within our natural volumes) to help burn fat and keep a firm figure.

2. Growth Hormone

If I managed to flog the idea that testosterone is nothing to worry about, let me see if I can beat that and get around growth hormone (GH). Like testosterone, we need GH to metabolise body fat amongst a whole host of other things. GH is naturally occurring within the human body and a prolific fat burning agent as I mentioned previously. Weight training helps stimulate the secretion of GH, as does a good night’s sleep. Again, it can’t make you gain mountains of muscle (or even close for that matter) but what it can do is look after your body and keep you lean. Many female celebrities go to anti-aging clinics for GH treatment to keep their youthful looks.

3. Body Recomposition

Whilst weight training won’t make you look masculine or unfeminine it will make you look like a fitness goddess with killer curves and a lean streamlined figure. As point one and two above outlines, resistance training helps stimulate a hormonal reaction that’s far superior to conventional cardio training.

A bit about the science – most women do lots of cardio, eat very little and lose a lot of weight. What’s happening is their lean muscle mass is going and their body fat is staying – say hello to the “skinny fat” look. What resistance training will do with a high protein diet is allow you to maintain your natural lean muscle tissue so increasing your metabolism and reducing your body fat. This changes your overall composition to a much leaner, feminine and sexy look.

Weight training with intensity and real weight (not those pink 1kg dumbbells please) creates an effect known as EPOC which stands for “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption”. In short, this creates a calorie burning effect for 24+ hour’s post-workout increasing your overall ability to burn calories. Sometimes I refer to this as the “afterburn” effect.

If you have made it this far you will hopefully realise weight training will only help you on your quest to a more pleasing figure, not work against you and turn you into “he man”. I promise you won’t look back once you become a “lifter”.