Why Women Must Lift Weights

This month we are going to delve into 5 reasons why women need to do weights – that have nothing to do with how they look.

Lifting weights is such a wonderful, impactful mode of exercise that has far reaching, long lasting health benefits that have nothing to do with a look or aesthetic. In fact, encouraging your female client’s aim beyond a look, or a body ideal, will also keep her exercising for longer, with greater motivation too¹!

We are also going to touch on how to communicate and market this to potential new clients, so women realise that there are many more reasons to come and train with you – beyond losing weight!

1)Lifting Weights is Anti-Aging

To be clear, I am not buying in or promoting the ideal that women should LOOK young forever. By “anti-aging”, I am talking about the effects within the body that contribute to disease. Ageing is characterised by increased inflammation and an increased susceptibility to disease². Exerkines, which are signalling molecules released by various tissues in the body, a triggered by exercise, regulate inflammation, metabolism, and aid in healthy aging.

In studies done on mice, exercise has been shown to activate longevity genes as well as halt or slow age-related muscle loss. There is also a specific gene regulator called DEAF1, which can get stuck “on” later in life, contributing to muscle damage. Exercise can down-regulate this activity and mitigate muscle loss³.

Because muscle loss provides such a substantial contribution to ageing, it makes sense that building muscle is the most effective way to slow it down, although there is benefit from any kind of exercise or physical activity, aerobic or otherwise⁴.

2) Why Women Must Lift Weights – because of their BRAIN health!

Lifting weights can contribute to dementia prevention, is as effective as an antidepressant for depression treatment and boosts mental health more broadly.

Starting with dementia prevention, weight training may protect the brain and prevent cognitive decline¹. With two out of three people living with Alzheimer’s being women², protecting their brains from cognitive decline is especially important for them!

In another study, lifting weights for 6 months slowed and even halted brains shrinkage, with MRI’s showing healthier brain activity in the weight training group, changes that lasted up to a year after the intervention ended³.

Exercise has been demonstrated to be as effective as a treatment for depression as antidepressants⁴. Strength training specifically has an antidepressant effect with both people diagnosed with depression and those experiencing symptoms⁵. Even if you don’t have depression, lifting weights will have a beneficial impact on mental health more broadly, improving your resilience to mental health problems⁶.

Women are more impacted by depression and mental health problems than men^{7 8}, making a well balanced exercise program, that includes strength training even more important. To this day, there is a gap in medical research, treatments, and outcomes in many health conditions between men and women⁹. Until this gap has been closed, regular exercise remains one of the safest, most accessible, and effective treatments for physical brain health as well as mental health that’s out there!

Learn more about optimising brain health and dementia prevention in our Mini Course (here), or get that course and all the others for FREE when you sign up for Premium in our Skool.

3) Why Women Must Lift Weights – Lifting Weights is HEART HEALTHY!

We think of heart disease, heart attack, and stroke as “men’s diseases” but they’re only slightly less common in women (5.9% in men, compared to 4.6% in women¹). Despite being almost as common in women, outcomes after heart attack and stroke are significantly worse; with women being more likely to have more complications in hospital, more likely to be re-hospitalised, and more likely to die, both in the short and long term².

For now, it’s better to address the issue of heart disease in women before it develops, and lifting weights is one of the most powerful ways to reduce the likelihood of heart disease, heart attack, and stroke³! As little as half an hour a week on strength building exercises is linked to lower risk of premature death from heart disease⁴. It does this by increasing the flexibility of the blood vessels and how they function, improving lipid and glucose profiles, and also improving blood pressure⁵.

Nearly all of us have a relative with heart disease, so marketing to women the importance of lifting weights for their hearts should resonate with many of them. The heart is a muscle too, and just 1min to 59min per week of lifting weights can reduce cardiovascular events by 40 – 70%⁶!

For women who continue to be afraid of “getting bulky”, lifting weights can be hidden in weighted vests, car tyres, and shopping bags (more on this in my blog). We also don’t have to do a lot of weight lifting to get these heart benefits – there’s a heart health benefit from 1 min a week! Women who train for bulk train every single day, and follow a very specific diet regime. It’s like learning to drive and then expecting to have the skills to race formula one… women can let the fear of bulk go!!

4) Lifting Weights is Vital For Hormonal Health and Management of Hormone Driven Disease

Lifting weights isn’t a magic bullet, but there is plenty of evidence that it is a major player in managing hormone driven disease.

For example, lifting weights improves your insulin sensitivity¹, which will go on to improve the management of diseases like diabetes and PMOS (formerly PCOS).

You don’t need to body-build for these benefits, three sessions a week of resistance training coupled with 5 aerobic sessions (think walking, swimming, etc) and you’re done²! In just 16 weeks of the above program, participants improved their muscle mass, glycemic control, and insulin action! It works because your muscles take up the glucose circulating in your system, rather than relying solely on insulin production and sensitivity³.

The best thing about resistance training, as opposed to aerobic exercise, is that the muscles continue demanding glucose even when they’re not being used⁴. If you had to choose one or the other, choose strength training, but the best results are seen a combined, resistance plus aerobic training program.

Lifting weights can also help regulate cortisol, our primary stress hormone. To briefly recap:

• Cortisol is only a problem if it is chronically high, we need cortisol for normal functioning⁵.
• Oestrogen and Cortisol often act as antagonists, and have an intertwined effect⁶
• When Cortisol is chronically high, it can affect other hormones like your fertility and appetite responses⁷

Cortisol is better regulated when you regularly strength train, and particularly for women^{8 9}.

Strength training also triggers an increase in Growth Hormone and IGF-1, and this is a good thing for women, because both of these hormones play a role in muscle repair, metabolism, healthy ageing, bone density, and maintaining a healthy weight¹⁰.

Women who strength train also have a more stable Oestrogen and Progesterone balance, which can help regulate their menstrual cycle and improve their menopause transition¹¹. Testosterone is also at better levels in strength training women, contributing to a muscle mass, metabolism, bone density, and all round healthier ageing¹².

Finally, thyroid function and sensitivity is improved through regular strength training, which has positive effects on energy levels, weight management, and overall health (including hormonal!)¹³.

If you are living with a hormone disorder, whether it’s diabetes, hypothyroidism, or something else, chances are that strength training and improving your muscle mass will have a positive effect on the management of that disorder. I should also clarify, results will happen gradually over time, not happen instantaneously and across the board (except with blood sugar regulation). Generally speaking, the more muscle mass, the better your results, which will then vary from person to person depending on their specific disease expression and reaction to the weight training stimulus.

5) Why Women Must Lift Weights – for Their BONES …

The “skinny” trend really concerns me, because people with no idea on physiology are pushing it, as doing long term harm to themselves and their followers. Women are especially at risk of osteoporosis, and currently make up 2 out of 3 cases in Australia¹. Women’s unique life events – breastfeeding² and menopause³ especially, hit bone density hard, and “skinny” makes it worse.

Your bones are not passive, inanimate structures. In fact, they’re actively modelling, remodelling, and regenerating in response to their daily stresses and stimulus’s. What this means is if you never stress your bones, they de-condition themselves to match the easy life they have. This is why astronauts come back to earth so frail, because their bones and muscles de-condition when they’re not put under stress, like in a zero gravity environment⁴. It’s a classic use it or lose it scenario.

You can stress your bones, in an impact exercise such as running, and still develop osteoporosis. There’s a couple of reasons for this:

1. Relative energy deficit syndrome – This occurs when the energy consumed by a person doesn’t cover the costs of the activity they’re doing. In women, a classic red flag for this is irregular or impaired menstrual cycles, and skipping just one cycle due to RED-S can have far reaching and permanent consequences⁵ on a woman’s bones. Many athletes (but not only athletes) develop osteoporosis early because they weren’t eating enough to cover their energy costs during their career⁶.
2. Running only stresses the bones in one direction, so the other directions are never re-enforced^{7 8}.

You can also be intentional in your run – add some ski jumps, box jumps, and rabbit hops over the street furniture will add different stresses to your bones. Weight training usually pulls on the bones, ligaments, and muscles in a variety of directions as well. As long as the weight is heavy, for you, then it should have the desired effect.

From a marketing perspective, it is tricky because people can’t see their bones. It is hard to imagine the consequences of our 20 year old selves impacting our 60 year old self – it feels like it will never happen to us. You may find talking about osteoporosis is more effective in women who already have it, and then communicate that there’s hope. Plenty of women have turned around their osteoporosis, provided they caught it early enough, and performed the right kind of bone-stimulating exercise to rebuild!

If you like this then please head over and join me on Skool. This talk today is part of one of the modules that you get for free when you upgrade to premium.

6) Women Must Lift Weights so they FUNCTION better

Young mums and grandma’s especially are already lifting. They’re lifting children, nappy bags, grocery’s for four people. We need to build resilience into their structure so they don’t lift the mattress one day while making the bed and put their back out.

Women are still doing the lions share of care-giving¹; which is physical Changing nappies is lifting. Getting toddlers in and out of car seats is lifting. Helping an elderly aunt do their shopping is lifting.

Women are still doing the lions share of the housework²; which is also physical. Carrying loads of wet laundry to the line is lifting. Making beds is lifting. Moving chairs to vacuum is lifting. The grocery shopping involves lifting.

Women also bear most of the the mental load associated with caring and managing a household; even when they’re not the main care giver, they are almost always the one planning the care and organising the activities³.

Lifting weights can be a blessed break from the thinking, planning, and executing of care and management for a woman’s brain⁴. I acknowledge that any exercise or activity may provide blessed relief for women under a massive mental load, and think if the goal is to improve function then anything from meditation to crossfit is probably beneficial. Lifting weights, however, can be done slowly, and has a massive bang for buck in terms of health return on effort investment, that I would encourage all women to give it a go!

Lifting weights is not necessarily something you need a gym for. Nor is it a specific rep range or set number or even intensity level! All that we are after is to consistently challenge your muscles, and to increase that challenge over time. The technical term for this is “progressive overload” and it basically means to increase the weight as you get better at it.

There’s some great ideas in a previous series that i did a while ago: Weights Without Weights that you can read here.

My name is Clare Hozack, I am an ex-Australian Athlete, ex-NSWIS coach, and on a mission to change how women’s bodies are trained in the fitness industry. If you have a women’s health question, DM me and I will answer it live on Monday at 12pm!

If you liked this then please head over to my Skool (it’s free). There is a bunch of free content and opportunities for conversation and learning. You can also complete a free, 7 day trial of Premium, and collect 7 CPD with @AusActive and @NZREPS free at the same time! Check it out here!

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