10 Mistakes Women Make in the Gym

whitebalance

I thought #10 was kind of interesting...

10. Juicing
No, not juicing as in steroids. I'm talking about the plastic cups of pulverized, Osterized, barely palatable concoctions of kale, seaweed, wheat grass, and whatever other obscure vegetables or fruits the juicer is able to buy at a discount that so many women have permanently affixed to their hands when they walk into the gym.

I know it seems contrary, even heretical, to suggest you stop or limit your consumption of these drinks, but hear me out. Vegetables and fruits contain simple sugars and more complex, harder-to-digest carbs. No problem there. However, when you blend up fruits and vegetables, you're breaking down all those normally hard-to-digest carbs into infinitesimally small pieces. Drink that stuff down and you're virtually bypassing much of the digestive process. All those sugars are presented to your bloodstream like flowers to your momma on Mother's Day. They get absorbed super quick, and your pancreas releases a surge of insulin to counteract all that sugar. It's virtually the same effect you'd get from shot-gunning a 24-ounce 7-11 Slurpie.

Insulin shuttles off some of the sugar to muscle cells and the rest are stored (in the liver or as body fat), but then insulin levels dip below baseline and you get hungry again pretty fast. If you give in to that hunger, you're ingesting more calories than you might normally have and extra, unnecessary calories get stored as fat. What's more, if you do the juice thing often enough, you may actually develop some insulin resistance, which is the first step down the path to Type II diabetes.

There's one more thing to consider, too. You probably wouldn't be able to eat all the fruits and vegetables that are in a typical fruit or vegetable smoothie if they were sitting there on a plate. They'd take up too much room in your stomach and even all that Spandex in your Lululemon pants wouldn't be able to flatten out your belly. However, pulverize all those fruits and vegetables down into primordial ooze and they, and all the calories they contain, fit in your stomach just fine. Juicing allows you to eat more than you normally could, which is never really good if you're trying to keep tabs on your body fat levels.

I'm not suggesting that you give up all juices. Drink them in moderation, eat them in their un-pulverized, natural state, or simply employ one simple trick: just have the juice junction, jamboree, or whatever add a scoop of protein (whey or casein) to your drink. The protein will ameliorate the big insulin surge, not to mention giving your muscles some extra building blocks.

I wonder how accurate this is... it sounds accurate, and totally worth further investigation.


oh... and... seeing as I apparently lives in the Slurpee capital of the universe... it's spelled SLURPEE :laugh:

Hmmm. When I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia as a kid, they told me to handle sugar crashes with something like a turkey sandwich and orange juice or lemonade. The sugary drink was to provide a quick sugar hit to the blood stream, while the turkey was to provide protein to stabilize it. So yeah, maybe.

JoRocka

Yes, TRX...sorry I couldn't remember the name. It was over in the 'womens weight section' so I never saw any of the guys on it. I certainly wasn't paying the guy - it was part of the gym membership that they give you a health assessment & write you a program.

Previous to that I was doing resistance & free weights - increasing the weights as I gained strength. I generally found the simple exercises were most effective (squats, lunges, planks etc) - I really enjoyed it & kept pushing myself. It just felt like at this new gym, he was trying to use every piece of equipment he could think of. I am willing to give most things a try, but I just didn't feel any extra benefit from some of the combos he had me doing. I felt I was focusing so much on balance and less on the actual exercise.

Maybe I was doing it wrong. He wanted me to do press ups with my legs on a swiss ball - I couldn't even balance let alone do a single press up - its was comical. Also dumbbell flyes on a swiss ball - rather than a flat bench - I managed that ok, but not sure i gained anything with the modified version. Do you think these exercises should have done more for me?

izokay.

TRX is a great tool. lots of really hard core people use them- they aren't a joke- I'm considering purchasing gymnastic rings to use as a TRX substitute. and it makes me cranky when they put *kitten* in a women's only section- there is nothing about any piece of equipment or exercise that requires a penis. or a vagina.

There is no such thing as women's workouts
Or men's workouts- so there for the equipment in the training area's should be the same.

And doing anything on the stability ball will challenge your core more- I do all sorts of push ups on there- it's a great core activator- if you can't hold a plank on the ball- then maybe you should practice. It's a great way to up the plank from the ground.

Any time you pull your feet up for push ups/planks or anything like that- you add to the difficulty and increase the challenge.
Elevate AND make it unstable- it's great for using stabilizer muscles and engaging the trunk.

And ultimately if you were doing your free session- half the point of that is to show that the trainer is can give you effective workouts and half of it is to say - hey maybe you need some help with this.. part of it's marketing- not denying that.

But just because you didn't like it and couldn't do it doesn't mean it is a bad exercise. Besides- balance is a skill- you don't practice it-you lose it- you do practice it- and you can get better. (and that's why 80 year old people fall a lot and break things and why it's good to keep training it)

ShibaEars

Bumping so I can read later - site is blocked :grumble:

skeo

I knew I wasn't crazy :embarassed: I thought the same about the oblique/side bend things. I see plenty of men and women doing them while holding on to 25,35,45lb plates and doing at least 15-20 reps each side. For guys, OK I see if they want a stalkier mid-section, but for women I'm sure the aim is for an hour glass waist. I skipped doing those after realizing, we dumbbell curl for bigger biceps, so why wouldn't the same apply for our midsections?

Now, I just do different variations of planks :bigsmile:

brower47

I thought #10 was kind of interesting...

10. Juicing
No, not juicing as in steroids. I'm talking about the plastic cups of pulverized, Osterized, barely palatable concoctions of kale, seaweed, wheat grass, and whatever other obscure vegetables or fruits the juicer is able to buy at a discount that so many women have permanently affixed to their hands when they walk into the gym.

I know it seems contrary, even heretical, to suggest you stop or limit your consumption of these drinks, but hear me out. Vegetables and fruits contain simple sugars and more complex, harder-to-digest carbs. No problem there. However, when you blend up fruits and vegetables, you're breaking down all those normally hard-to-digest carbs into infinitesimally small pieces. Drink that stuff down and you're virtually bypassing much of the digestive process. All those sugars are presented to your bloodstream like flowers to your momma on Mother's Day. They get absorbed super quick, and your pancreas releases a surge of insulin to counteract all that sugar. It's virtually the same effect you'd get from shot-gunning a 24-ounce 7-11 Slurpie.

Insulin shuttles off some of the sugar to muscle cells and the rest are stored (in the liver or as body fat), but then insulin levels dip below baseline and you get hungry again pretty fast. If you give in to that hunger, you're ingesting more calories than you might normally have and extra, unnecessary calories get stored as fat. What's more, if you do the juice thing often enough, you may actually develop some insulin resistance, which is the first step down the path to Type II diabetes.

There's one more thing to consider, too. You probably wouldn't be able to eat all the fruits and vegetables that are in a typical fruit or vegetable smoothie if they were sitting there on a plate. They'd take up too much room in your stomach and even all that Spandex in your Lululemon pants wouldn't be able to flatten out your belly. However, pulverize all those fruits and vegetables down into primordial ooze and they, and all the calories they contain, fit in your stomach just fine. Juicing allows you to eat more than you normally could, which is never really good if you're trying to keep tabs on your body fat levels.

I'm not suggesting that you give up all juices. Drink them in moderation, eat them in their un-pulverized, natural state, or simply employ one simple trick: just have the juice junction, jamboree, or whatever add a scoop of protein (whey or casein) to your drink. The protein will ameliorate the big insulin surge, not to mention giving your muscles some extra building blocks.

I wonder how accurate this is... it sounds accurate, and totally worth further investigation.


oh... and... seeing as I apparently lives in the Slurpee capital of the universe... it's spelled SLURPEE :laugh:

I wondered the same thing about #10. I would have to do more research before accepting it at face value. I liked the rest of it.

AsaThorsWoman

"Guys are probably the biggest tools in the gym because they're driven by ego instead of logic, but women make their own share of mistakes that are unique to their sex. Women are torn between what they read in Shape or on some insane aerobic queen's blog, their unqualified husband's or boyfriend's pontifications on diet and exercise, or society's conflicting and confounding expectations of what a woman should look like. It's no wonder women can't decide between lifting weights, becoming a Crossfit wind-up toy, doing aerobics until they're thin as a waif from Oliver Twist, or practicing so much yoga that their seven angry and overworked chakras pack up their things and go to Cabo for a weekend of volleyball, sun, and suds."

Bwa ha ha ha, I can so relate to that.

resistance_freak

Bump to come back later when I have more time to comment. But I will say that I almost shut down completely as soon as the article referenced "Skinny Fat". This idiotic phrase is one of my pet peeves! And I find it very difficult to take anyone seriously who uses it.

AsaThorsWoman

Thanks for sharing.

debbie14892

Awesome article...thanks for sharing!

Modern_Warrior

There are a number of items in there for both men and women. Thanks for helping to get the word out!

Edited for typos.

jrgriffin82

Great article. Thanks for posting it. I must admit when I walk into the weight room at the gym I feel completely lost. I pretty much just stick to the weight machines because the free weights and weight bars/benches kind of intimidate me. Especially because that's what all the "big dudes" use and I'm not really sure what to do with them. I have no goals for the weight room and I'm not even sure what would be reasonable goals for me to set in there. I've been using the weight machines on and off for years and never really feel like they're doing much of anything for me and I just recently found out that I have in fact lost some muscle. When I worked with a trainer in the past he had me doing the weight machines as well and when he did have me doing dumbbells they were always the lighter ones. He always told me lighter weights and more reps. I need to find a trainer who will work with me on the "big boy" stuff and will actually challenge me and push me and teach me so then I can learn to do it on my own.

sugarkissprincess

Thank you for sharing!!

JenAndSome

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

brower47

Bump to come back later when I have more time to comment. But I will say that I almost shut down completely as soon as the article referenced "Skinny Fat". This idiotic phrase is one of my pet peeves! And I find it very difficult to take anyone seriously who uses it.

I liked the article but though I don't have an issue with the term 'skinny fat' since someone at a normal body weight can have an obese BMI (what I would consider skinny fat), I wasn't fond of the description of endurance athletes bodies as unattractive.

"I've got a question for you: Have you ever see a marathoner or even an accomplished jogger with a really good body? Probably not. They're either slightly emaciated, have a body with very few curves, or are plagued with the skinny-fat condition I talked about in the intro. They also have really ugly feet."

The writer is making the mistake of making his personal body preference a panacea for every other person's aesthetic preferences. But I'm able to dismiss a person's opinion that I don't agree with from the useful information presented in the rest of the article.

ErynV15

Great article! Thanks for posting.

PunkyDucky

Love this article! :flowerforyou:
But wouldn't your midsection muscles get larger due to a calorie surplus? I feel they should have mentioned that in the article. Or am i wrong?

firstsip

I thought #10 was kind of interesting...

10. Juicing
No, not juicing as in steroids. I'm talking about the plastic cups of pulverized, Osterized, barely palatable concoctions of kale, seaweed, wheat grass, and whatever other obscure vegetables or fruits the juicer is able to buy at a discount that so many women have permanently affixed to their hands when they walk into the gym.

I know it seems contrary, even heretical, to suggest you stop or limit your consumption of these drinks, but hear me out. Vegetables and fruits contain simple sugars and more complex, harder-to-digest carbs. No problem there. However, when you blend up fruits and vegetables, you're breaking down all those normally hard-to-digest carbs into infinitesimally small pieces. Drink that stuff down and you're virtually bypassing much of the digestive process. All those sugars are presented to your bloodstream like flowers to your momma on Mother's Day. They get absorbed super quick, and your pancreas releases a surge of insulin to counteract all that sugar. It's virtually the same effect you'd get from shot-gunning a 24-ounce 7-11 Slurpie.

Insulin shuttles off some of the sugar to muscle cells and the rest are stored (in the liver or as body fat), but then insulin levels dip below baseline and you get hungry again pretty fast. If you give in to that hunger, you're ingesting more calories than you might normally have and extra, unnecessary calories get stored as fat. What's more, if you do the juice thing often enough, you may actually develop some insulin resistance, which is the first step down the path to Type II diabetes.

There's one more thing to consider, too. You probably wouldn't be able to eat all the fruits and vegetables that are in a typical fruit or vegetable smoothie if they were sitting there on a plate. They'd take up too much room in your stomach and even all that Spandex in your Lululemon pants wouldn't be able to flatten out your belly. However, pulverize all those fruits and vegetables down into primordial ooze and they, and all the calories they contain, fit in your stomach just fine. Juicing allows you to eat more than you normally could, which is never really good if you're trying to keep tabs on your body fat levels.

I'm not suggesting that you give up all juices. Drink them in moderation, eat them in their un-pulverized, natural state, or simply employ one simple trick: just have the juice junction, jamboree, or whatever add a scoop of protein (whey or casein) to your drink. The protein will ameliorate the big insulin surge, not to mention giving your muscles some extra building blocks.

I wonder how accurate this is... it sounds accurate, and totally worth further investigation.


oh... and... seeing as I apparently lives in the Slurpee capital of the universe... it's spelled SLURPEE :laugh:

I wondered the same thing about #10. I would have to do more research before accepting it at face value. I liked the rest of it.

I'm wondering the same. This isn't the first time I've come across it; I remember reading a few write ups post-Steve Jobs' death about the concept.

jkestens63

bump

emdeesea

I just saw this last night at my gym. This girl working out with 1-pound weights.

What a delicate flower you are, honey.

BigT555

Bump to come back later when I have more time to comment. But I will say that I almost shut down completely as soon as the article referenced "Skinny Fat". This idiotic phrase is one of my pet peeves! And I find it very difficult to take anyone seriously who uses it.

im not a huge fan of the term either considering is a pretty big oxymoron, but it really is the best way to describe someone who has alot of fat and little muscle