General Comment About People Who Don't Lift

You don't have to lift heavy at all to get benefits from strength training.

Try a class like "Group Power" (a strength training class that does lifts to music) at your local gym if you think you mighty like to get into strength training that way. They start people of f with low weights, or just the bar, until you feel strong enough to start putting more weight on the bar.

I don't believe I am. You need the stretching and cardio of dancing, along with the strength training to get a dancers body. You need to dance.

Yes. Plus, be born to parents who had the right combo of genes to gift you a body suitable for dance.

Yes, you are so right. Cause and effect runs the other way. This reminds me of when people point to long distance runners and claim the exercise will make your muscles longer. Maybe people with long muscles (genetically determined) are more likely to become successful long distance runners. Successful competitive body builders will likely be those whose genetics are more conducive to the sport. There seems to be lots of confusion about correlation vs causation around here, including lack of understanding regarding direction of cause/effect and omitted variable bias. You know that higher ice cream sales causes more swimming pool drownings, right? The two are positively correlated!

eta: I totally reversed osteopenia (pre-osteoporosis) caused by medication solely by heavy weight lifting. The end.

Yes, quite true. Also, my friend Acg67 has a great chart that shows the correlation of the increase in pirate activity to changes with global warming. That proves it!! lol

Besides the numerous health benefits that have already been discussed....

It just makes me feel like a total bad-a**.

That's reason enough right there.

When I made my original comment about aspiring to a dancer's body, I was thinking about belly dancers. Most of them look very fit, and they can do beautiful and controlled movements with their bodies, so it's obvious that they exercise and practice. I've never watched a belly dancer and thought "look at those muscles!" What I see is grace and control, and I aspire to that, not rippling muscles.

But I do lift and increase weights until I can't complete 12 reps. I recognize the importance of building muscular strength in my own life (I like to garden). But I think it's perfectly fine to aspire to something different than what heavy lifting gives you.

I've thought about lifting but I don't have weights and I belong to Curves for Women and don't want to join another. Curves says I'm getting strength training because their equipment works with resistance not weights. I also do strength training on my WII fit which includes lunges, pushups etc. And incase I'm not getting enough I also downloaded YAYOG. I did that on Saturday for 16 minutes and discovered the muscles I'm missing (I mean that I haven't exercised!). I'll probably try that once every 2-3 days as well. So do I still need to lift?

Real life example, I'm 51, I do resistance and was doing Jillian Michaels 30 DS with 3/5 lb weights only. I fell down 11 stairs, and cracked my collar bone in 2 places (not broken through). The first doc told me "You are lucky for your age" the Ortho told me "Its a good thing you exercise or you would have shattered that baby, its a very thin bone"

Resistance is helpful, lifting is helpful, have your DEXA scans and talk to your doctor if you don't really want to do more and are not sure if you should. I want to do more but have to wait, just not as long as I would have if I hadn't been doing anything.

I have not read nearly all the comments...I got bored. JUST last night I started to read New Rules of Lifting for Women. It was insightful. According to what I have read so far is that you can't get a dancer's body. That body of long and lean is genetic. You can however get the muscle tone the dancer has...through lifting!!!! There are apparently no workouts to make a person long, lean, appear taller, etc. You can't change that part of your body!

@ Those knocking curves, seriously don't knock unless you've actually tried it.

It's actually a really great, non intimidating way to motivate women to weight lifting. It's the first form of weightlifting I ever tried, and was my gateway drug to having the confidence to go to a real gym. Did I stick with it? Nope, but that's not curves fault. I was a much smaller girl back then, and in my first month alone I can still remember losing 12 inches between hips/waist/chest/thigh/arm. That's a lot of inches.

Do you know how overwhelming it can be the very first time you walk into a lifting room by yourself, or even with a friend as a women, especially not one in shape? Trust me, if you understand a little about your muscles and what you are doing before hand, which curves can teach you, the intimidation factor goes down drastically.

Their machines are based on hydrolics and resistance, much like those at orangefitness (which I call 'curves for super fit people who like HIIT), yeah the name needs some work...

Without having done curves first, I wouldn't have found the confidence to go to the gym. Without doing that I wouldn't have done BFL, and without that I wouldn't have learned what healthy, clean eating is, and I wouldn't have learned NRoLfW or tried Bodypump, so it really is a continuum and Curves is Beginner 101.

If your grandma or your daughter is thinking about doing an exercise program, but lifting at the gym is too overwhelming for them, or they are uncomfortable exercising around men for whatever reason and they want to try curves, why not? Just tell them to keep it month-to-month, because if they get the lifting bug, they will want to move on.

When I made my original comment about aspiring to a dancer's body, I was thinking about belly dancers. Most of them look very fit, and they can do beautiful and controlled movements with their bodies, so it's obvious that they exercise and practice. I've never watched a belly dancer and thought "look at those muscles!" What I see is grace and control, and I aspire to that, not rippling muscles.

But I do lift and increase weights until I can't complete 12 reps. I recognize the importance of it.

Wait! There is more than ONE type of dancer?! Unpossible.

Yeah, one thinks of belly dancers, one thinks ballerinas. Me, I think more of a chorus line type dancer like the Rockettes. :ohwell:

No, I haven't seen all the pictures in the thread (and not the belly dancer posted earlier). I wasn't talking about every possible dancer anyway; I was talking about the dancers in my head. I have a DVD of belly dancers performing, and their bodies look very different from the bodies of weight lifters that I've seen posted around the forum here.

Again - I haven't seen all of them, but I did know that there are hard muscled dancers and less hard muscled lifters. I've seen a few examples of both in this thread.

If I didn't want to be able to dig out rocks and move heavy things around in the wheelbarrow to do landscaping projects, I don't think I'd do much weight lifting. I'd still practice belly dancing.

Oh and if you want a dancer's body, you can just look like me! I'm a totally hot zumba dancer. :P I'm all like out there shakin my money maker...and then some.

I wish people would come to terms with the fact that a slightly higher body fat percentage will turn "OMG she's like SOOOOOO bulky!!!!!!! #Idontwannalooklikethat %whateverstupidtaggingthingpeoplearedoingthesedays" into "grace and tone and control" and all those other good adjectives people use for strong chicks that don't have super low BF%'s.

This. A belly dancer and a figure competitor (in other words, the super tanned, super lean women flexing in bikinis on stage) might have the same exact muscle mass. One has a higher level of bodyfat, one has a very low level of bodyfat. The figure competitor might look just like your belly dancer image in the off season.

I am doing this too because of some lower back issues. I don't think I can go right into freeweight exercises on some of the lower body exercises. My back is too weak. I'm working up to it though. :bigsmile:

Careful, this could be a dangerous way to go. No machines will strengthen the stabilizers and antagonists the way actual lifting can. You should be doing freeweight exercises, starting light and very slowly moving up. If you build certain larger back muscles up without building the stabilizers around them, you can create an imbalance that can get you injured later on.

The right way is to do the correct compound exercises from the beginning.

Read the weakness, back recovery, guidelines, and inflexibility articles here:
http://www.exrx.net/Exercise.html

I am doing this too because of some lower back issues. I don't think I can go right into freeweight exercises on some of the lower body exercises. My back is too weak. I'm working up to it though. :bigsmile:

Careful, this could be a dangerous way to go. No machines will strengthen the stabilizers and antagonists the way actual lifting can. You should be doing freeweight exercises, starting light and very slowly moving up. If you build certain larger back muscles up without building the stabilizers around them, you can create an imbalance that can get you injured later on.

The right way is to do the correct compound exercises from the beginning.

Read the weakness, back recovery, guidelines, and inflexibility articles here:
http://www.exrx.net/Exercise.html

Talk to your doctor before you do any of that.

If your grandma or your daughter is thinking about doing an exercise program, but lifting at the gym is too overwhelming for them, or they are uncomfortable exercising around men for whatever reason and they want to try curves, why not? Just tell them to keep it month-to-month, because if they get the lifting bug, they will want to move on.

I joined a small women's only gym. They have female trainers, the place isn't crowded all the time, and you don't ever have to unrack huge amounts of weight that guys have left on the bars.
There are better options than Curves, though it's good that it helped you.

I did Curves for 6 months before I gave up. I saw no difference.

edited because I seem to spell better the second time around.

I am doing this too because of some lower back issues. I don't think I can go right into freeweight exercises on some of the lower body exercises. My back is too weak. I'm working up to it though. :bigsmile:

Careful, this could be a dangerous way to go. No machines will strengthen the stabilizers and antagonists the way actual lifting can. You should be doing freeweight exercises, starting light and very slowly moving up. If you build certain larger back muscles up without building the stabilizers around them, you can create an imbalance that can get you injured later on.

The right way is to do the correct compound exercises from the beginning.

Read the weakness, back recovery, guidelines, and inflexibility articles here:
http://www.exrx.net/Exercise.html

I'm doing both, but I'm lifting heavier for quads on some of the machines. My legs were pretty weak. I also do squats and lunges but with way less weight.