Women & weights: how much + results questions

I don't know the scientific answer for this, but I've been lifting weights 2-3 times a week for close to 15 years and always see the best and quickest results when I push myself - feeling the burn! Many women seem to lift light which is fine at first, but once it no longer feels challenging, it's time to bump up your weight.

If you want your muscles to actually get bigger, this requires gaining weight by eating at a surplus (above your maintenance intake level). If you just want to get stronger and retain your existing muscle while you continue to lose fat, then you can do that as an alternative to mass gains. An in-between approach is to eat right AT maintenance and do what's called a recomposition - slow fat loss and slow muscle gain. Either way, you'll want to find a good progressive lifting program that challenges you to continually increase the weights you're using. In terms of reps, the range for strength is about 4-6 and hypertrophy is only about 8-12. Any higher than that and you're training for endurance, not strength or muscle gain. The last rep or two should be very difficult to complete - so yes, you should feel a burn at that point.

I've read that 12 to 15 reps before you lose good form is a great guage of whether a weight is heavy enough for you.

Throw that book away and instead read The new rules of lifting for women.

Kind of this. Doesn't sound like the workout in that book is gonna get you anywhere. Think about a gym membership, or buy a a barbell, if that's not an option YouTube how to substitute the compound movements with dumbbells (you will quickly need more weight though) I heard good things about the all pros beginners routine using dumbbells.

And everything cmeirun and hmvol said. They know

For aesthetics, aim for 9-12 reps. If you want the best medium between strength building and aesthetics, then do something more like the heaviest weight you can do at 6-8 reps. If you want to focus simply on strength gains but don't care that much about how it makes you look, lift as heavy as possible in the 1-5 rep range.

You can buy a book or there are lots of free web sites. When I was young and into bodybuilding, I honestly started with Weight Lifting for Dummies and Oxygen magazine. I have been lifting off and on since 2000. I am getting more into the power lifting side of things now. I don't think you need barbells at all for bodybuilding to start, as long as your dumbbells are heavy enough. I like barbells now and use them a lot, but I still prefer dumbbell chest presses and overhead presses, but now I use 40 pound dumbbells. The only things I actually prefer barbells on for body building is squats and deadlifts, although that's just my personal preference.

I don't buy into the fact that body recomp is difficult. I gained a ton of weight in grad school (70 pounds) and started lifting again when I was about 200 pounds (down from 235) in about October 2012. Then eating at a small deficit and working out with weights has caused me to lose 3 pants sizes in the last year, but I've only lost 10 pounds the whole time (now at about 170 and in the acceptable body fat range). I you are new to weightlifting, you will see gains and I saw them very easily. For example, my leg extension (although I rarely use machines now) was 40 pounds in October 2012 and now it's 140+ pounds. I am now curling 25# and I was curling 8-10 when I started lifting again in October 2012.

I could start to see visible results after about 4-6 weeks of lifting. If you are thinner, you will see definition quickly.

Prior to my new routine I was lifting light and high rep and saw no change in my measurements. Now that I lift as heavy as I can tolerate for 8-10reps the inches are coming off.