For Women: weight lifting

my hiney workouts,I have a love hate relationship with with squats and lunges

I don't lift but I love working abs!

I just got a great new(ish) book from the library called The New Rules of Lifting for Women. The author is Lou Schuler. He's written a lot for men in the area of weight lifting, and in this book talks about how important weight lifting is for women, and that we need to life HEAVIER THINGS! Check into it! It totally motivates me to give it all I've got at the gym. I typically work on my core, arms/back, and legs/butt. I'm kinda getting conceited about my defined shoulders!!!

Edit: Haha, it looks like a few others were thiinking/typing the same thing as me as I wrote that. :laugh:

I'm using Chalean Extreme and love it...on week 8 of a 12 week program and already so much stronger and also seeing definition. Once I'm done with week 12, I will go into maintenance and stick with this program. Good luck!

I'm currently lifting to P90X! I love it because it gives me a balanced workout in all my body parts!

Heavy squats and deadlifts with the barbell.

Hmm where to start: About myself: I just turned 51, I have 5 kids the oldest is 24 and the youngest is 6 and the next youngest to him is 18. I've been really overweight for 24 years. I developed diabetes at age 35 and it went into remission when I started doing nursing clinicals (CNA type work). Kept it away until I was pregnant with my last child at age 45 and in the 7th month. Went away again during nursing and came back @2yrs post partum when I was weaning him and still starving. I started really paying attention just befor I got pregnant the last time. I was 226 and stayed the same throughout pregnancy. My boy was 7lbs 14 oz. Post partum I was at 216. Then I started belly dancing for a show so was practicing pretty much nightly and dropped all the way down to 209. Don't remember how much I bounced back up during weaning but it seems like it was about 216 again. Hunger was an issue. I was up to 27 units of long acting insulin 2x's a day and 17 units of fast acting at every meal. I was swimming, but starving and felt like I was not losing anything. I found a drug called Byetta which dropped my need for insulin, kept my sugars down and killed my appetite. then I added weight training and my fitness pal. Unfortunately not able to afford continuing the Byetta.

Having said that however, I'm now down to 5 units of long acting insulin only on the days I'm not weight training and I'm down to 193 and holding however my measurements are slowly dropping and finally some real movement in my hip measurement which means that the viceral fat is going away!

I actually felt like I was sitting on muscle when I got really going on the 5x5 program, whereas before it was more like just sitting on tissue or bone. I do 3 exercises a day, 3x's a week. Alternate between doing Squats, Bench Presses and Bent rows and then doing Squats, Overhead Preses and Deadlifts. Take 2 full days off, no cardio except whatever I do for fun. I've also started measuring and weighing once every 2 weeks.

Once I felt like I could lift the wieght of a standard bar (15 lbs) I started the proper version of Strong lifts 5x5. Adding 5 lbs to every exercise every time unless I couldn't make it and then repeat that weight on the next round of that exercise. Once squats were heavy enough that I wanted to make sure I had a safer way to do them (I was using chairs instead of a squat rack) we found a used olympic bench with weights that normally retails around $400-$500 on Craigslist for $150.

I got all the way up to 120 on my squats and started crumpling over in order to muscle the weight up and had noticed that my hams and glutes were not as sore as they should be. So now I'm backing down to 115 and doing box squats which forces me to push into my heels throughout the lift. I've also corrected my form on OHP and dropped back down to 65lbs.

I very highly reccommend stronglifts 5x5. If you google it you can find a full pdf that will give you tons of info and there is a spreadsheet to download too. It's desgined for anybody and most of the info is geared toward men but you should be able to start with a standard bar, if you can't then start with dumbells and go to the bar when you can do at least 15 lbs. Make certain you get enough protien. Stretch afterwards, do cardio if you must on the same day, preferably after and on non weight training days do mild cardio and or yoga and stretching.

Gloves and a bar pad are recomended and a belt for your working weight if you have trouble remembering to tighten your abs during lifting.

For form I recomend going to youtube and searching for so you think you can squat, there's one for deadlifts, and bench presses too. Might be one for Overheads and rows, not sure. Also Mark Riptoe on Overhead presses.

Good luck!

bump

I've always just done by own thing, usually mixing it up between 4x8 and 3x12 sets/reps and dividing the week by body part and doing about 3 exercises per body part. Although my strength was increasing, I never saw any physical changes so I decided to stop *****footing it around and started http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/laura-bailey-muscle-building-program.html on Saturday. Just finished day 3 today. I only got a few hours of sleep last night because I was feeling the DOMS in my legs hardcore. I'm excited for more

Ah, I watched her video a while back and I just love it. Do you follow her nutrition program (in terms of consuming that many calories), or have you adjusted it in some way?

another P90X fan, lifting heavy. Have tried a few other things, but for me, this gives the best fastest results. And I am "trainer picky" - not many I can stand to listen to for long, but Tony Horton works for me, so I can stick with the plan. I have done a few rounds now.

Its a full body plan, and I see results all over. Started with a few small hand weights, eventually bought a dumb bell weight set at Wallmart for about $40. No we just add on a new set of weighted dumbbells, as we need them. My husband also does (P90x now, so we have acquired a good weight range at home.