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What kind of lifting are you doing? If you want the "toned" look, then you need to stop doing "toning" exercises and start focusing on building muscle. The best way to do this is to focus on doing heavy lifts (free weights or machines, both are effective for you at this point). Try to do a weight that only allows you to do 4-6 reps and do 4-5 sets of each rep. Make sure you supplement your lifts with some protein afterwards to repair and build the muscle. Where you're so close to your goal, you'll start to see a difference relatively quickly. But, bottom line, you need to focus on building some muscle as opposed to just pounding out the cardio.

I do Nike Training Club and it covers EVERYTHING. Cardio+ strength training for all muscle groups. Free in my living room, no machines. Great results!

Do P90x and follow their nutrition plan. I guarantee it works. Lost 27 pounds in 90 days and I was able to workouts at home.


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You need to be doing compound lifting exercises that will engage as many body parts as possible. machines usually just target certain mucles. You will burn alot more calories doing free weights because of the supportive requirements to lift/hold/stablize the weights.

Free weight squats, dead lifts, power cleans to an overhead press all require to use your entire body to perform. I don't care if you have to use a bare 45lb bar. Or even a 30 lb dumbell.

First of all, Major Kudos for what you already do!... I agree with what's already been said... There's more to strength and conditioning than arms and legs....And it's a total myth that if a woman 'weight lifts' that she'll bulk up with man muscles..... thoses muscles are caused as much if not more my hormonal differences that anything else... If you buy a few "women's health" magazines, they'll have a lot of exercises in there you can do on your own at the gym... Watch and talk to others in the gym; most will be happy to help. Look me up on facebook.com/Ron Andersen. email: Ron_Andersen2000@yahoo.com.... I have several female workout buddies across the nation who do weight training as well as a lot of cardio... I love to help anyone who is serious about exercise. We make up challenges for each other.... it's pretty fun..... and a butt kicker at times..

I do P90x at the moment (I'd recommend it by the way), but generally, it sounds like you need to build some muscle. Lift some heavy weights and go for 5 sets at 5 reps. You should be lifting a weight that you can get 5 on the 1st 2 or 3 sets but you're struggling to get 5 on the last 2 or 3. Once you can get 5 on all 5 sets, increase your weight.

I'd recommend free weights and compound moves rather than machines. Machines tend to isolate single muscles whereas compound moves with bar or dumbbells - like squats, lunges, deadlift, shoulder press, back rows, bench press etc - work the main muscle group you're going for along with a whole bunch of secondary muscles.

Switch out your routine every 4-6 weeks to get round the plateau. Just change round the day you do the different muscle groups, which muscle groups you do together and the order and types of movement you make, there's a million different movements that work the same major muscle groups but keep your secondary muscles guessing. Switch em round a bit.

Don't worry about bulking up, it aint gonna happen as a woman - you don't have the hormones to get bulky and mannish, you'll just get a nice toned look. And bulking while eating on a deficit is virtually impossible for anyone ever.

I'd say work cardio and strength alternate days, but that's open to opinion... Regardless, switch muscle groups between resistance workouts to give each the time to recover before hitting it again. The major muscle groups are legs, back, chest and arms & shoulders. You can work 2 on the same day - eg. legs/back, chest/arms etc - so you should be able to do a week rotation if you leave a day between most resistance workouts. Even do one area twice a week with another group, tailor it to the areas you want to work on.

For your cardio, give HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). Basically training at 60% your max intensity for a period, then a short burst of 90% for a short period and back and forth. I'm not a major gym/machine cardio kinda guy though so maybe someone else can fill in the blanks on this training style....

For post WO nutrition, you could drink whey shake for quick release protein to get the best out of your muscle recovery after resistance training. You should probably eat something protein rich like cottage cheese or chicken or tuna shortly after a workout at least.

Of course, these are just my suggestions, you gotta do what's good for you!

Hope some of that helps!

Jay

i highly suggest new rules of lifting for women. I've had great success with it...check out my most recent blog on it for my first 7 week progress stats.