I’m going to start a series aptly called “Reality Check” to help distill the information people receive in regards to planning a fitness program. In today’s fitness world there are many terms and concepts being erroneously perpetuated and I’ll look at couple of these now. Specifically I’ll be addressing some common confusion around women and weight training.

Reality Check #1 : Toning Your Muscles

As part of my my personal training service, I have all new clients fill out a detailed report that includes relevant information, not the least of which is goal setting. In that section I have clients put 8 common training goals in order of importance. These include weight loss, cardiovascular fitness and endurance to name a few. Most people, especially women, will almost always have strength and muscle building in positions #7 and 8. Now this isn’t because they don’t want to be strong with a lean muscular physique, rather that strength training or muscle building conjures up negative images for them. These same people will tell me their #1 goal is to be “toned” but they were concered that it wasn’t on the list. It must have been a mistake right? Actually no. When I’m confronted with this (almost every time I do a consultation) I promptly push strength training to the top of their list. Let me explain.

The term “muscle tone” or tonus describes an electrophysiological phenomenon, a measure of ionic flow across muscle cell membranes. It can be thought of as the muscle’s readiness to do anaerobic work. The more fit the muscle, the more electrophysiological activity it exhibits at rest. Lack of exercise leads to poor tone, aerobic exercise improves tone a little bit, low-intensity weight training improves tone more, and high-intensity training improves tone the fastest. This why a strength athlete’s musculature appears to be flexed even when  at rest.

Most exercise programs that claim to improve muscle tone are actually lower-intensity muscle building programs. You know the ones with very high reps counts. usually in a circuit setting. These are only moderately effective for improving muscle tone. If “tone” is the goal, strength is the method. Period.

Reality Check #2 : Women and Big Muscles

Everyone knows men want muscular development, for obvious reasons of masculine dominance and peer respect (and intimidation). But women who are afraid of developing ‘masculine’ muscles soon change their tune. Initial concerns of getting “too bulky” are quickly abandoned as they become aware of just how difficult it is too gain a significant amount of muscle. Strict nutritional, training and recovery protocol must be implamented 24/7 to accomplish this. In addition, you must possess the genetics and motivation to build large muscles. Most women have neither. Simply lifting weights is not enough to create more than a few pounds of muscle gain in most cases. However, this is the ideal scenario if you want to make subtle but noticable changes to your physique.

With rare exception, when a woman begins to see the shape of her triceps, roundness in her shoulders, sweep of the thighs, and particularly a hint of abs poking through the fat, she is hooked. Perhaps wearing smaller clothing sizes and being more ‘compact’ or ‘tight’ in dimensions is good encouragement to tolerate any added muscle. Such tolerance likely is the case since in today’s world an acceptable look for women ranges from the hourglass or ‘petite-and-slim’ look to the athletic.

Reality Check #3 : Developing flexibility

There is some concern from women that weight training will decrease their hard earned flexibility. This is simply not the case unless they train that way. A lot of younger women that I run into display an impressive degree of range of motion through most of their joints. This is usually because they regularly participate in activities that encourage extensive passive flexibility (ie. stretching on the floor) like most yoga. Of course there is nothing wrong with this (in most cases) but there needs to be an implement in place to develop ones active flexibility or ability to stretch under load .

In the same way a lot of weight lifters (if they develop too much mass)  eventually become stiff if they don’t stretch, you will likely soon develop hypermobile joints if you don’t get stronger. Your flexibility might seem impressive but is actually unsafe and unnatural. You cannot allow your joints to move through terminal ranges without a certain amount of strength supportting them or you risk injury. It’s always about balance. With intelligent weight training you can balance  out your active and passive flexibility (the active flexibility deficit).

An example might be someone performing a basic hamstring stretch on a mat to a desirable range but are unable to duplicate that range while under load in a Straight Leg  Deadlift. This is not good and may eventually result in injury. This deficit also correlates positively to your performance in a chosen sport. If your joints are unstable, your power and strength will suffer. The bottom line ladies: I know you love your yoga but make sure you compliment your flexibility with a sound strength training regimen.

I hope this helps some of you make more informed decisions about setting up a workout schedule. I’ll be back soon with more reality checks, this time for men.