How to Start a Weightlifting Routine

If I’m going to pick TWO exercises for women who are in their 20s to their 80s, it’s going to be weight lifting and walking, hands down! Why? 

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Because they’re both activities we can do for our entire lifetime.
                  2. They’re very accessible and relatively inexpensive.
                  3. They’re the BEST options for balancing our female hormones which help avoid weight gain as we age.

I’d argue that every single woman should be engaging in weight lifting at least 2-3x/week to maintain or make gains and not LOSE muscle mass each year. Weight lifting also has benefits in helping maintain our metabolism, lower our body composition, improve our bone density, and improve our function and balance. 

So where do you start?

There are LOTS of different ways to begin a weight lifting program – if you did a google search, you’d have millions of hits with a variety of answers, and because there are so MANY options out there, I think it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the noise and get paralyzed on where to even start. So I’m going to break it down for you today.

1. How often should you lift? Remember that something is ALWAYS better than nothing! So if you’re doing nothing right now, start small with 1-2x/week. Long-term goal: 2-4x/week depending on what you’re doing, but if you want to make gains, you should be lifting at least 2-3x/week.
2. You’ll want to take a day off in between lifting the same muscle groups. For example, you don’t want to do bicep curls 2 days in a row. The muscle breaks down after a lifting session to build back up stronger. It needs that day off in between for recovery.
3. I put together a quick FREE guide of the muscle groups I focus on, my go-to basic exercises, and a sample workout of how to put them together! Drop your email at this link and I’ll send it over.

If you started this workout routine and did it 2x/week for 4 weeks, you’d be on your way to a great strength training routine. You can ALWAYS add another day, change up your exercises, or add more to your routine. But don’t neglect the basics and don’t despise the small beginnings. You don’t have to be all or none. You can start simple and once simple becomes easy, you can build upon it.

Happy Lifting! Reach out if you have any questions! I’d be happy to help!