Workouts for men and women should be different because men and women have very different bodies. This is why it is important that there are workout plans for women and other plans for men. Men often focus on muscle since they have more muscle and women tend to focus on fat loss since a woman’s body has more fat than a man’s. Fundamental differences like this should be taken into account when coming up with workout plans for women.
Although this is not to say that many things which work for men while working out, will not work for women. However, it is important for men and women to establish different workout goals because usually they are looking to get different end results. One issue is that due to pressure from the media and a horrible self image, most women look to lose fat and achieve a stick thin body that is not normal. This truly is unfortunate because there are many women who spend their lives worrying about what they look like and wonder what else they can do to make themselves look more like their idols. Men are no different and will do close to anything, including taking illegal and dangerous drugs, to get massive arms and a huge chest.
I am not saying that getting fit and healthy is not a good goal, but it is important to understand that looking good may not always mean you are healthy. I think that people incorrectly use the words heath and fitness in the same context. You can look amazing and have almost no body fat, but that does not automatically make you healthy. In theory, you could lose a lot of weight by eating very little food and existing on diet sodas. But is this a healthy approach? Of course not. You need to find a balance between losing weight, getting in shape and being healthy while doing it.
So, lets discuss a good workout regime.
There are plenty of workout regimes out there, the best workout plans for women will usually have 2 things in common.
#1 - Resistance Training; and
2. Cardio Exercises Done In Intervals
For best results you should train three times a week for about an hour and limit your calories enough to cause a caloric deficit.
Strength Exercises
Resistance training can be done in a gym or at home. Working out at home can be attractive to some people, maybe you are self conscious or you just want to stay away from the gym rats. Many people wrongly believe that a gym is full of people who have great bodies and that are in amazing shape. In most cases, there are just a lot of normally shaped people at the gym that are trying to lose weight and get in shape - you really won’t be the only one. Out of all the gyms I have been to, there has only been a handful of people who looked like the next mr or miss universe. So don’t be intimidated and try one out, I think you will like it once you start to make a few new friends.
Dumbbells, workout balls, resistance bands and body weight exercises, which may just be the best, are all involved in strength exercises. With bodyweight exercises you get a great workout and won’t even need any equipment. In fact, if you do train at home, you will need very little if you are going to concentrate on bodyweight exercises. If you are thinking that you can’t get in to great shape with just bodyweight exercises, I think you will change your mind if you really give them a try. I have read about some of the harshest workouts ever by the US Navy Seals Navy Seals, that only involve bodyweight exercises and are done in the middle of the woods! You can make any workout, even without weights, very intense.
You will burn more calories when you increase the amount of lean muscle mass you have. This is how men will often lose fat quicker than women. This is not always the case, but more times than not if you have a muscled man and a large women go on a diet, all things being equal in accordance with their size and amount of working out they do, the women will take longer to lose fat over the man. This is why you will lose much more fat if you commit to a regular workout of resistance training exercise. In order to achieve the maximum results, it is best to have a progressive increase in resistance or overload with each training session. The idea is you do not do the same amount of reps or use the same weights as you used in your last workout. You have to keep progressing, either increasing repetitions or weight or just reducing the amount of rest time in between sets. Doing this progressive style of training will help your body to get stringer faster. You will increase the amount of muscle on your body so that your body needs to burn more calories. Your metabolism goes up and you burn more calories and fat throughout the whole day, not just when you workout. The next part of this plan is to add what is known as interval cardio.
Interval Cardiovascular Training
Cardio done in intervals is not the same as the cardio most people do, but it is very effective at working the body. Not only is it effective but it doesn’t take as long as a conventional workout. In fact, you are only going to do interval training for around 15 minutes or less.
As an example lets use a workout bike. You can use this blueprint and apply it to a treadmill or any other cardio workouts, however on a bike you can change speeds easier. I am going to use a scale of 1-10 with one being very low intensity and ten being that you are pedaling as fast as possible.
* Start by warming up at a really slow pace for about 2-3 minutes at a pedaling pace of about 3.
+ Spend a minute on 4
+ Then for 30 seconds pedal at a 9
-Go back down to 4 for 1 minute
-Speed back up to 9 for 30 secs
+ Do this for about 13 minutes
-Go down to 4 and slowly decrease the speed down to a 3 or less over the last 2 minutes as a cool down.
After you’ve done this workout for awhile - about 3 times each week - you should be able to complete the entire workout cycle of resistance and cardio in under an hour. 30 minutes for the resistance and 15 minutes for the cardio. Give it a try because this really is one of the best workout plans for women.
