Beginners Strength Training for Women – Introduction
What is an excellent beginners strength training workout for a woman at home?
A lot of women are nervous about strength training.
They mistakenly believe that lifting weights will make them muscular or bulky or give them masculine-looking muscles.
These fears are entirely misplaced!
The main biological driver of muscle growth is a hormone called testosterone.
Most women have about 10% the testosterone as men, and despite this, men still find building muscle a hard and laborious process.
With only 10% of the testosterone as men, it’s very unlikely that a woman will build massive muscles and start to look manly.
You certainly won’t “bulk up” from just a few strength training workouts a week.
Instead, lifting weights will allow women to:
- Tone and shape their muscles
- Target “problem” areas, such as the hips, thighs, or backs of the arms
- Prevent age-related muscle loss
- Increase functional strength
- Improve joint health
- Increase bone density
- Increase insulin sensitivity
- Lose or maintain body fat and weight
While cardio can produce some of these benefits, only strength training does it all.
In terms of bang for your buck, an excellent beginners strength training workout for a woman at home is very hard to beat!
In this article, we reveal what you need to do to get the most from strength training and provide you with a workout you can do at home using minimal equipment.
Beginner Strength Training Workout – Basic Guidelines
Your time and energy are valuable commodities, so don’t waste them on ineffectual workouts designed for men!
Instead, follow these guidelines to ensure you get the most from your strength exercises.
#1. Stick to compound exercises – mostly
Exercises can be classified as isolation or compound movement.
Isolation exercises involve one joint and relatively few muscles.
Examples include leg extensions, triceps pushdowns, and pec flyes.
In contrast, compound exercises involve multiple joints and larger groups of muscles.
Examples include:
Compound exercises are more functional, make better use of your training time, and are better for burning calories.
While there is nothing wrong with doing a few isolation exercises at the end of your strength training session, compound exercises will produce the best results in less time and should be the focus of your workouts.
#2. Full-body workouts are best
Bodybuilders train different muscles on different days, an approach that is known as split training.
This allows them to do many different exercises and sets for each muscle group, which is thought to help build bigger muscles faster.
As most women don’t want to build massive muscles, it makes sense to avoid training like a bodybuilder.
Instead, most women should stick to full-body workouts, where all the major muscle groups are trained each session, and you work out 2-3 times per week.
Don’t worry; we’ve got a workout for you to try at the end of this article.
#3. Challenge your muscles with moderate to heavy weights
Some fitness influencers suggest doing very high-rep sets with a lighter weight, such as three or five pounds for 50 reps.
Unfortunately, this is both ineffectual and a waste of your valuable time.
Your muscles only adapt after they’ve been challenged to work harder than usual.
Easy workouts with light weights won’t get the job done.
Instead, you must overload your muscles with progressively heavier weights, working in the 6-20 repetition range.
If you can do more than 20 reps, your weights aren’t really heavy enough.
Conversely, if you can’t do six reps, your weights are probably too heavy.
Remember, there is no need to worry that lifting hefty weights will lead to massive muscles.
Your lower testosterone levels mean this isn’t likely to happen.
#4. Take your sets close to failure
For your workout to be effective, you need to challenge your muscles and ask them to do more work than they are used to.
The simplest way to do this is to continue your set to within a couple of reps of failure.
This means your muscles start to tire, and you cannot do more than a couple more reps in good form.
The effective reps model tells us that, to produce positive results, you should get within one to five reps of failure.
While it’s hard to judge your proximity to failure so precisely, most people know instinctively when they only have a couple of reps left to give.
This is the “sweet spot” for improving the condition of your muscles.
#5. Follow a balanced program
It can be tempting to only train the muscles or muscle groups you feel are weak or enjoy working.
For example, you might want a bigger, shapelier butt and only train your glutes.
Unfortunately, unbalanced workouts like this can cause more problems than they fix.
Your body has over 206 muscles, and many are arranged in opposing pairs across joints.
For example:
- Hamstrings and quadriceps (back and front of your thighs)
- Triceps and biceps (back and front of your upper arms)
- Erector spinae and rectus abdominis (back and front of your lumbar spine)
- Rhomboids/trapezius and pectoralis major (back and front of your upper torso)
Emphasizing one muscle and ignoring its opposing neighbor can create strength imbalances and postural problems and can even lead to injuries.
Avoid such problems by always following a balanced workout plan, like the one we’ve included in this article.
#6. Keep doing the cardio
When it comes to cardio and strength training, many people think it’s a matter of doing one or the other.
If you lift weights, you can’t do cardio, or if you do a lot of cardio, you don’t need to lift weights, right?
The truth is that while both forms of exercise are effective, they work even better when you do the two of them regularly.
Cardio is good for fat burning, cardiovascular fitness, and general health, while strength training is good for everything else.
For example, you could plan your workout week like this:
- Monday – strength training
- Tuesday – cardio
- Wednesday – strength training
- Thursday – rest
- Friday – strength training
- Saturday – cardio
- Sunday – rest
Good cardio activities include jogging, swimming, cycling, rowing, and group exercise classes.
Or, even more convenient, you can just go for a brisk walk every day.
Combing cardio and strength training is like 1+1=3 – the results will amaze you!
#7. Be consistent!
Even if you put all these guidelines into practice, your workouts still might not produce the results you want.
Why?
Lack of consistency!
For strength training to be productive, you need to do it regularly.
For example, if you do your workout three times one week, twice the next, and then skip it the week after, you won’t accumulate enough effective training for your body to adapt.
So, instead of working out on random days or whenever you feel like it, set a schedule and stick to it.
With full-body workouts, this usually means three times a week, e.g., Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
If three workouts per week are impractical, you can get good results from two workouts per week, e.g., Monday and Thursday.
Regardless of the frequency you choose, do your best to maintain your training schedule, and remember that no one ever got fitter or lost weight by skipping workouts.
Beginners Strength Training Workout for a Woman at Home
There are lots of beginner strength training workouts for women, and some of them are pretty good.
However, more often than not, they involve joining a gym or buying home exercise equipment.
This workout is designed to be done 2-3 times a week at home with nothing more than a few household items.
Because of this, you should have less trouble doing it consistently, and you know how important that is!
But, before you start, spend a few minutes warming up by doing some light cardio, e.g., jogging or jump rope, followed by dynamic mobility and flexibility exercises for your major muscles and joints.
Finally, remember to continue each set until your muscles tire and feel like you are approaching failure.
Easy sets won’t give you the results you want.
With that in mind, understand that the reps quoted in the following program are for illustrative purposes only.
It’s okay if you can do more than the specified number of reps.
However, look for ways to keep your reps between 6-20 to save you from wasting time on longer-than-necessary sets.
Exercise | Sets | Reps | Recovery | |
1 | Plie (wide stance) squat | 2-4 | 6-20 | 60-90 seconds |
2 | Hip thrust | 2-4 | 6-20 | 60-90 seconds |
3 | Push-up (kneeling or full) | 2-4 | 6-20 | 60-90 seconds |
4 | Single-arm row* | 2-4 | 6-20 | 60-90 seconds |
5 | Deadlift, curl, and press* | 2-4 | 6-20 | 60-90 seconds |
6 | Lateral lunge | 2-4 | 6-20 | 60-90 seconds |
7 | Plank | 2-4 | 20-40 seconds | 60-90 seconds |
8 | Side plank | 2-4 | 20-40 seconds | 60-90 seconds |
*Use dumbbells or, if you don’t have any, you can use bottles filled with water or sand, cans of food, or any other weighty handheld object.
Beginners Strength Training Workout for a Woman at Home – Wrapping Up
Strength training is arguably the best thing you can do for your body.
It’s good for your muscles and bones and, contrary to popular opinion, can also help you lose fat and control your weight.
However, as powerful as strength training undeniably is, it’ll only work if you do it consistently and with sufficient intensity.
You could go to the gym to get your strength training fix, but it’s usually more convenient to work out at home.
Training at home means you have fewer reasons (or excuses!) to skip your workouts, as you can exercise at whatever time suits you best.
Home workouts will also save you money.
Put our training guidelines into practice and do the workout 2-3 times a week.
You’ll be amazed at what you can achieve in just a few months of consistent training.
Rich is a NASM-CPT (Certified Personal Trainer), an