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1. Fear of Muscle Gain
Many women fear that weight training will make them look too muscular, perhaps like a bodybuilder, and so they avoid weights altogether or at least some of the better muscle-builders such as the squat, lunge, bench press and deadlift. When you first begin to regularly perform these exercises, yes--you might see some changes in muscle mass and definition start to take place. That's because your body probably hasn't been taxed that particular way before. You won't, however, keep adding pounds of muscle every month. "It's hard for women to put on a large degree of muscle mass, period," Horn says. "Women who weight train run no risk of accidentally looking like men, who have far greater amounts of the muscle-building hormone testosterone in their body." In fact, Horn stresses that increasing muscle mass from these compound movements will actually accentuate the shape of your physique and make you appear leaner.
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2. Improper Training Ratio
To train efficiently, you must strike a balance between cardio and weight training. Many women focus on cardio work, de-emphasizing (or excluding) weight training in the mistaken belief that more cardio will help them achieve their goal of burning fat to attain a leaner physique. Yet you can spend hours on the stair-stepper or treadmill and not effectively reduce your bodyfat percentage, because weight loss is commonly at the expense of lean muscle tissue, which actually stokes your body's metabolism. "The best way to burn fat is to add muscle to your body," Horn notes. Adding a few pounds of muscle through resistance training will help increase your metabolic rate and burn bodyfat. To do this, women should spend at least half of their training time working with weights.
