For Ladies – How To Motivate Yourself To Start Weight Training

Pretty much every girl I’ve ever spoken to regarding to start weight training told me that she finds it intimidating to grab a barbell and squat, for instance. Even though many of us know the benefits, we still feel uncomfortable trying to start weight training in the gym, because we’re women. Here are a few tricks that helped me get over this- have a look and see if they help.

How To Start Weight Training

1. Research

If you’re still not convinced why women should train like men, please do your research. We have a few such articles here on Fitneass, and you should browse them carefully to learn. In a nutshell, this is what it’s about: the main fear regarding weight training for women is that they will grow big and muscular. The reality is that women’s bodies do not produce enough testosterone to grow big muscles. They can get strong, and they will help your body have “more curves in the right places”, but you are not going to turn into Popeye in the blink of an eye.

Besides, even men have a hard time gaining muscle mass- and they do have testosterone! Can you realise how hard it would be for us? After all, change doesn’t happen overnight. If you give it a try and you notice after a few weeks that you are growing, you can just change your exercises. But I guarantee you will be nothing but happy if you’ll start weight training.

2. Proper Form

So let’s say you’re ready to hit the gym, dumbbells ready in both hands… and then you think “What if I look stupid doing that?”. Well the only way to look stupid when you start weight training exercise is if you do not have the correct form.

When you’re a weight lifting beginner it’s important to either:

• Get a coach;
• Get informed.

If you can get a coach that is great, as he/she can see you live and correct your form if needed.
But I guess you would not be reading this article if you wanted to get a coach, so in order to know proper form when you perform weight exercises you need to look up instructional videos online. There are hundreds of tutorials online that teach you exactly where your limbs should be, how your back should be, etc.

If you are still uncertain, you can film yourself (smart phones are pretty small, after all, no you won’t be drawing attention) and then watch yourself lifting to see if it looks like those in the tutorial videos.

3.  Practice!

Always remember there is absolutely no shame doing the exercises at first using the smallest weights. Biceps curls with a 3 pound dumbbell still count, and it’s important you practice good form. And squatting with an empty bar might feel weird, but you know what feels weirder? A painful back caused by using heavier weights than you can handle, and thus having bad form.

Do you wanna start weight training? Or maibe you already did it? How did you get over the intimidation when you first started out? Share your ideas with us in the comments section so that all our lovely readers can find some motivation to hit the gym.