Here’s the no. 1 myth about women and weights:

Women who lift weights will end up with grotesquely huge muscles and unfeminine bodies… not to mention square jaws and hair on their chests.

And here are the facts:

Women who train with weights do not develop unnaturally large muscles. Those photos of steroidal women that do the rounds of office email inboxes every now and then might give some people the wrong idea! However testosterone is a male hormone that promotes muscle growth and masculine characteristics. The level of testosterone naturally present in a woman’s body is nowhere near enough to cause large amounts of muscle growth.

A good weight training program can give you a stunning, feminine physique. Yes, you will develop some muscle but it will be shapely muscle tone, not huge bulging biceps, and it will help you shed fat and lose dress sizes (see below).

Weight training helps you lose body fat. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism is… and thus, the more calories you burn even sitting still, even sleeping! Also, muscle is more compact than fat. So if you put on muscle and lose fat, you can end up weighing the same but be physically smaller and more shapely.

Weight training makes you strong. You’ll notice the difference every day, from carrying shopping bags and lifting toddlers out of prams, to changing tires and mowing lawns.

Weight training keeps your bones strong and healthy, helping to prevent and/or reduce the symptoms of bone and joint conditions such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. Every time you lift a weight you put a degree of stress on the bones involved, and your body strengthens your bones in order to cope better with that stress next time around.

Weight training improves your posture. How many of you work office jobs, sitting hunched over a computer for 8 hours a day? Bad backs and hunched shoulders are often the result. Weight training can strengthen the muscles in your core, lower back and upper back, thus helping you to stand straight and tall with your shoulders back.

Weight training increases your confidence. It’s a great feeling to find yourself getting stronger and achieving things in the gym that you never thought possible. If you can do that, what else can you do?!

- Jasmin Higgs,

Manager, MICHAEL TABBAN ONLINE TRAINING