5 Tips For Women To Build Muscle & Increase Strength

Gone are the days of legs bums and tums classes & endless boring cardio. More and more women are turning to weight training to build muscle and increase strength and it’s great to see. We’ve been preaching this for years. Watching our female members gain strength, muscle, competence at lifting and confidence in the gym is one of the many reasons I love my job.

If you are new to weight training or perhaps you’ve been lifting for a while but have plateaued, follow our top 5 tips to increase strength & muscle

Focus on the big multi joint exercises

To get the most return on your time spent in the gym focus on big multi-joint (compound) lifts. These lifts will target larger muscle groups, get you working harder and will help you build strength and muscle more effectively.

For the lower body you should include squats, deadlifts & split squat variations.

For the upper body include chest press, shoulder press, row and pull down variations.

Focus on the tempo – slow it down

The best bit of advice if you are new to weight training is to slow down

You want to stimulate the muscle through every part of the movement that you are performing.

For example, when squatting the lowering phase is often performed without control and too quickly, essentially letting gravity do it’s thing. Instead try resisting gravity and slowly control the squat on the way down over 4 seconds and then drive up fast from bottom to top position. You should feel your muscles working harder and longer

Increase training volume

Training volume is the amount of work performed per session. Look to increase training volume over time.

For begginers you may perform 2-3 sets of 8-12 reps per exercise

For advanced lifters perform 4-5 sets of 8-12 reps per exercise.

Lift heavier weights

If the weight is too light you will not build muscle.

Constantly aim to increase the weight lifted on all exercises.

Of course we wouldn’t expect you to increase the weight on every exercise for every set. Instead aim to increase the weight on exercises you feel confident and competent in.

If you can lift heavier weights on the first 1-2 sets and then have to drop down that is fine. The following week/s aim to lift the same weight for 2-3 sets.

Protein intake and quality nutrition

Protein provides the building blocks to increase muscle mass. If you don’t eat enough then your body will not grow.

We set the minimum amount of grams of protein per day at 1.5 x body weight in kg.

We also recommend to try and spread this amount evenly throughout the day so that your body has a consistent supply to repair and recover the body from training.

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