Workouts for men and women should be different because men and women have very different bodies. This is why it is important that there are workout plans for women and other plans for men. In general, men carry more muscle than women and women have a bit more fat. Things like fat and muscle have to be considered when putting together an exercise routine, no matter what it is that you want from a workout.
To a certain degree, the same things will work for both men and women – we are all human after all, aren’t we? However, it is important for men and women to establish different workout goals because usually they are looking to get different end results. Thanks to images women are bombarded with by the media, they will often have a strange view of themselves and the kind of body they want. This is a shame and there are countless women who worry everyday about what they look like and how they can improve their bodies. The same applies for men, who will often push the boundaries on things they will try to get bodies like the men on their TV, such as take illegal drugs in an effort to increase their arms and chests.
Being healthy is an admirable goal, however it is important to realize that having a body that looks great, may not always mean we are healthy. A lot of people confuse the two words “health and fitness” and think that one is automatically linked to the other. Just because you have such a low body fat level that you can see your abs, does not mean you are healthy. In theory, you could lose a lot of weight by eating very little food and existing on diet sodas. Is this healthy though? It definitely is not. You need to find a balance, you need to exercise and eat healthily, however you should not do anything to the extreme.
First you should start with a solid workout plan.
The best workout plans for women all have these two things included in them:
#1 – Resistance Training; and
2) Interval Cardio
In order to achieve the best results, it is recommended that you train at least three times a week for an hour each session and at the same time reduce your caloric intake to create a deficit.
Resistance Training
Strength exercises can be something you do in your home or you can go to a gym. If you do not wish to go to a gym or would rather not exercise around some of the steroid popping gym rats, then just workout at home. Many people wrongly believe that a gym is full of people who have great bodies and that are in amazing shape. Once you actually go to a gym you will be surprised to see that most people are your average person who are there for the same reasons you are. However, every gym has that one person or super couple that looks like they could grace the cover of the top fitness magazine without any air-brushing, coaching or extra work. If you really want to go to the gym just try it – you might find that you’ll be making new friends and having fun getting fit in no time!
Resistance training can involve light dumbells, stability balls, resistance bands, or what I feel may be the best type, bodyweight exercises. Most body weight exercises are very effective and don’t require that you purchase any additional equipment. Believe it or not, you can do body weight exercises and train very effectively at home with very little in the way of equipment. A lot of people really swear by the results that they have achieved just through doing body weight exercises alone, so if you’ve never tried them you should give them a chance. The U.S. Seals, an elite special force of the American Military, do some pretty brutal workouts that use and all they involved were bodyweight exercises carried out in the middle of a forest. With bodyweight training you can push as hard as you want.
It works to help you develop more lean muscle mass, which helps your body to burn calories at a higher rate. This is one of the reasons that men can sometimes lose fat a little easier than women. This is not always the case, but more times than not if you have a muscled man and a large women go on a diet, all things being equal in accordance with their size and amount of working out they do, the women will take longer to lose fat over the man. This is one of the reasons that resistance training will help you to lose fat if you do it right. Each time you train you progressively increase the resistance. It is important that you do not just keep lifting the same amount of weight and doing the same number of repetitions that you did at your last session. Always progress, it can be as simple as doing a single more rep, or just spending less time resting. Your body will strengthen as you increase your progressions in order to handle the new workload. You will begin to grow your muscle mass, which takes more energy to maintain. This is the basic key to increasing your metabolism in order to burn more calories and fat. The next part of this plan is to add what is known as interval cardio.
Cardio Training in Intervals
Interval cardio is going to be a little different than what most do and is going to be a lot more effective. Interval training lets you get faster results so you work out less for better results. In fact, you are only going to do interval training for around 15 minutes or less.
As an example lets use a workout bike. You can use this blueprint and apply it to a treadmill or any other cardio workouts, however on a bike you can change speeds easier. This should give you an example that you can use in your workout to understand the pedaling speeds, with 1 being the slowest and 10 being the fastest you can pedal.
-Warm up at a slow pace for around 2 or 3 minutes at about a 3 or so.
-Go back down to around a 4 for 1 minute
-Speed up to around a 9 for 30 secs
+ then spend a minute on 4
-Speed back up to 9 for 30 secs
-Keep alternating between the two until you reach around 12 or 13 minutes
* Then bring it back down to a 4 for a final time and slowly decrease your speed down to a 3 or even less during the final two minutes of your workout as a cool down period.
If you do these workouts 3 times a week you will end up finishing your workout in 45 minutes. Spend half an hour doing resistance training and then 15 minutes finishing up with some interval cardio. Give it a try because this really is one of the best workout plans for women.