It doesn’t matter what your genetics are or what your gender is, fitness is important. Uncovering female fitness and the female body is very important since men and women are so biologically different. 

As a woman you may not have the sheer muscle volume as men, but that doesn’t mean you can’t perform the same lifts and become just as, if not stronger than your male counterpart.

Ultimately it depends on what you’re looking for and what your personal fitness goals are. So if you’re interested in putting on muscle (either targeted, such as with your gluteus, or over your entire body), want a tight and toned body, or simply want to shed weight for a slender physique, all of these options are available to you. You just must dive deep into uncovering female fitness and how your body works!

Uncovering Female Fitness

You just need to know how to go about doing this. Uncovering female fitness shows you that all of your goals are in front of you. Here is what you need to know in order to reach those goals.

 Your Diet As A Female

Regardless of what your fitness goals are, without a diet paired with your workout routine you will never achieve what you’re seeking to accomplish. It’s far easier to shed 400 calories out of a diet than it is to burn 400 calories at the gym, so following a specific diet is critical to your success.

With that said there are different kinds of diets you need to follow based on the goals you have established.

After all, if you want to build a larger booty or put on some muscle on your chest you will need to slightly alter your diet over what you might if you want to tighten and tone.

According to Healthline (2018), an average woman needs to eat around 2,000 calories per day to maintain their weight. Cutting this down to 1,500 calories a day will help shed one pound of weight per week. These numbers however do not take into consideration your workout routine.

Due to this, you will need to make sure you have calories on hand for energy. If you cut your diet down to 1,500 calories a day and find you struggle through the workout, push these calories back up to 2,000. You will get more out of your workout and will still drop weight. 

Now, if your fitness goals include putting on muscle what you eat will take a significant shift. You may have tried to cut out carbs from your diet for one reason or another. However, if you want to put on muscle you need to consume carbs.

Carbs will give you a boost in energy during your workout. It also is used as energy first, which then allows the protein in your diet to go towards repairing and building muscle.

If you don’t have any carbs in your diet your body will begin consuming the protein you ate, which limits the amount of protein you have to repair muscle tissue. 

So just how much protein should you eat?

It depends on if you want to tighten and tone or if you want to build muscle mass. As men have naturally larger muscles their bodies require more protein to rebuild damaged muscle mass after a workout, so avoid following the diet recommendations for a man.

That will overload your diet with too much protein. Instead, if your female fitness goals are to build a tight, lean body, you will want to consume around 0.36 grams of protein per pound you weigh (you can round this up to 0.4 if it’s easier to do the math).

However, if you want to build some muscle you will want to shoot for between 0.7 and 0.8 grams of protein per pound (U.S. News, 2015). 

Boost Your Metabolism As Girl

You will want to look for ways to boost your metabolic rate while you workout. This helps burn more calories, which in turn gives you a greater bang for your workout buck. There are a number of ways you can go about doing this.

First, uncovering female fitness restricts you to cut out drinks that are calorie packed (such as sodas, sugar-filled coffee, and so on) and instead drink water. And the more water you drink the better off you’ll be.

At a minimum you should drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day. That’s a minimum. Ideally you’ll drink an ounce of water for every pound you weigh. This not only helps with keeping you hydrated but it helps you avoid retaining water, which allows you to cut more weight. It also helps with the overall appearance of your skin (The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition). 

From here, there are additional ways to boost your metabolism within female fitness. Caffeine helps, so drink unsweetened tea or coffee (sans sugar and cream). Cinnamon helps with boosting your metabolism, so you can add cinnamon into your coffee if you need a bit of non-calorie sweetener.

Also, adding spice to your foods, such as hot sauce or red pepper flakes can help with your metabolism as well. As you can see there are a number of ways to increase your metabolism to help burn more calories and reach your fitness goals.  

Weight Training As A Woman

If you’re skipping weight training your short-changing your female fitness goal potential. Even if you don’t want to put on muscle mass you need to hit the weights. The amount of weight you put up and the reps you perform will shift based on your fitness goals, but you need to hit the weights. 

Why?

Because when you use weights you cause microscopic tears in the muscle tissue. Your body will then need to repair this. Repairing the muscle tissue helps tighten and tone the muscle. It also forces your body to build more calories as it repairs the tissue.

This means your body will continue to burn calories long after your workout has finished. This is not something that happens with a cardio workout. So, while you still want to fit cardio into your workout routine you should never avoid weight training.  

Uncovering female fitness can allow you to understand the kind of lifts you want to perform will remain the same no matter what your desired fitness outcome is.

However, the weights and reps you perform will change depending on what your goals are. If your goals are to tighten and tone you will want to lighten the weight and increase the reps. For this shoot for 15 to 20 reps per set.

However, don’t just go super light and blow through the workout. If you hit 20 and you can easily perform more you’re going way too light. You should be completely tapped of energy somewhere in the 15 to 20 range (if you can’t make it to this range drop the weight).

With the lighter reps you should aim for around 2 to 3 sets. Perform 3 sets for the larger muscle groups (such as your gluteus, chest, and shoulders), and 2 sets for the smaller muscle groups (such as your biceps). 

If your goal is to increase the size of your muscles you will want to ditch the lighter weights for heavier weights and fewer sets. To build muscle you will want to shoot for 6 to 8 reps per set.

However, you need to lift to failure here. This means if you can possibly squeeze out another rep than 8 you need to increase the weight. If you can’t put up 6 reps you should decrease your weight. In terms of sets you will want to perform at least 3 sets of each exercise, although if there is a specific muscle group you want to target for optimal size growth you can increase the number of sets to 4 or 5. 

When lifting for size growth make sure to focus on the larger muscle groups first. So, if you are focusing on your upper body you will want to perform a lift that hits the larger muscles first, such as a bench press, then move to a shoulder press, then target your back with a row and your biceps with a curl. This way, you will have more energy to give for the primary lifts. 

Now, what if you want to build some muscle size but you’re also interested in building more strength?

You will want to fit your reps right in the middle of the two of the other two lifting routines. For this, shoot to perform somewhere between 8 and 12 reps per set. Again, you will want to perform the rep to failure. If you can perform more than 12 reps per set you need to add weight.

This workout routine allows you to lift heavier weight but it also forces you to perform more reps. This will help your body build more strength while also tearing the muscle fiber, which leads to the potential of growing muscle (American Physiological Society, 2016). 

Cardio Training For A Chick

Cardio is a great way to burn through excess calories quickly.

While you need to include weight training you should also add in some cardio as well. Your workout routine should always start with the weight training first and then move into cardio second.

If you perform cardio first you’ll burn through most of your energy, which you need to lift the heavier weights (especially if you are lifting for strength gains or for size gains). 

If you perform weight training five or six days a week, make sure there is an off day when you give your body time to recover. From there, you don’t need to do extensive cardio training following your weight training.

Doing this will lead to over training, which can actually break down more muscle tissue and prevent you from building it back up (which is likely not what you want).

So, if you are doing weights every day you should track on some high intensity interval training at the very end. This is where you go hard for a quick burst, have some recovery time, then repeat. For example, you sprint for 30 seconds, then go for a slow jog for 60 seconds, and repeat. You only need to do this for five or 10 minutes to maximize your cardio (Harvard Health Publishing: Harvard Medical School, 2015). 

However, if you’re lifting weights about three times a week, where you have one day on where you’re lifting weights and one day off, you will want to have a full cardio session on the off day.

Again a high intensity interval training is great for this, but you’ll want it to extend out to 45 minutes or more. You can add some slight resistance training into this to maximize what you’re doing.

Pilates, for example, is a great way to focus on your non-weight training day. Pilates works your muscles in a number of ways. It also often uses some slight weight resistance such as a medicine ball, during some workout routines. 

When it comes to cardio you should try to differ it up.

This will help keep your cardio workouts interesting while also preventing your muscles from becoming accustomed to your workout routine.

When your muscles become accustomed to your workout you will not burn as many calories as the body naturally adapts to burn fewer calories. Besides, you don’t want your workout to become stale.

So you can perform a kickboxing routine on one day, or a spinning class on another. By keeping your workout routine new it helps keep your body guessing while it helps keep your mind mentally focused on the task at hand. By focusing on your workout you’ll get more out of it and reach your goals quicker. 

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter what your fitness goals are as a female, everything you want to accomplish is right in front of you. You just need to know how to accomplish these goals. By following the provided information you have what you need to get yourself started.

Uncovering female fitness is very important; from building muscle to toning and tightening, whatever you want to do can be accomplished. You just need to remain dedicated to your workout routine and always remember your diet plays a significant role in your potential success.

But with the right diet partnered with the necessary workout, you will eventually reach your fitness goals.  

-Terry Asher