Should You Lift Weights If You Want To Slim Down

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I often have to educate my clients and dissuade them (especially women) from their fear of weight-lifting (resistance training.)  Many women who aim to get slim fear that weight-lifting would inadvertently give them big bulky muscles like Mr. Olympia. That is as logical as saying, "If I start driveling the basketball, I will unintentionally find myself becoming Michael Jordan."  You are probably saying, "That's ridiculous. You won't just unintentionally become a great professional basketball player even if you play basketball a lot."

Well, that's also true with weight-lifting. You will not gain unwanted bulky muscles by just lifting weights, especially if you do it correctly in a way designed to build long lean muscles. Therefore, you should not fear weight-training because you really need a high level of testosterone (and other hormones) to build bulky muscles. Women generally have less testosterone than men. Even men with normal levels of testosterone have trouble building big muscles.  Therefore, it is not rational to fear weight-lifting for those of you who want to slim down.

However, if you want to slim down, you should do more than just lifting weights. Other components you should include are cardio and flexibility training, which you can easily include. There are of course other components of training, but I won't go into them here for simplicity's sake and for the sake of preventing problems.  Feel free to contact me to learn more about other components of training and to slim down effectively.

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