1 week Weight Training Workout Plan for Women

After sharing 5 great dumbbell exercises in my post yesterday, today I will show you how you can go about employing them in your weekly training program. This program will provide a nice way to ease into strength training for a woman who has never lifted weights before, and also provide results for woman who has been lifting light weights with no results so far. Make sure to do a whole body warm up, and then a few sets with light weights before you start the working sets:

Monday:

1) One arm dumbbell snatch- 5 sets of 3-5 reps each side

2) Body weight circuit: do 3-5 rounds of the following circuit with 1 minute rest between rounds.

a) push up- 5-10 reps

b) lunges- 10 each leg

c) T- rotations- 6-10 reps each side ()

d) situps- 8-15 reps

Wednesday:

1) One arm military press- 3-4 x 5-10 reps each side

2) One arm bentover row- 3-4 x6-12 reps each side

3) 15-25 minutes run outside or on a treadmill

Friday:

1) Windmill- 3 x 3-5 reps each side

2) Goblet squats- 3-4 x 8-15 reps

3) Rope jumping- 5-10 rounds of 1-2 minutes skipping with 30 seconds rest between rounds

Keep the rest between sets of dumbbell exercises to 1-2 minutes. On the off days engage in some light or fun activity like Yoga, dancing, walking, swimming, cycling, etc to burn more calories and recover faster between workouts.

Now does this workout look too easy compared to what you may have been told is the minimum you need to do? If so, then yes, this workout will be too easy if all you were to use are 2 kilo dumbbells forever. The purpose of the above program is to allow you to go heavy and avoid overtraining by doing 50 sets in a workout.

To understand how heavy, you can check out Youtube clips of some very fit women doing snatches, with 20 kgs dumbbells, or heavier. You can see videos of women doing goblet squats with 80 pounds (36 kgs)( ), and rows with 70 pounds (32 kgs)

and more. Of course, I am not saying that you use 20 and 30 kilos from day 1, but with time aim at increasing the weights that you lift. After all this is strength training, so you need some decent weights and not just stick to light puny bells. Ultimately, quality is more important that sheer quantity in this case.

And if fat loss is the goal, then first clean up your diet! There are people who have lost tons of weight by simply cleaning up their diet. Why, because, fat loss is 70% or more dependent on your diet. This is why overtraining for more than an hour a day, while eating all the sugar and refined foods throughout the day does not yield any results! Focus on getting in high quality nutrition rather than only focusing on cutting out calories. Want to lose fat even faster?

Get your overall lifestyle in order. This means, reduce your stress levels, and get 7-9 hours of sleep each night. These seemingly simple lifestyle changes help to optimize your hormone levels and help you to lose fat even faster. And yes, will these workouts bulk you up, or make you look manly? No, they will not do so.

To bulk up you need an abundance of the male hormone testosterone in your body, which women have very little in them to have a bulking up effect. Plus, most of your favorite models and actresses lift weights, so are they all bulky? Weight training can make you lean and toned while giving you many more health benefits. Give it a try and you will know what I mean.

About the Author

“Arnav is a strength and conditioning trainer based in Kolkata. He has trained a variety of clients from housewives to competitive athletes. He contributes regularly, on fitness, to the top global websites. He has been a guest on an American web radio show as an expert to discuss his fitness and training methods. To know more about him and his training methods visit his website:

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