Articles
“Why Am I So Skinny?”: Why Some Women Can’t Gain Weight
When it seems like everyone else is trying to lose weight, if you’re a skinny woman trying to gain weight, it can feel isolating. On top of that, some skinny women are eating a ton, and they still can’t weight. If you’re a woman who is thin, skinny, slender, bony—whatever you want to call it—inside this article, we’ll cover what’s going on.
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Double Dumbbell Front Squat: How To Do It Properly & Tips
The double dumbbell front squat is a great variation for women ready to progress past the dumbbell Goblet Squat. It’s a great choice because while it hits the quads and glutes, it’s also a full-body exercise that hits the anterior core, upper back, and shoulders as you stabilize the dumbbells on your shoulders. The double dumbbell front squat will help to develop not only an attractive female body but an athletic one, too. Let’s take a closer look:
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Single-Arm Dumbbell Row on Bench: Overview, How To Do It, & Tips
The single-arm (1-arm) dumbbell row on the bench is a classic lift. It’s a great beginner exercise for building muscle in your upper back. The main muscles it works are the lats, traps, and rear delts. It’s also fairly good for your arms, though, and should stimulate a bit of biceps growth. Let’s take a closer look at how to do it, common mistakes, and how to program it into your workouts.
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Dumbbell Sumo Deadlift: Overview, How-To, & Tips
The dumbbell sumo deadlift is a great variation of the conventional barbell deadlift. It helps to build strength in the quads, glutes, and hamstrings. What makes it different is that you stand in a wide stance with the dumbbell between your legs, like a sumo wrestler, and you use a dumbbell (or kettlebell) instead of a barbell. Inside, we’ll take a closer look at what that means in terms of benefits, when to use this variation as a female lifter, etc.
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Best Post-Workout Drinks For Women
Right after lifting weights, your muscles are primed for growth. You just gave them a stimulus to grow, there is heightened blood flow to the area, and the body has already started the recovery process.
Getting in some protein and calories not too long after your workout is the key to a great recovery. Great recovery equals great muscle growth. You show up to the next stronger, and you keep this process up. Over time, you’ll see muscle gains.
Inside, we’ll take a look at some solid post-workout drink options for women interested in maximizing their muscle gain.
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How Much Weight Should a Female Beginner Lift?
When getting into lifting weights, it can be confusing as to how much weight you should lift. There’s no definitive answer because every woman is different. But there are some good tips to figure out what the right weight is for each exercise that matches your own current levels of strength, athleticism, and recovery. Let’s take a closer look.
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Clamshell Exercise—Overview, How-to, & Tips
The clamshell is an isolation exercise for many of the glute muscles that don’t get stimulated to their full potential with the standard squat or hip thrust movements. For women looking to get the most three-dimensional and athletic glutes, they’ll need to be training the rotation motion of their legs. Clamshells are a great exercise for this. Let’s take a closer look.
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Single-Leg Hip Thrust: Overview, How-to, & Tips
The single-leg hip thrust is a great isolation exercise for building up the glutes. You can do it with your own body weight, or you can load it with a weight plate, a dumbbell, a kettlebell, etc. Inside we’ll show how to do the proper form (one version with your body weight and one with a weight), common mistakes to avoid, and tips for including it in your workout programming.
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Glute Bridge vs Hip Thrust
Almost every woman we’ve worked with has wanted to improve their butt, and they can do that by doing some compound exercises that hit the glutes (squats, Romanian deadlifts, etc.). But for optimal muscle growth, they’ll also want to do some isolation exercises for the glutes.
So how does the glute bridge exercise compare to a hip thrust? Is one lift better than the other? Let’s take a look.
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Signs Of Gaining Muscle For Females
When you’re trying to gain muscle, it’s normal for a woman to wonder if what you’re doing in your workouts is actually working. It takes time, patience, and consistency to see muscle gain. So you won’t see results overnight. But on the other hand, continuing to do something that isn’t working, especially over many weeks, is a surefire way to waste time and kill your motivation. So what are some signs to tell if your muscle gain efforts are actually paying off or not?
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Female Weight Lifting Transformations—4 Case Studies
See how these women combined lifting weights, nutrition, and lifestyle changes to see amazing before-and-after transformations. Inside we’ll take a closer look at four women as they set goals, begin lifting weights and eating differently, and see their monthly progress updates.
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