GALE'S GALIMAUFRY WOMEN AND WEIGHT TRAINING Tennis player Anna Kournokova doesn�t want to have �muscles�, and that�s why Anna Kournokova has never won a major tennis tournament - or any tennis tournament in which major (i.e., weight training players) players were there. The fact that she is offered such lucrative endorsement contracts is simply a sad commentary on the average man�s reason for watching women�s athletics. Every woman should work out with weights - very light weights if nothing else. Professional female athletes know this, but you don�t have to be a professional athlete to lift weights, you just have to be someone who wants to gain poise, posture, self-confidence, and strength to cope with unexpected emergencies. It's not a question of achieving the 'perfect' body - perfection in the eyes of whom? It's a question of treating your body well - like a temple. There are female body builders who train for several hours a day and take lots of supplements (as opposed to steroids) to assist them in building muscle mass. The average woman doesn�t want or need to do this. The average woman wants a lean, firm body. (And if you can�t be lean, for whatever reason, be firm). It�s better to acquire such a body by eating lots of healthy food, and working out, then to starve oneself and as a result not have the energy or the health to enjoy life. It is a cliche, but it is very, very true - if you do not have your health you do not have anything. So, check with your doctor to make sure there�s no reason why you shouldn�t start a weight training regimen. Then go get yourself some weights. Don�t pay full price at a department or sports store. Visit garage sales or used equipment stores, where you should be able to acquire equipment at a reasonable price. Why is this? Unfortunately, more than half the people who buy weight sets - men or women - use them for about a week and then pack them away in a closet. If you think that by buying full price, you�ll be sure to use them, you�re wrong! Get yourself a journal, which you will keep every day, recording your progress. There�s nothing quite as fun as reading down a page of notes and seeing how your poundage and repetitions increase in just a few weeks. It doesn�t have to be an official �weight training� journal. Just by a quadrille ruled notebook and use that. If you�re not naturally athletic, don�t go overboard. Start with a few simple exercises, three for the arms and two for the legs, and work on those for a couple of weeks, before adding, or replacing them with others, to vary your routine and allay boredom. Buy a barbell and weight bench with a leg exercise attachment if you can. (Again, since you�re going to be buying at a garage sale or a used equipment store, by the best weight bench that you can afford. It is difficult to do leg exercises on a weight bench with a poorly designed leg attachment.) If you don�t have room for a weight bench and barbells, buy dumbbells - the kind that you can add on weight, and the heaviest wrap around leg weights you can find. You can�t learn the martial arts from a book, but you can learn the proper techniques for performing such exercises as bench presses, curls, military presses, etc. And you must know the proper technique so that you don�t hurt or strain yourself. So make sure you check out a book from the library, (or purchase one of the books below through our secure link with Amazon.com.), and study it before you begin your exercises. Above all, err on the side of too light rather than too heavy weights. Increase your weights gradually. If you�re going for endurance rather than strength (and most women are) it�s not how much weight you have on your barbell, for example, but how many times you press it. Even pressing only 20 pounds in two sets of ten repetitions will give your arms quite a workout. Once you�ve mastered that, add on another set of repetitions, and another after that. Buy Now With a weight bench, start with 20 pounds and do bench presses for your chest, bench curls for your biceps, and deadlifts for your back. If it�s got a leg curl attachment do leg extensions and leg curls. If you don�t have a weight bench, do the same moves with the heaviest barbells you can stand, and do leg extensions off of a chair, and leg curls, again with the heaviest weights you can put in your leg weights. Let me emphasize that you must be careful to choose the amount of weight carefully. You do not want to overstrain yourself. Athletes familiar with weight training have been known to pull muscles, so it can happen to you, too. Be careful. If you choose to put twenty pounds on your barbell, and CANNOT bench press them at least ten times (the tenth time being a struggle doesn�t count!), the weight is too heavy for you. (Most beginning women can benchpress twenty pounds, but it�s always better to be safe than sorry). Lower it down to fifteen. Work up gradually to twenty, over the course of a couple of weeks, then up to thirty. Depending on your goals a barbell weight of thirty pounds is good enough. For leg weights, weights of fifty to a hundred pounds, depending on the exercise, aren�t uncommon even for beginners. You do not lift weights every day, but rather every other day. This gives your muscles time to rest and recuperate. If you like you can do upper body exercises every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, for example, and your leg exercises every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, taking Sunday off. Be prepared to work hard. If you�re on your third set of 10 repetitions of thirty pounds worth of weight on a barbell, and you�re really having to grit your teeth and work hard to lift that barbell back up to its supports, this is a good thing. The cliche �No pain no gain� is another true one! Buy Now The most important thing to remember, for weight training or any activity, is to maintain your enthusiasm. And when you look at your training journal and see those numbers slowly increasing, and look at your body and see the long, clean muscles, your enthusiasm will be there! .