Written by Garett Reid | NSCA, CSCS, CISSN, M.S.E.S.S
Fact checked by Kiel DiGiovanni, Co-founder
FACT CHECKED
Yes! Women should lift heavy weights in the gym! One of the oldest misconceptions inside the gym is that women shouldn't lift weights, let alone heavy weights! Well, if you've been following this advice or are new to lifting, you need to read this article. We're going to tell you why if you're a lady lifting in the gym, you need to put on more weight!
What Does It Mean For Women To Lift Heavy?
Before proceeding, we need to define the term "heavy." This word can have different meanings depending on whether the general public or a professional in the industry is using it.
You see, the term "heavy" is usually used objectively, such as "Is this heavy? "This feels heavy," or, "Should I lift heavy?"
But what does that mean? What's heavy for you isn't heavy for me. Well, in terms of lifting weights, "heavy" has a subjective meaning that defines a load placed on a bar.
When we prescribe a load, there are generally 3 different loading ranges that are associated with a percent of your 1RM:
- Light= 12+ reps // <70% 1RM
- Moderate= 8-12 reps // 70-80% 1RM
- Heavy= 1-6 reps // 80-95% 1RM
As you can see, "heavy" means that you're using a load of at least 80% of your 1RM, which equates to 6 or fewer reps. However, 80% is right on the verge of being "moderate," and most of the time, it's considered to be "heavy." Regardless, we're going to include it here.
So, "lift heavy" means to put a load equal to 80% of your 1RM on the barbell. Going further, this means much more than simply lifting a heavier weight. Lifting this amount of weight with this rep scheme has special attributes beyond the arbitrary description of simply "being heavy." There are several methods for 1RM calculations so it's relatively easy to figure out your starting place.
Lifting Heavy Means Building Strength
Some women tend to avoid lifting heavy weights, as they may see it as an ego thing or believe they'll get "bulky."
This is exacerbated when social media posts say, "you don't need heavy weights." This leaves the impression that using these heavier weights offers no benefits other than saying you can.
This is not true.
To understand this, you need to understand that increasing muscle mass and muscle strength are not the same thing. Of course, there's plenty of crossover, but these are two different adaptations.
Muscle Mass Vs. Strength
Increasing muscle mass involves physical adaptations in which the muscle grows. This can occur through several mechanisms, but the primary issue is that these don't necessarily mean the muscle will get stronger.
On the other hand, strength is a measure of the neuromuscular system. Your neuromuscular system is how your brain speaks to your muscles to control contractions. However, when this system isn't used, the communication is less than optimal, which means less force is produced.
However, when training properly, you can improve this communication, and the muscle can then produce more force. To be clear, strength training involves making the existing muscles work better. This means you can get stronger without building new muscles.
All this means is that "lifting heavy" is ultimately saying "increase your strength."
Related: Strength vs Hypertrophy Training
Training With Intensity
Training heavy means working in the lower rep range with heavier loads.
While this will be our primary focus, we also want to state that some of the benefits we discuss below can apply to simply training with intensity.
By this, we mean:
- Training with progressive overload
- Performing reps close to failure
- Training with overall intensity
- Going to the gym with the intent of doing more reps or weights and progressing
So, while our focus will be on the benefits of lifting heavy, we will also address the need for women to use progressive overload in their resistance exercise training.
Why Women Need To Lift Heavy: 5 Benefits Of Strength Training
Now we know that when we say women need to lift heavy, we're ultimately saying they need to increase strength. Here are the reasons why this should be part of every woman's training plan.
1. It's Crucial For Building Strength
Above, we went over how lifting heavy weights is good for strength, but it goes deeper; using heavy loads is essential for building strength.
Let us explain.
Remember, your neuromuscular system controls that strength. For this to improve, adequate force needs to be placed on your muscles. If not, it never experiences the stimuli needed to cause adaptations to the neuromuscular system.
While you can increase strength with lighter loads, it tends to be suboptimal. Further, the efficiency of lighter loads decreases as you progress. In the beginning or your lifting career, you may be able to use light loads to increase strength but eventually you'll need to start lifting heavy!
Numerous studies have compared the effects of training with heavy, moderate, and light loads. These studies have shown that while you can build muscle with any load, there seems to be a threshold that occurs when building strength.
This threshold is found at around 85% 1RM.¹
2. Increase Muscle Mass
Even though we've been talking quite a bit about muscle strength, lifting heavy is still going to increase muscle mass! As mentioned above, the optimal rep range for muscle growth is 8-12, but you can technically use any rep range.
Either way, using progressive overload will increase volume, thus increasing muscle mass. This is crucial, especially as you age.
Further, there's good reason to believe that using at least one heavy exercise per muscle group will help you increase muscle mass. Put it like this;
- A stronger muscle can lift more weight, which equals more volume and muscle mass
- A bigger muscle has greater potential for becoming a stronger muscle
3. Burn Calories And Increase Metabolism
There seems to be a belief that cardio monopolizes burning calories. Yes, cardio is great for shedding pounds and improving fitness. However, resistance training in a progressive manner is going to help shed the pounds as well.
To be clear, your primary goal for lifting heavy is to increase strength and muscle mass. However, understand you'll be burning calories as well. This happens through 3 mechanisms;
- Calories burnt during the training
- Calories burnt after the training (EPOC)
- Increased metabolism
Lifting Weights
For one, you'll burn calories while lifting heavy weights. Lifting weights isn't easy and demands large supplies of energy.
EPOC
At the same time, you'll get a nice little bump in EPOC or exercise post-oxygen consumption. To be clear, most claims of EPOC are greatly exaggerated.
You're not going to burn 1000s of calories in EPOC no matter what you do. However, you may burn an extra hundred or two across an entire training week, which adds up.
Increased Metabolism
There's also a third mechanism, building muscle. Compared to fat, muscle is much more metabolically demanding. Similar to EPOC, this bump in calories burned has been highly exaggerated.
In reality, 1 pound of muscle only increases your RMR by around 6 calories per day.² RMR is the amount of calories you burn daily if you're just lying around the house.
Assuming you're getting some exercise, this will cause a bump in the calories burnt per pound of muscle per day. This range can be somewhere around 10-12 calories. Regardless, these calories can also add up, especially when added to the other 2 categories of calories burned.
4. Improve Body Composition And Mental Well-Being
Time and time again, people will diet and do cardio to shed weight. They're successful at burning fat but are surprised they don't see any abs or muscle!
This also happens to men but may be more common in women due to the fear of "looking bulky." To build an aesthetic body, you must include resistance training to build muscle.
Being happy with your body can also build confidence and increase self-esteem. It can also improve overall well-being and mental state.
5. Increase Bone Strength
Lifting weights isn't just for muscle! Heavy resistance training can actually increase the density and strength of your bones! Resistance training increases bone strength in a similar manner as building muscle.³
When an external load is placed on the bone, it bends and causes small micro-breaks. These micro-breaks are then filled in by osteoblasts, which eventually fuse into bone, thus increasing its density and strength.
Now, this is important for everybody, as everybody needs stronger bones! However, it plays a unique role with women, as women are more prone to osteoporosis. The good thing is that this can easily be averted through heavy resistance training.
Prepare to maximize your strength with our exclusive 13-week strength training program. 3, 4, and 5 day per week programming options.
5 Ways Women Can Use Heavy Lifting In Their Program
While women should lift heavy weights, they can't lift heavy weights for every exercise. This begs the question; What exercises should women lift heavy with?
It's difficult to give concrete suggestions that satisfy everyone's needs, but here are some general guidelines for incorporating heavy lifting into your program.
1. Train The 6 Primary Movements
If we break down the primary movement patterns found in the body and resistance training, we find at least 6. These include:
We list 6, but there's also the "lunge," and we would also include a carry. However, these are either a bit harder to perform with heavy weights or simply difficult to quantify.
That said, one easy guideline is to use an exercise for each of these movements in the "heavy" range of 1-6 reps. These major movements will generally be barbell movements.
You also want to make sure the exercise is easy to set up with heavy loads. For example, doing an overhead press with heavy weight is easier when a barbell is set up on a rack compared to lifting dumbbells to your shoulders.
Either way, some good options for strength exercises for each of the movement patterns include:
- Vertical Pull: Chin-up, Pull-Up (You may need to use bands)
- Horizontal Pull: Bent Over Row, Landmine Row
- Vertical Push: Military Press
- Horizontal Push: Bench Press, Incline Bench Press, Push-Ups
- Squat: Back Squat, Leg Press, Hack Squat
- Hip Hinge: Deadlift, Barbell Hip Thrust
2. Lift Heavy For 3 Movements
Now, if you're new to lifting heavier weights or don't like it, you could get away with using three movement patterns: pushing, pulling, and leg movements.
We went over the 6 primary movement patterns, but as you can see, you can break them into 3 movements:
- Pushing= Vertical Pushing + Horizontal Pushing
- Pulling= Vertical Pulling +Horizontal
- Legs= Squat + Hip Hinge
Even though the movement patterns are different for each group, they still use the same primary muscle groups;
- Pushing: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps
- Pulling: Back, Biceps
- Legs: Glutes, Quads, Hamstrings
For example, suppose you only use a heavy load for the bench press (horizontal pressing). In that case, you're already hitting your pushing muscles, so you don't need to use heavy movement when performing the vertical pressing.
To be clear, this does not mean you only need to do one, such as a vertical or horizontal push. It just means you could lift heavy for the vertical press and then lighter for the horizontal press or vice versa.
3. Choose An Appropriate Load For Heavy Lifting
As mentioned, "heavy" refers explicitly to a load of 85% of your 1RM or greater.
However, 80% would be an acceptable load to use, especially for lifters newer to heavy lifting. This would put you in the 5-6 rep range, depending on the individual.
If you don't know what your 1RM is, don't worry—you don't need to actually know!
All you need to do is find your starting load for the first week of adapting this training scheme.
How To Find An Appropriate Heavy Load
Here's how it would look: Let's say you want to start using 6 reps. This load is right on the heavy threshold but tends to be easily manageable.
That said, let's use the bench press as an example. First, you would do your general warm-up. Then, you would start doing the bench press with lower weights as you ramp up; we always recommend using just the barbell on your first set.
You would then start performing sets of 6 reps. Even if you can do more, just stop at 6. You would then rest, add more weight, and perform another set of 6 reps. Continue this until you find a weight that brings you to an RPE8, which means 80% effort.
For example, here's how it might look;
- Set 1: Barbell (45lbs) X 10
- Set 2: 65lbs X 6
- Set 3: 75lbs X 6
- Set 4: 80lbs X 6
- Set 5: 85lbs X 6 (This felt like an RPE8)
4. Use Progressive Overload
The gym never gets easier; the weight just gets heavier!
Have you heard that? Well…. it's true!
Lifting a heavy load with an appropriate load will increase your strength. However, now that you're stronger, that weight won't be as "heavy" relative-wise.
Further, it won't be placing a greater demand on your body. This simply means that if you keep using the same weight, you'll stop seeing strength gains!
To prevent this, you can utilize the concept of progressive overload. Progressive overload simply states that to progress, you need to continually place a greater demand on the body.
In other words, add more weight! Technically, you can also use more reps, but remember that the load is essential with strength training. This would simply look like this;
- Week 1: 4X6 100lbs
- Week 2: 4X6 105lbs
- Week 3: 4X6 110lbs
- Week 4: 4X6 115lbs
With that said, you could also use ladders. This refers to using a small rep scheme (usually just spread by 2 or 3) such as:
- 4-6
- 5-6
- 6-8
From here, you would use a load that has you at the lower end of the rep scheme. Then, week after week, you add reps. Continue this until you get to the higher end.
You would then add a load and return to the lower end. This might look like this for a 3X4-6 rep scheme:
- Week 1: 3X4 @ 150lbs
- Week 2: 3X5 @ 150lbs
- Week 3: 3X6 @ 150lbs
- Week 4: 3X4 @ 155lbs
5. Use Your Heavy Training At The Beginning Of Your Session
Exercise selection is an important variable but easy to address. Basically, just use your strength training at the beginning of your program.
At the beginning of your training session, you're fresh and able to perform at your best, which is crucial for lifting heavy objects.
Therefore, your "heavy lift" will be your primary lift and start every session.
An example lower body day might look like this:
| EXERCISE | SETS | REPS |
| Squat | 4 | 6 |
| RDL | 3 | 8 |
| Leg Press | 5 | 10 |
| Walking Lunges | 1 | 50 |
| Hip Abduction | 3 | 15 |
Lifting Heavy Will Change Your Body!
If you've never lifted heavy or used progressive overload, this will change your entire program and body! Something happens when women first start lifting heavy. They tend to improve body composition faster, feel better, and look better.
Start slow and add just a couple of pounds to the bar if necessary. Continue this, and soon enough, you'll start questioning why you didn't start sooner! If you're a woman and have shied away from lifting heavy, this might be your sign to load the bar!
Check out our full collection of workouts for women!
References
- Schoenfeld, Brad J., et al. “Effects of Different Volume-Equated Resistance Training Loading Strategies on Muscular Adaptations in Well-Trained Men.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, vol. 28, no. 10, Oct. 2014, pp. 2909–2918, https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0000000000000480.
- Wang, ZiMian, et al. “Specific Metabolic Rates of Major Organs and Tissues across Adulthood: Evaluation by Mechanistic Model of Resting Energy Expenditure1234.” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 92, no. 6, 1 Dec. 2010, pp. 1369–1377, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2980962/, https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.2010.29885. Accessed 15 June 2020.
- Watson, S. L., et al. “Heavy Resistance Training Is Safe and Improves Bone, Function, and Stature in Postmenopausal Women with Low to Very Low Bone Mass: Novel Early Findings from the LIFTMOR Trial.” Osteoporosis International, vol. 26, no. 12, 5 Aug. 2015, pp. 2889–2894, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00198-015-3263-2.
Garett Reid
Author