When it comes to gaining weight, there is only one type of weight that you want to put on – muscle. That’s true for women as much as it is men. Gaining lean muscle tissue will not make a woman muscle bound or inflexible. What it will do is to give her the curvy shape that most women (and men) desire.*
In order to gain muscular body weight, you have got to eat right, take the proper supplements and you have to exercise right. Check out our nutritional weight gain guide for women here. In this article, we shall focus on how you should exercise to gain lean body weight.**
The 7 Principles of Weight Gain Exercise for Women
To gain body weight, you need to exercise against resistance, such as your body weight or weights. The following principles will help you to get the most from your training.
- Progressive Overload: Every single workout you need to do something to make it more intense than the one before. Whether it’s lifting an extra couple of pounds, doing one more rep or reducing the rest time between sets, you have got to keep moving forward with your workouts.
- Intensity: When working out with weights, intensity refers to the difficulty with which you push the weights. You know that you are working at the right intensity if the last 2 reps of each set can just be squeezed out and you couldn’t possibly do another one.
- Compound Movements: To burn the maximum amount of calories, focus on movements that work muscle groups in tandem. Exercises like squats, dead-lifts,
- d lunges will work for nearly muscle group in your body.
- Train Major Muscles First: Your smaller muscles groups – shoulders, biceps, triceps – are synergists when you are training your larger muscle like chest and back. They link the weight to the working muscle. The last thing you want to do is to pre-exhaust these weak links and not allow the larger muscles to get a decent workout.
- Minimize Rest Between Sets: Keep your between-set rest periods to just 30 seconds. You don’t want to your intensity level to drop.
- Change Your Program Every Six Weeks: That will prevent your body from getting too used to the routine. You need to keep your body guessing if you want it to keep responding. Changing it up every six weeks will allow you to do just that.
- Isolate the Working Muscle: If you are working on your biceps, don’t allow your lower back to do the work by swinging and using momentum. Get your mind into the working muscle. Focus on tensing and contracting that muscle without the aid of other parts of the body.
A Sample Routine
Here is a great introductory program to get you into the weight training routine. Do this workout three times per week on alternate days. Follow the 7 guidelines above, and, so long as you combine your training with smart weight gain nutrition and clever supplementation, you will progressively add lean muscle tissue to your frame.*
- Squats – 3 x 15 reps
- Inverted Rows – 3 x 15 reps
- Dumbbell Bench Press – 3 x 12 reps
- Push Ups – 2 x AMAP (as many as possible)
- Lunges – 2 x 12 each leg
- Wall Sit – 1 x 30-60 seconds
Conclusion
By combining an exercise program built around weight resistance training with weight gain nutrition and targeted supplementation, you can add quality weight to your body. Work consistently, stay focused and avoid junk food and you will be able to shape the body that you desire.
* Fitness Disclaimer
This website offers health, fitness and nutritional information and is designed for educational purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional medical advice, diagnosis treatment. This website does not promise any specific results, as each individual responds differently to training. The author of this article is not a medical professional. We have volunteers in our organization from different aspects of health, nutrition, and fitness. Not just modern medicine doctors and physicians, but yoga teachers, spiritual teachers, martial arts teachers, and energy healers and we use all those resources to be able to provide the best and most proper advice to people around all walks of life. We do not have a defined goal, we only have a mission to help as many people as we can.