When women see the equivalent in women body builders, they rarely want to “go there” because the idea of becoming a “pumped up” woman doesn’t conform to our vision of femininity. Not only that, how good would you look in that foxy new dress if your muscles burst from the sleeves of the blouse?

The hidden secret about exercise programs for women, however, is that using weight training programs that are specifically designed for the female body and that are designed very intentionally not to compromise the femininity of your form are far more prevalent than ones that produce those super women we see on TV. That is because when women workout, we do so to support some very physically demanding things that go on in our lives but to do so without losing our “girlish figure”. Some physical demands that need strong muscle support in a woman’s life include…

• The work world has its own physical demands. Whether it’s replacing the water in the water cooler or helping reorganize the office, women in the workplace often experience sudden demands on their physical abilities.
• As a homemaker, it may fall to you to mow the lawn, lift bags of mulch and fertilizer and dig up that garden bed to make the home a better place for your family to live.
• That newborn needs to be dead lifted from the crib or the floor sometimes dozens of time a day. When you see a mom carrying that wiggly child around on her hip, that is no small act of physical dexterity.
• All this and women are called upon to stay slim and sexy so when its time to go out on the town, they can still turn heads.

These demands mean that exercise programs for women are specifically focused on what is called the “core” muscle groups which include the back, the shoulders, the abdominals and the pelvis. These are the muscles that will be called upon to support the most frequent physical demands on a woman.

Exercise programs for women must be holistic. That is to say that while time at the gym where a trainer or a work out group can afford you the ability to think about your body and only your body, that is not the only time you exercise. It’s a good idea to integrate exercise into every aspect of your life.

You can do deep knee bends while watching the morning news, lift cans of chicken soup out and back to develop core muscles in your back and sides and do leg lifts during Leno to build pelvic and leg tons as well.

By being attentive to your core muscle groups and putting some thought into a holistic exercise program, your work out will be so much more than “pumping iron at the gym.” It will be part of who you are and your lifestyle as a professional woman, a wife, a mother.

Female weight training can do a world of good for the female body as much as it does for men who give themselves to the discipline. When you looked in that weight room, the guys who have developed their muscles to the point that they are huge muscular “supermen” are the ones that get your attention first.

But if you look past those guys, you might not have noticed dozens of everyday guys that you might encounter anywhere in life using weight lifting to define tone and build muscle, not to lift a car with their teeth but to be fit for everyday life. And women have the same physical demands on their bodies during everyday life as men if not more.

So to, weight training can benefit everyday normal women just like you and I and it doesn’t have to transform our bodies into massively bulked out behemoths that would scare off husbands and boyfriends alike. The truth of the effect of female weight training on the female form is that the typical outcome of a well designed and faithfully followed weight lifting discipline is the opposite of that image of the superwomen we see in Olympic competition or on the covers of weight lifting magazines.

That image of the bulked out women is an aberration to how the female body works. To achieve that look, those women have to subject to themselves to a very carefully crafted lifestyle of weight lifting, diet control, chemical supplements (yes THOSE chemical supplements) and scientific and technically complicated programs to make their bodies look like that.

The truth is the female body is not designed to look like that. Instead, a program of weight lifting that a trainer can put together for you can give you new muscle tone and “core” muscle strength that will simply make the daily physical demands of life less difficult and less prone to give you aches and pain at night. And as you grow stronger, your shape will not become masculine and disfigured. Instead the new muscle tone will enhance your posture and put you at ease “in your own skin” in a way that will make you more shapely and feminine than ever.

So let’s stop running from the weight room and discover the good that the men have so carefully kept to themselves. It will benefit our daily lives, the way we react to change, aging and even pregnancy and it will even fight common feminine problems such as osteoporosis that can be so debilitating in older women. These benefits all dictate that we run TO the weight room and not away from it so we can learn the secrets of weight training for good help today and for all of our lives.

If you are a physically active and athletic woman, there may be a draw to the discipline of female bodybuilding that is calling to you. And the idea of achieving that level of strength and power is intoxicating. We should make no mistake thought. The commitment to working out and the time and devotion the champions have to put in to their bodybuilding efforts can take over your life and push out many other things you love if you aren’t careful. Of course, take a look at the exercise programs for females too.

Bodybuilding can become part of a woman’s life without dominating it so much that it’s hard to accomplish anything else. Its important to examine what your motivations are before setting that lofty goal of reaching such extreme levels of achievement we see women who are professionals in the sport reach so we are going into the sport for the right reasons and don’t enter with unrealistic expectations.

One unrealistic expectation would be that female bodybuilding will enhance breast size. One look at the champions in the sport will confirm that this is not true. While strong pectoral muscles and enhance the shape and presentation of your bosom because you are giving your bust more support from underneath, the breasts themselves are made up of fatty tissue and no amount of working out will make them larger or smaller for that matter.

Another unrealistic expectation is that weight training can help you lose weight and get rid of unwanted fat. Lifting weights alone doesn’t do that. It will help you develop muscle that is already there. But to get rid of fat along with building muscle you need to be involved in running or some other kind of cardiovascular activity so the fat comes off and the body uses new nutrition from your food to build muscle.

A myth that many women have about lifting weights that keeps a lot of them away from the sport or using it as valid exercise is that they will immediately get large muscles that will bulk them up and hurt their female shape and image. This myth, which is totally false, keeps too many women away from the good that bodybuilding can be for them.

Your trainer can help you design a bodybuilding routine that fits your goals and enhances the muscle groups you want to work on that will benefit your daily life. Your trainer will totally understand if you are uncomfortable with “bulking up”. The majority of the workouts that you trainer or advisor at the gym can help you with will never alter you physical shape at all except perhaps to make you more trim and well defined.

Instead they will give you a stronger core muscle ability so you life healthier, your posture improves and the physical demands of your day become less of a challenge. If you can get those great benefits and not get a “female body of steel”, you will have been one of the few who overcome their misconceptions and tap the good of bodybuilding to build a stronger, healthier and more fit female body while at all times keeping it very much a female body.

When it comes to women’s exercise clothing, the criteria for a good outfit is somewhat different than how you evaluate a cute evening wear dress or a power suit for the office. But in all of those cases, the clothing has to be two things at once. It has to be effective and durable.

Women’s exercise clothing that is effective are shoes, sweats and undergarments that make you more successful in your sport or workout. It means that your clothing will not become a problem as you workout and that it will protect you, keep you cool if necessary (or warm if necessary) and be “part of the team” striving for the goal of success as an fit and healthy person.

Women’s exercise clothing that are durable will be garments that can hold up under a rough workout situation. In the case of shoes, the shoe must hold up well under the pressure of a fast paced run or the start and stop of an aggressive game of basketball.

Your clothing not only cannot fail during the athletic event, it must help you succeed. Shoes must grip, undergarments keep us comfortable and mobile inside our clothing and outer garments funnel heat away form our bodies and keep sweat from decreasing our effectiveness in our workout or during the game.

Effectiveness and durability are the #1 and #2 priority for well designed woman’s exercise clothing that you will enjoy working out in and that come back with you to the gym time after time after time. Notice neither of our top two priorities were that the clothing will make you look great, be sexy or be in step with fashion.

There is something to be said for how your clothing can make you more confident and able to perform when you step out into your sporting event. And if your exercise outfit doesn’t fit right or is embarrassing to you, that can be a distraction and that’s not what you want.

So make a good look, striking colors or the “sexy cut” of your work out clothing a distant third in priority when you are shopping for new athletic clothes. This will take some sales resistance because advertising and merchandising will try to convince women that looking great in our workout clothes is the top priority.

But keep your goals in mind and use your resources to buy workout garments that will make you a success in your workout which means you get stronger, more fit, slimmer and healthier as well. And your fit and sexy body is the best “sexy cut” you can get from being an exercise conscious woman.

Women’s exercise equipment can become just as much of a toy to you as a man who may get obsessed with his golf clubs or scuba gear. But for women especially, exercise equipment has to be functional and fit a busy lifestyle. That is why it’s a good idea to put some thought into the kind of women’s exercise equipment you buy for the home so we get the right thing that you know you will use.

We all have had it happen and it’s a pretty sad event when you get hooked by some slick exercise pitch on TV and end up spending an embarrassingly large amount of money on some trendy exercise machine for the home. And then for some reason, you get it home, fool around with it four or five times and it goes into a back room or under the bed never to be seen again.

So what can we do to make sure the women’s exercise equipment you buy is the right fit for how you really will work out at home. One big rule that you should embroider on a pillow is this….

Spending money on it won’t make you use it!

This is a little fib we tell ourselves. We see that expensive workout machine with those stunning and phenomenally happy and sexy people using them on TV and we say to ourselves, “Well if I just buy this thing, then having it here will make me use it and then I will get in shape.” Congratulations because you just became an example of successful marketing but not successful thinking.

Its time you became the boss of what kind of exercise toys you are going to buy. And to take charge of these decisions, evaluate what you need by these criteria…

• Do you already do that exercise?
• Where will this machine live?
• Do you understand the equipment?
• Will the new machine be easy to use and fun to use so you come back to it often?
• Can you afford it?

The rule of thumb is, don’t buy anything unless you really need it. If you are already working out each day and addressing the basic goals of your workout program, why waste money on some toy that may not get used at all.

The best exercise toys you can buy are those you already use. Perhaps you use certain machines or tools at the gym frequently so you know they will get plenty of use at home. That is a good purchase. If you have never seen this device you want to buy before it shows up at your house, odds are you may not even take it out of the box.

Use this kind of critical thinking and sales resistance when deciding what kind of exercise toys you will buy to work out at home. Then when you do make a purchase, you will work that device every day not only getting your moneys worth out of it but letting it do its job of making you a healthier and stronger woman.

Pregnancy is already a time when your body is going through more changes in such a short time than it ever has before. The only person going through more change than you are is that little baby in you. Sometimes its easy when you experience the discomfort and watch your shape change so dramatically to let self pity kick in and give in to comfort foods and constant rest to “give yourself a break” during this time. These exercises for pregnant women are helpful but always consult your doctor first!

That instinct is the opposite of what is good for you. Your need for a constant and routine exercise program has never been more important than now. Exercise for pregnant women is just as crucial during the pregnancy than any time before or after pregnancy for many important reasons including….

• Good muscle tone is good for the baby. The task of growing a new human being within the structure of your body puts more demands on your muscle support system. If you know well in advance that a pregnancy is in the near future, you can step up your program to improve your leg, back and stomach muscles in particular to help your inner self be ready for the new demands of baby.
• You will have less discomfort. If you get in shape before the baby comes and stay in shape throughout the pregnancy, you are giving your body the resources it needs to handle the new demands of pregnancy and childbirth.
• It will not only make delivery easier, it will make it faster. That one word “push” is the one we most associate with childbirth. You can push with your abdominal muscles during delivery much better if those muscles were in good shape before the doctor says “it’s time.”
• It will get you back in shape faster after the baby comes. You know you want to get your figure back quickly after baby is here. By not starting from a deficit and having less unnecessary body fat and good muscle tone throughout the pregnancy, you can get in shape in no time and look great even while caring for a newborn.

Any one of these reasons alone is an outstanding justification for keeping a good program of exercise for pregnant women active during these important months for you and your baby. Your approach to exercise will naturally change as your pregnancy proceeds. But a routine program of walking, swimming and weight training that is specifically designed to be an exercise for pregnant women will keep you more comfortable throughout the pregnancy, enhance your appetite and ability to sleep and enable you to sail through the birthing experience much better than if you let yourself stay out of shape.

Its worth the effort to stay fit before during and after the birth of baby. It’s good for you, it’s good for baby and its even good for the family to see a happy and healthy mommy, daddy and baby get through this exciting but scary time healthy and happy together.

But many men focus their exercise on a specific sport because of the fun of challenge of that sport. So if the sport is basketball, that guy will work hard on speed and endurance in running and in balance and the muscles it takes to shoot a great basket. Again the goal is not general good physical fitness. The goal is the fun of the game and winning.

This is not to say that a program of total fitness for women will not have short term goals. But it seems easier for girls to design and stick with an exercise program that is well balanced in all aspects of physical fitness and which results in better overall health.

A program of total fitness for women will bring in components of each of the major health focus areas that must be addressed for a program to be well balanced. Those areas would include a good cardiovascular workout, strength and toning training for firmer muscle systems and a well developed emphasis on stretching.

It is a mistake to put emphasis only on any one of these focus areas. If you only do weight training for the purpose of muscle tone and strength, these exercises are not going to help you lose fat which is often a big indicator that your exercise program is working. The smart combination of running, swimming or other cardio intensive activities with weight training results in an increase in the muscle tone of your body as the fat ratio in the body decreases.

Then when muscle replaces fat, you don’t drop down to a “slinky little waif” but transform from your former shape into a shapely and sexy woman. That healthy glow that will come from your devotion to a well rounded diet and exercise discipline is far sexier and more attractive to everybody around you than either extreme of being overweight or underweight can give to you.

Sometimes it’s easy for us to forget the importance of stretching as part of your exercise program. Too often we see stretching in the same way we view flossing our teeth. It’s something we ought to do but it’s boring so skip it. But stretching is as much a big part of your exercise program as that aggressive sprint during your run or finishing that last set of 10 lifts during weight training.

Stretching IS exercise because it is the first step of engaging your muscles in the act of working out. Often after stretching you will already sense your heart rate increasing and feel the effects of the workout in your muscles. So be sure that one third of your fitness program is devoted to stretching and you will work out better and sustain fewer injuries as well.

Its easier for women to put together a balanced program of exercise. Its easier for women to stick with that program because a balanced program leaves you feeling refreshed and energized to get out there and take the world by the horns and tame it. So put some energy and planning into creating a well balanced program of exercise. As that program shapes you and makes you healthier and stronger with each passing week, you will be glad you put the thought into how you work out well in advance. And your body will thank you too.

When you start to review the vast assortment of magazines out there, you may have trouble sorting out which women’s fitness magazine shares the same focus that you have. You would think that a magazine devoted exclusively to issues involving women’s health and fitness would have nothing else in it but diet and exercise tips.

But even the quickest view of these magazines will tell you that they are often glossy and overproduced, adorned with overly skinny and/or overly muscular women that shout out to you and to anyone looking at this magazine that the extreme looks in a woman’s presentation are what people, men in particular, are looking for.

Any women’s fitness magazine you review with the intention of possibly becoming a subscriber will have one or more emphasis on the following priorities…

• Exercise
• Diet
• Education
• Inspiration
• Sex
• Glamour
• Gossip

Now all but the last three of these goals are appropriate for any health oriented magazine for women. So why do we see such an emphasis on sex, glamour and gossip in those periodicals? Very simply, those things sell magazines. By putting a sexy girl on the front of the magazine, it influences men to buy the magazine for the woman in their life with a thinly hidden motivation that maybe their girlfriend or wife might turn into such a sex kitten. But it also influences women to buy the magazine to find out how to become such a sex kitten.

Examine the magazines you are considering using to help in your quest to become a healthier, slimmer and more fit woman and if the emphasis is too heavily placed on sex, glamour and gossip, it might be best to find a magazine that’s a little more focused on what really matters.

Information about diet and exercise is exactly what we expect form magazines devoted to this topic. It might be a good exercise to buy one copy of each of the leading magazine candidates to become part of your library of healthy choices in reading and perform a rough estimate of the percentage of magazine copy devoted to education and encouragement and what proportion to subjects that are best done by People or Glamour types of magazines.

If that test comes back showing that some magazines just give too much time over to the nonessentials, you have just saved yourself the price of a subscription and a lot of clutter subscribing to a magazine that is wasting your time. And by patronizing woman’s health magazines that are dedicated to helping and encouraging you in your quest for a healthier life, you are sending a message that this is what matters to us as consumers. Then maybe those magazines that didn’t make the cut will get the message.

There is another side benefit to breaking up your exercise into a greater variety of sport and exercise programs. It keeps you from getting bored. And by staying busy and doing things you enjoy and have fun doing, you will stay with your exercise program longer and so be more successful at it in the long run.

This is why the explosion of interest in women’s tri fitness clubs and events have been so successful. For one thing, triathlons focus on three sports that women commonly excel at which are running, swimming and cycling. So women’s tri fitness programs provide the structure for you to excel in three of the finest exercises available to you today.

One benefit from becoming involved in women’s tri fitness organizations is that you will kick your program “up a notch” as they say. In fact, by going from a casual or recreational approach to cycling, running and swimming to working with your local tri fitness club to work toward competition in triathlons, the intensity of your workouts will increase dramatically as will the effectiveness of your workouts in these three sports.

There is nothing like competition to drive us to greater achievement. By lighting a fire under your love of cycling, swimming and running, you will begin to excel at all three and reach much higher levels of achievement and intensity than you ever were able to reach before.

The social nature of getting involved in your local tri fitness club is also an outstanding benefit. It goes without question that we will get involved in exercise and stick with it much better if we are part of a social group that keeps us working out and if others have an expectation on us that we will perform.

If you submit yourself to the training of your local woman’s tri fitness club to get ready for triathlon events, your enjoyment of cycling, swimming and running will go from a hobby to a passion. And when a sport is a passion, you will reap the health rewards almost without knowing it because you are driven to win for yourself and for your teammates

In addition, you no doubt are less developed in one of those three sports. So if you were good at cycling and running but not as strong in swimming, your team will help bring up your swimming skills and your ability to swim longer and faster than ever before.

The results will be phenomenal. Your stamina and muscle development will improve tremendously. Your love of each sport will skyrocket and you will go from a casual exerciser to a true athlete, maybe for the first time in your life. And when you and the girls on your team bring home your first woman’s tri fitness trophy, the pride you will share will be something that will stay with you for life. That’s a passion worth investing yourself in.

The idea that there is a shortcut to weight loss and good health is certainly what drives the multibillion dollar weight loss chemical industry. How many commercials have you seen for shortcut weight loss programs that promise you don’t have to exercise or change a thing about how you eat and the weight will just melt off?

Isn’t amazing we ever believe these pitches? As women, we pride ourselves on being the thinkers of the genders. And yet we are the ones most prone to buy into that marketing pitch that they found some magic chemical in the jungles of Bolivia that will make us skinny without any change to our lifestyles.

Women’s health is too important to experiment with by buying snake oil treatments that just won’t work and may make you sick in trying to find a shortcut to a healthier you. But there is a shortcut to outstanding women’s health if we will put the same investment of time and giving it priority in our lives that those expensive diet pill people demand from our budget.

But the shortcut to great health hides in the things we are tying to run away from. The short cut to vibrant women’s health is diet and exercise. The reasons this is a “short cut” is that if you get up tomorrow morning and put into effect a new lifestyle of healthy diet and moderate but routine exercise, you will start losing weight within a few weeks. Then if you are devoted to the program, keep cooking and eating right and keep bringing your heart rate up each day with regular and ambitious exercise, you will keep losing weight week after week until you hit your goal weight.

The snake oil treatments say you can lose 20 pounds in a month. You can lose 4 pounds in that same month with a well designed program of diet and exercise and it will be 4 pounds that stay off. This is the other secret of this “short cut” to great health for women. A shortcut is no shortcut if you have to keep going back and going through it over and over again for the same results. You might lose a few pounds with chemicals of some magic program. But because those programs don’t change your lifestyle, you will be going back over and over losing the same weight each year, maybe for decades. This is no shortcut, its torture for you to see that weight come right back on only for you to try a new magic diet program the next year.

Give yourself a challenge to try a program of great diet and exercise for six months. Work with your doctor and people you know who know their stuff about nutritional eating and you will find you can train your stomach to enjoy the foods you are giving it and you will stay full all the time.

Then as the pounds melt off, notice how they don’t come back. You can reach a goal weight, stay there and then start a new program and eventually get to that dress size you were at in college. And with this shortcut diet program, you will stay there. And that is a shortcut worth investing in.