Intermediate Skill Levels

Muscle naturally decreases with age. This is a particular issue with women, who lose about 1% of their muscle mass each year during their 30s and 40s. Muscle is often replaced with fat. This is problematic for the waistline and because maintaining a healthy muscle mass is vital in preventing injury (muscle absorbs impacts that bones can’t and shouldn’t, which prevents serious injury), cushioning joins, and staving off osteoporosis. Furthermore, maintaining proper healthy muscle mass provides women the strength and energy for various daily activities and strength training helps improve bone strength and density. Plus, muscle burns a lot of calories, which means when you maintain a healthy muscle mass, you’ll lose weight (especially with a good diet), look thinner, and more toned.

Fit Sisters is designed with women’s needs in mind. The goal is not to build muscles like guys have—that’s anatomically impossible (unless you’re taking testosterone for some reason). Instead, the goal is to use light weights, body weight, circuit training, functional and compound movements, and cardiovascular exercises to strengthen muscle, fix muscular imbalances, and burn mega calories.

Strength training is so effective at increasing the amount of calories that you burn that you’ll burn up to a third more calories than you burned during your workout, after your workout! In other words—you’ll go home with your body prepped to burn way more calories than you burned in the short 30 minutes you worked out. This is multiple times the amount of calories you’d burn with a basic cardio workout on the treadmill (which is most useful when coupled with strength training)!

Benefits of strength training for women:

·  Builds strong bones – strength training stresses your bones, increasing bone density and helps to decrease the risk of osteoporosis.

·  Healthy muscle mass helps maintain healthy body weight – strength training turns your body into a calorie-burning furnace, leading to weight loss.

·  Muscles protect joints from injury.

·  Strong muscles are better at balancing – if you don’t train your muscles, your muscles won’t be prepared for that uneven slab of sidewalk that you might not see. Properly trained muscles are strong enough to balance, rebound, react, and stabilize your body when something unexpected (like a trip) happens.

·  Increasing muscle strength means an increase in endurance – you’ll be surprised at how much more energy you have as a result of strength training!

Resources: http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/take-shortcut-fitness-circuit-training?page=3http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/strength-training/HQ01710