Dr. Lauren Colenso-Semple

Historically, I think women have been told that exercise is for weight loss.

And so it's really important that we start to shift that narrative because resistance training isn't about being smaller.

It's not about the number on the scale.

So we want to think about...

getting bigger, about growing muscle.

And in order to do that, we need to challenge the muscle in a way that is a sufficient stimulus for growth.

So if we think about a full body training program, we want to target all of the major muscle groups.

And a challenging load will differ depending on the exercise and the muscle groups that we're targeting.

And we can train in low, moderate, or high rep ranges, but we need to train close enough to failure.

Meaning if we can only do 10 and not an 11th, that's failure.

So we can stop at maybe eight or nine and that's an appropriate stimulus.

But if we finish that set of 10 and we could easily do another 10, then that load is too light.

So making sure that we are doing a full body training program, targeting all the major muscle groups, that we're using appropriate loads, and we're progressing over time.

Because what you'll be able to do, whether it's load or number of repetitions, this month will change next month and the month after.

If you're only going to train two or three times a week, I think it's better to do a full body session because –

you're hitting all those major muscle groups at an appropriate number of times per week.

If you want to train more often than that, it does make sense to split it up.

So if you're training four days per week, I would do maybe upper body, lower body, upper body, lower body.

If you're training five days or six days per week, then we might split it up even more the way that you suggested.

And there are also...