Jaime Seeman

On average, after age 40, we lose about 1% of our muscle size.

With these age-related declines, we become weak, we become frail, and the risk of all chronic diseases starts to go up.

In a study, they found the more days, time and effort that women devote to strength training, the better their body composition is.

Myth number two is that weightlifting is hard or maybe too hard on our bodies.

You see, even as women, if we make a decision to go work out, we're more likely to choose the cardio equipment.

But let me dispel this myth.

Strength training meets you where you're at.

The first day you're in the gym, you're not going to be doing a 500-pound back squat.

It's about being stronger today than you were yesterday.

But we don't have the same role models when we walk into the gym.

Because when we walk in and we see this man with multiple plates on the bar, and he's making crazy faces, and even crazier sounds,

It's not very inviting to most women.

But you see, women actually have an advantage over men in certain parts of our life.

We make more estrogen than men.

And estrogen means that we don't fatigue as fast and we actually recover faster, which means that we can handle more volume in weight training without overtraining.

Myth number three is that weightlifting is for the boys and aerobics is for the girls.

You've seen it when you walk into the gym, this big room of treadmills, ellipticals, and stair climbers filled with women.

But in the Journal of Exercise Science, they found for every woman that was using the free weight section of the gym, there was 27 men.

This disparity continues to make it difficult to foster health for women across their lifespan.

Resistance training happens to be the only non-pharmacological intervention that has been consistently shown to offset these age-related declines in skeletal muscle mass, strength, and power.