The best strength training program for women, complete guide

Between those men convinced that women should train like they do, and those women convinced that a radically different approach is needed, the truth is far more nuanced. Women do not need pink training, they need smart training, training that takes their specific needs into account without limiting them.

So why keep applying generic strength training plans that ignore those specific needs?

Whether you're a strength training beginner or more advanced, whether you're trying to lose body fat without becoming too muscular or you want to orchestrate muscle gain to build a toned body, this guide is here for you!

You've seen it, there are dozens of strength training for women websites and apps offering countless strength training programs in PDF or video format. No matter the format, the conclusion is often the same: after a few weeks, you start to plateau, you get bored with repetitive exercises and, eventually, you stop training.

The reason is simple: everyone is different, and your training plan should be too. This is even more true if you have a specific body transformation goal: lose weight, gain muscle mass, or even combine both.

The best strength training program is a plan that adapts first and foremost to your body type, your goals, your training level, your genetics, your physical abilities, your lifestyle, the equipment available to you (at the gym and/or at home) and above all, your preferences.

In short, you get it... If you want to make progress and see visible results, you need a personalized strength training program.

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How do you create a strength training program for women?

It already seems hard enough to choose from the ready-made programs you manage to find, so the idea of building your own program may feel out of reach.

Let us reassure you, contrary to what people try to make you believe in order to sell you ineffective methods, building a custom program is not rocket science when you have the right information! And we're going to prove it to you.

We wrote this article to guide you step by step through building your program, personalized according to your goals and the various factors that influence its effectiveness.

After reading us all the way through, you'll probably walk away with the best strength training program you could possibly have.

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Step #1, Define your goal: fitness, self-confidence and body transformation

Your goal will play an important role in creating your strength training program.

It's the reference point that helps you choose your type of training and your exercises, while giving you a clear vision of the path ahead. It's the carrot that will pull you forward so you keep training!

When you're super motivated, it's easy to spread yourself too thin by trying to do everything at once, so: set yourself a simple, specific and measurable goal.

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Do you want to gain muscle mass?

How many kilos? Up to what muscle mass / body fat ratio?

What kind of physique do you want? Muscular like female bodybuilding athletes? A fitness body? An athletic physique to be stronger? A lean silhouette?

Your full program will be built based on your answers to these questions! 

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Do you want more defined muscles?

First of all, take a full-body photo of yourself before you start. Then you can take another one every month (with the same pose) to track your progress. So, would you rather build your back? Have firm, defined arms? Or build your glutes?

With specific strength training workouts and a diet adapted to muscle growth, it's possible, while still listening to your body.

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Do you want to transform your physique?

What changes do you want to make to your measurements? For example: bring your hip measurement from 97 cm down to 70 cm to lose saddlebags?

Or lose love handles to have a more balanced silhouette?

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Do you want to lose weight?

How many kilos? To reach what body fat percentage?

To help you visualize that goal, you can draw inspiration from the before-and-after weight loss photos of our clients.

Or maybe you want to fit into a size 38 again?

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Do you want to be stronger?

For example, be able to lift more than 100 kilos on the Hip Thrust. Be able to do push-ups, like Laure, while blowing your limiting beliefs out of the water?

Or be able to do pull-ups like Laëtitia?

That's perfect, strength training is a strength sport, and it's going to help you truly build self-confidence.

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Step #2, Set a realistic timeline to reach that goal

In movies, progress happens in a 30-second montage with the Rocky soundtrack playing in the background. Reality is a little less fast-tracked, but it can be just as epic in its own way.

So yes, having an ambitious goal is great! Your goal should push you to go beyond yourself and make progress, but within realistic limits. Otherwise, you risk getting discouraged when you see that you're not progressing as fast as you'd like, or burning yourself out by trying to do too much.

You probably won't lose 15 kilos in 3 weeks. In 6 to 9 months, on the other hand, that becomes a great goal!

And we'd rather tell you this clearly, you will not see results overnight... If that were the case, it would be dangerous for your health. But don't get discouraged! It takes time, consistency and discipline. If you embrace that process, the rewards that come from it will be all the more gratifying.

So set short-, medium- and long-term progress goals. They will help you track your progress at regular intervals and adjust your strength training program and your nutrition plan as you go. Short-term goals will be small wins that keep you motivated throughout your body transformation.

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Step #3, Identify your strength training level

Have you just started strength training? Have you done it before but never in a gym? Do you know how to build a balanced workout and master training techniques? 

If you don't know how to assess your strength training level, know that there are no ranks or colored belts for that. There is no absolute rule. Everyone has their own potential and progresses at a different pace. Someone who trains randomly can theoretically remain a beginner their whole life.

You can still use several criteria to assess your level:

• Novice: you have never done strength training or you have not done it regularly for more than 6 months. You make good progress most weeks.
• Intermediate: you've been training for more than 1 year, you make good progress most months by investing yourself in your training and paying close attention to your diet.
• Advanced: you've been training for several years, you progress slowly despite optimizing all the parameters of your sports nutrition and training.

So experience alone is not everything. Your strength level, which you can measure through fundamental exercises (squat, bench press, deadlift), can also help you place yourself against standards.

To build your perfect training program, it's important to have an idea of your level. It has a direct impact on the recommended frequency and volume for your training, and on your rest times.

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Step #4, Choose the right strength training volume

Focus, this is probably the most important point.

The more you work a muscle (within its recovery and adaptation capacity, of course), the more it will develop. That is why muscle building takes time. You cannot build bigger glutes in two weeks, despite what fitness magazine headlines sometimes say.

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How do you build muscle volume as a woman?

To develop your muscles, you need to gradually accumulate muscular work volume over the long term. Think of muscle development like the growth of a tree.

“A tree does not become majestic overnight, but rather over the years”

It starts as a small seed that sprouts, then grows slowly each season, developing strong branches and lush leaves. In the same way, your muscles need time to grow and get stronger.

Each workout is like a season for your body, contributing a little more to your muscle growth every time.

Consistency is the key to transforming yourself. With patience and perseverance, you will see your muscles become as strong and impressive as a mature tree.

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How to calculate training volume

Studies suggest two different ways to calculate training volume:

1. Calculate tonnage : this is the product of the number of sets, the number of repetitions and the load lifted. In other words, if you do 3 sets of 10 repetitions with 100 kilos, the tonnage will equal 3 X 10 X 100, or 3,000 kg.
2. Count effective sets: much simpler than calculating tonnage, this is simply the number of sets performed close to muscle failure.

As for us, we only count effective sets. Research has shown that even if total tonnage differs, muscle hypertrophy (muscle growth) is similar when sets are pushed close to failure. [References: 1, 2, 3, 4].

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What is the optimal training volume?

The goal is to distribute a certain number of working sets for each muscle group per week.

The more beginner you are, the more you can progress with a relatively low weekly work volume. The more experience and muscle mass you gain, the more you will need to expose your muscles to an increasing amount of work to keep them progressing.

Many factors can have a positive or negative influence on your ideal training volume, such as:

• Your strength training level.
• Your lifestyle: sleep rhythm, stress level, activity level.
• The quality of your diet (macronutrients, vitamins, minerals, etc.).
• Your body composition (body fat percentage vs. muscle mass percentage).
• Your natural abilities (your genetic potential)
• Your sex.
• Your age.
• Your medical history.
• Your personality.

Although we observe a correlation between these factors and ideal training volume, the exact nature of that correlation has not yet been defined by scientific research.

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How many sets per exercise and per week?

Start with a volume of 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week, and adapt that volume based on how you feel and the progress you notice.

Here's the simple version:

• If you are a strength training beginner: do around 10 sets per muscle group each week.
• If you are intermediate in strength training: aim between 10 and 15 sets per muscle group per week.
• If you are advanced in strength training: you should do between 15 and 20 sets, and even more if you recover well.

To develop Gina's glutes, we sometimes even went as far as doing more than 30 exercise sets per week.

Aim the upper end of the range for the muscles you most want to see develop. Then, as you gain experience, you will probably need to increase your training volume to maintain your progress.

If you are a beginner, with an ideal weekly work volume of 10 sets for your glutes, for example, you could do:

• 4 sets of Bulgarian Split Squat, Monday.
• 3 sets of Hip Thrust, Wednesday.
• 3 sets of Glute Kickback, Friday.

That way, you will reach 10 working sets per week for your glutes, spread across each strength training workout.

That's the essential part of what you need to know about training volume.

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Step #5, Choose your training frequency

Once you have an idea of the training volume you need to get results, it's time to look at your training frequency. Frequency is the number of workouts you do each week. More precisely, it's the number of times you train a given muscle group each week.

Remember: the more you progress in strength training, the more your body will tolerate a high work volume. Why? Because well-trained muscles recover faster than those that are less used to exercise.

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How do you avoid undertraining?

As soon as your muscles have recovered well, you can train them again to maximize their progress. That is why, as a beginner, you can do 2 big workouts per week and get results. But after a few months, you will plateau on those exercises, which is logical.

In fact, the more you progress, the more you will need to increase the number of sets. So after a few months, 2 weekly workouts will no longer be enough to contain the training volume you will need. Your body would be too tired to perform the exercises with proper technique, which would hurt the effectiveness of your training.

Some elite-level athletes train up to 2 times per day. Not for long, but frequently. That is possible because with practice they recover much faster and can train more frequently.

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How do you choose your number of workouts per week?

You need to consider several factors. First, does your schedule allow you to train frequently?

Then, you should know that the more frequently you train a muscle group, the less you need a large exercise volume for that muscle group in each workout, and vice versa.

Ask yourself whether you prefer to train longer (30 to 60 minutes), but less frequently (2 to 4 times per week) or for less time (10 to 40 minutes), but more frequently (4 to 7 times per week).

The optimal frequency ranges from a minimum of 2 times per week per muscle group, up to daily. If you are a beginner, you can get results with as little as 2 full workouts per week or 10 minutes of strength training per day.

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What is the best training frequency?

The scientific answer is that it does not exist.

It is the weekly training volume you impose on your muscles over the weeks, months and years that will dictate your progress or your plateau (in addition to your calorie and protein intake).

We often see some advanced strength trainees train only a few times per week and get results just as good as trainees working each muscle group every day. But that is above all a matter of genetics.

You are unique, so let us insist: the most important thing is to complete your optimal weekly training volume per muscle group. And between 2 and 7 workouts per week, optimal training frequency is mainly a matter of preference. The best thing is to try, then adjust.

Start by choosing what best fits your lifestyle. If you see that you can stick to it, keep going. And as soon as you see that it is no longer suitable, feel free to adjust. What matters for getting results is being able to sustain it over time.

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Should you take rest days in strength training?

You do not have to have fixed rest days (for example, Wednesday and Sunday if you train 5 times per week). Be flexible.

You can absolutely decide to have two floating rest days, so you rest when you feel your body needs it and train when, on the contrary, you feel more rested. We often train 7 days in a row ourselves, and have done so for several years.

This approach is especially practical if you have a very irregular work schedule, like most high-responsibility positions, for example. Do not forget, your strength training program for women adapts to your goals and who you are.

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Step #6, Choose the exercises for your strength training program

Up to this point, you've probably been told that this or that exercise is the best for this or that muscle. Or that one exercise is better than another.

Except it does not work exactly like that: an exercise is first and foremost a movement. So rather than thinking in terms of exercise, we invite you to think in terms of movement patterns.

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Compound exercises

This is the type of exercise that should make up the majority of your women's strength training program.

Compound movements work several muscle groups simultaneously in two different ways:

1. Primary: muscle groups mainly targeted by the exercise.
2. Secondary: muscle groups indirectly targeted.

Here is a list of movement patterns in strength training:

1. Vertical push:
   ‍For example, overhead press or arnold press.
   • Primary: chest (upper portion), shoulders, triceps.
   • Secondary: traps, upper back muscles.‍
2. Vertical pull:
   ‍For example, machine-assisted pull-ups or lat pulldown.
   • Primary: lats, biceps.
   • Secondary: traps, rhomboids.‍
3. Horizontal push:
   ‍For example, bench press or push-ups.
   • Primary: chest, front delts
   • Secondary: triceps‍
4. Horizontal pull:
   ‍For example, dumbbell row or TRX low row.
   • Primary: mid-back muscles (rhomboids and traps), biceps.
   • Secondary: forearms, shoulders.‍
5. Squat movement:
   ‍For example, Sumo Squat or Smith Machine Box Step-Up.
   • Primary : quadriceps, adductors, glutes.
   • Secondary : lower back, spinal erectors, core muscles (for stability).‍
6. Hip extension movements:
   ‍For example, Romanian Deadlift or Hip Thrust.
   • Primary: hamstrings, glutes, lower back.
   • Secondary: core muscles.

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Isolation exercises

As their name suggests, these exercises directly target the muscle group they are designed for.

Here are a few examples of isolation exercises by muscle group:

• Glutes: Cable Kickback or with a band.
• Quadriceps: Leg Extension, Sissy Squat or Quadruped Terminal Knee Extension.
• Hamstrings: Seated Leg Curl, standing or lying.
• Biceps: Dumbbell Biceps Curl or Bayesian Curl with a band.
• Triceps: Cable Pushdown.
• Shoulders: Dumbbell Lateral Raises or cable.
• Abs: Ab wheel, Reverse Crunches or Ball Crunch.

These are accessory exercises that allow you to add work to the muscle groups you want to develop more, without adding work to the other muscles.

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How do you build your glutes without making your thighs bigger?

We use this example because it is probably the question we get asked most often.

You can do a Barbell Squat or a Goblet Squat (compound exercise) and add a Glute Kickback to isolate the gluteus maximus, or hip abductions with a cable or a band to isolate the gluteus medius. That is what allows you to add more volume to the glutes only.

But if you want to develop your glutes just as much as your legs, you will instead choose not to add an isolation exercise and focus on a squat exercise and a hip extension, such as the Hip Thrust, which will add training volume to the adductors and a bit to your quadriceps.

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How do you choose your strength training exercises well?

Choosing exercises is a balancing act that lets you sculpt the silhouette of your dreams. But from experience, we know it is not easy to be objective about your exercise choices.

If, for example, you want a flat stomach, there is a good chance you will add ab exercises, even though that is not necessarily a good idea, as we explain in this article on getting visible abs.

That is why getting support from a coach is the most effective way to change your physique.

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Step #7, Choose the intensity (the loads) of your training

Now that you have chosen your exercises, you are probably wondering whether you should lift heavy or light weights to build muscle, and what load to use. So it is time to talk about intensity.

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What is intensity in strength training?

You can measure the intensity of your training as a proportion of your 1RM. 1RM, or "one-rep max," is the maximum load with which you can perform at most 1 repetition.

The intensity of your training will be inversely proportional to the number of repetitions you can do for each exercise set. At low intensity (light load), you can do many repetitions, and at high intensity (heavy load), you cannot do many.

Keep in mind that the higher your rep target is (therefore the lower your training intensity), the closer you will need to get to muscle failure to get results. We talk about muscle failure when you can no longer perform an additional repetition because your muscle is no longer able to generate enough force, enough tension, to lift the load.

Do you remember Laure?

On the second repetition, she is unable to push.

Still a beginner when making this video, the load (her body weight) is significant relative to her upper-body strength level. We can say that she is training at high intensity.

So the closer you get to muscle failure, the more effectively you recruit your muscles to force them to get stronger and grow. But be careful! That does not mean training to absolute muscle failure is a good idea.

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Should you reach muscle failure?

The answer is clear: no. You should get close to muscle failure, but not necessarily reach it.

Here is everything you need to know about that:

In practice, true muscle failure is rarely reached. First of all because the burning in your muscles and lungs, or the breathlessness, become too painful or too limiting to continue the strength training movement. We generally stop at technical failure: the moment when you are no longer able to perform the movement with proper form.

In strength training, you should prioritize the quality of repetitions over their quantity.

“One more repetition will not be enough to build muscle, but it could injure you forever”

That is why we do not recommend training to true muscle failure. The goal is not to impair your recovery or risk injury for one or two extra ineffective repetitions, since fatigue would hurt your technique.

Reaching absolute muscle failure has the consequence of exhausting the recovery capacity of your muscle fibers, especially those linked to your central nervous system, which regulates motor control and balance among other things.

So to optimally stimulate your muscles without risking unnecessary exhaustion or worse, injury, you should try to stop right when you feel that you will not be able to complete your next repetition.

How do you identify muscle failure?

Look at the speed of execution of your movement. The closer you get to failure, the slower your repetitions become.

Until the moment when you can no longer perform the movement through its full range of motion. It is as simple as that.

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What is an effective repetition in strength training?

In 2010, a study conducted by Burd and colleagues showed that the success of a workout does not depend only on total tonnage lifted, but also on the intensity of the effort, whether that means lifting 30% or 90% of the maximum load you can lift for one repetition (1RM). It is in this context that it is important to understand the concept of an effective repetition.

An effective repetition, broadly speaking, is a repetition you perform when your muscles are maximally activated for the muscle group you are targeting. This maximal activation means your muscles are recruiting all their motor units and working at full capacity to adapt to the effort you are producing. It is this maximal activation that stimulates muscle growth.

When you use a heavy load, you reach this level of maximal muscle activation more quickly.

On the other hand, with lower intensity, you need to perform a greater number of repetitions before reaching the same level of effort and, therefore, effectively stimulating muscle growth.

The first repetitions mainly serve to fatigue your muscles until they reach that level of maximal activation.

It is a bit like preheating an oven so it reaches the ideal temperature to bake a cake. First, you preheat the oven, then you put the cake in and start the actual baking. If you put the cake into an oven that has not been preheated yet, it will not bake properly. In the same way, you cannot stop the effort before reaching the maximal level of muscle activation, otherwise you will not get the results you want.

So with a light load, the first repetitions are less effective than the last ones, which means you need to stick with your set for a while to reach maximal muscle activation, even if it may seem long and pointless at first.

In general, for exercise sets to be effective, we recommend doing 5 to 30 repetitions, getting as close as possible to muscle failure.

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How do you choose the intensity of your strength training exercises safely?

Now that you understand these fundamental concepts, it is time for us to teach you how to choose the right intensity for each exercise.

Our rule is simple: choose an intensity that allows you to progress safely, by adapting the load and the number of repetitions to your level, the type of exercise and your physical abilities.

Intensity for compound exercises

Prioritize a load that allows you to do between 4 and 15 repetitions.

‍‍These are energy-demanding exercises that will quickly exhaust your cardio. To avoid that problem and promote maximal muscle recruitment, train at high intensity (heavy load, fewer repetitions).

Intensity for isolation exercises

Prioritize an appropriate load that allows you to do between 8 and 30 repetitions.

These exercises isolate one muscle group, you are working through one joint. The risk of injury is higher. We recommend prioritizing low intensity (light load, more repetitions).

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We are sharing our decision-making chart based on your training level and the type of exercise in your strength training program for women

But keep in mind that as long as you train with a good proximity to failure and challenge yourself to progress over the course of your workouts, you will get just as many results whether you train with 4 or 30 repetitions.

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At what intensity should you train when you have pain or are injured ?

As much as possible, train at low intensity. The best way to recover when you are injured is to keep training. But not just any way.

We recommend using a load light enough not to cause pain and doing as many repetitions as possible until you reach muscle failure.

In general, we recommend our clients use loads that allow them to do between 20 and 40 repetitions. That way, you can recover while continuing to develop your muscle mass with balanced training. It's magic.

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Gradually overload your exercises

Do not forget that you will need to progressively overload each exercise over time, as you progress.

If you are a strength training beginner, you do not yet need high training intensity to see results, especially since you still need to solidify your technique so you can increase your training intensity safely.

As you progress, your body will respond better to higher intensities. You will need to increase the loads you lift as you improve.

Even without using external loads, push-ups are quite easy to progressively overload:

• You can start by doing incline push-ups.
• Then, once you have enough strength: do knee push-ups.
• To become capable of doing real push-ups on your feet.
• Then, when that becomes easy: you can do deficit push-ups.
• Until you are able to do decline push-ups.
• Or even archer push-ups.

Speaking of that, do you remember Laetitia from the beginning of this post?

With the method we teach you, she is now able to do archer push-ups.

How do you progressively overload your exercises at home?

Sometimes, you may be limited by a lack of equipment, especially during a bulk. This is generally the case with certain resistance band exercises.

For example: seated hip abductions with booty bands for isolation work on the gluteus medius.

If you cannot load an exercise enough to reach maximal activation during a set of 4 to 30 repetitions, and only in that case, you can decide to push all the way to muscle failure by doing well over 30 repetitions.

Then pay especially close attention not to lose sight of your training technique on the last repetitions of your set to avoid injury. At low intensity, the closer you get to failure, the more you will feel your muscles burn. That is linked to the accumulation of metabolic waste in the blood.

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Step #8, Organize your exercises according to your volume and training frequency

At this stage in your reading: you know your training level, you have an idea of your optimal training volume, you know how many times per week you are ready to train and you have selected your exercises.

It is time to answer the following question:

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How do you create your personalized training program for women?

Keep in mind that to get results, you need to train each muscle group at least twice per week. There are several ways to organize your weekly training volume, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Here are the 5 best-known methods and our opinion as professional coaches on each one. 

1. The Split training method for women

This is a program where each muscle group is trained only once per week. Reading that, you should already know that this is a suboptimal way to train.

2. Full Body training for women

In each workout, you will train all muscle groups. Depending on your physique goal, it will not necessarily always be with the same exercises.

For example, if you train 2 times per week and train each muscle group 2 times per week, you will simply do two full-body workouts.

And if you do 6 full-body workouts per week, each workout can be shorter (because you will do fewer exercises, with fewer sets per exercise) than if you trained 2 times per week doing 2 full-body workouts.

3 Upper Lower / Half body training

This type of training allows you to work upper-body strength training one day (Upper) and lower-body training one day (Lower). You will repeat that logic as many times as you decide based on your training frequency.

If you are a beginner, want to train 6 times per week, and want to train each muscle group 3 times per week, you can alternate between Upper and Lower workouts 3 times in your week.

4. Push, Pull, Legs training for women

The Push - Pull - Legs approach consists of dividing your body into three sections: the muscles used for pushing (chest, triceps, shoulders), the muscles used for pulling (lats, biceps, rear delts) and the leg muscles (glutes, quadriceps, adductors, hamstrings, calves). In each workout, you train only one of these three muscle categories.

For example, on Monday you train the pushing muscles (push), on Tuesday you focus on the pulling muscles (pull) and on Wednesday you train the lower-body muscles (legs).

Once the three workouts are completed, you will repeat that logic as many times as you decide based on your optimal training volume. But we recommend that women in their strength training program instead complement with full-body workouts for the rest of the week to avoid neglecting the lower-body muscles, because the Push/Pull/Leg approach is slightly more upper-body focused.

This is where the hybrid training program comes in.

5. The hybrid training program

If you train 5 times per week with that same goal and want to train each muscle group 3 times per week, you could divide your training this way: Push - Pull - Legs - Full Body - Full Body.

It is an interesting approach for women who want to put more training volume on the lower body.

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What is the best way to organize your training program?

It all depends on what best fits your lifestyle and your motivation right now.

Be flexible, you can adjust at any time!

So right now, do you prefer to train longer (30 to 60 minutes), less frequently (2 to 4 times per week) ?

Or for less time (10 to 40 minutes), more frequently (4 to 7 times per week) ?

We generally recommend that our clients train frequently with full-body workouts for 2 good reasons:

I. Less fatigue and more efficiency

Switching from a Push/Pull/Leg program to an Upper/Lower program generally makes it easy to increase your number of effective sets per workout.

And it is even easier if you train full body.

What is an effective workout? In the same workout, the more sets and exercises you do for the same muscle group, the more you will fatigue it. Your performance will gradually decrease over the course of the workout. That is logical and not a problem in itself.

The advantage of full-body training? Frequent full-body training allows you to do fewer exercises and sets for the same muscle groups within the same workout. That way you accumulate less fatigue and can perform better on each exercise in your workout, regardless of rest between sets. Beyond quantity, it is the quality of your training that drives the result. Here are 3 studies that support this idea: Hartman et al. (2007), Boyas et al. (2011), Ochi et al. (2018).

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II. Life is full of surprises

Based on the idea that the most important thing for making progress in strength training is training volume, a full-body strength training program helps you limit undertraining if you miss 1 or 2 workouts in a given week.

If you look closely, you have less room to maneuver when you train 2 times per week: 1 missed workout means losing 50% of your weekly training. Although nothing stops you from doing 3 workouts the following week, long workouts are harder to fit into the week.

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Step #9, Evolve your program over time

You get it, your program will evolve with you. To make sure you keep progressing, but also so you do not get bored with your program and stay motivated.

You can, for example, play with the exercises you chose by alternating different variations of those exercises, as long as the movement type and the targeted muscle groups stay the same.

That is why we created an alternative system for each exercise on our site. Thanks to that, you will not get bored from repeating the same exercise 3 times per week for months. In addition to evolving your strength training program for women according to your progress, stay in tune with your body and your mind so you can take your feelings into account.

For example, some signs could indicate that you may need to reduce your training load during your next workout:

• Do you dread the moment you have to go train?
• Can you no longer do as many repetitions as before with the same load?
• Have you been sleeping poorly for a while?
• Do you have soreness or pain that is getting worse?
• Do you feel stressed?

If you notice several of these signs at the same time, consider reducing your training volume to avoid burning yourself out or getting discouraged. Although training is important, rest plays an essential role in your progress.

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Realities specific to women

You may already have wondered whether, as a woman, you should train differently from men. You have probably heard a lot of misconceptions.

“Anyway, women do not have enough testosterone to build muscle”

And other discouraging statements of the same kind.

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Do women have as much muscle-building potential as men?

Let's destroy that myth right away!

Yes, women have roughly the same muscle growth potential as men. This has been proven by scientific research. Women build as much muscle and sometimes even more strength than men [2].

The only difference is the starting point.

Men generally start with more muscle mass and more strength, but the relative increase in muscle size is the same between men and women.

In fact, estrogen (those female hormones too often wrongly accused of preventing women from gaining muscle mass) has an anabolic effect.

A bit like testosterone.

They are actually rather beneficial for strength training: they support your metabolism, protect your bones and tendons, help muscle repair, etc.

Research has shown certain trends:

• Women are generally more resistant to muscle fatigue;
• They have a better recovery capacity, between sets but also from one day to the next between workouts;
• Women accumulate less metabolic waste than men during training and clear it more quickly afterward.

In practical terms, what does that mean for women and strength training?

It means that at the same percentage of their maximum load (or 1RM, for one-rep max), women can perform more repetitions than men. In addition, compared with a man, you may benefit more from training with longer sets (low intensity) than shorter sets (high intensity) if your goal is to gain muscle mass.

On the other hand, men have better explosiveness potential. As a result, women's resistance to fatigue becomes less obvious when approaching maximal load.

So, except at a high level, men can normally do more repetitions than women when it comes to explosive exercises at an intensity close to 90% (for example, powerlifting).

Unfortunately, there are still very few studies on the link between these differences and training program adaptation. The best approach is therefore to autoregulate while taking into account the elements mentioned above.

A few leads, however

Think about increasing the number of repetitions before increasing the weight. It seems that increasing repetitions is more effective for women.

You can also start by doing a few more sets than what a generic program recommends, and adjust as needed if you see that the number of sets is too high. Also keep in mind that high training frequencies are more beneficial for women. That is convenient, since you recover a little faster than a man.

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Can the birth control pill hurt muscle growth?

Unfortunately, yes. Without realizing it, many women use contraceptives that hurt the progress of their strength training. Many birth control pills hurt muscle growth by decreasing the activity of male hormones, and increasing a hormone called cortisol (the stress hormone). That puts the body in a state of chronic stress, which limits adaptation to the stress of training.

Basically, stress is not bad, but too much stress kills stress. The main culprit here is a component called progestin, which interferes with an important hormone called testosterone.

In reality, your menstrual cycle is not your enemy, far from it, as we explain in this article about how to optimize your strength training according to your menstrual cycle.

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Our coach's perspective on the best strength training program for women

You get it, the best training program for you is a program that takes your personal factors into account.

It is also a program that evolves with you, like a second skin. As you progress and your body transforms, your program sheds and changes to stay adapted to your needs.

Keep in mind that the most important thing is sticking to your program over the long term. Listen to your body and allow yourself to rest. It is a long journey, and you need to enjoy the ride all the way through.

If you want us to help you build the best training plan for you: contact us.

Published by Jérémy Loreau, fitness and nutrition coach for women

Since 2015, we have been passionate about helping women who look ordinary achieve an extraordinary body, no matter their age, whether after 40, 50, or 60. Women who, like us in the past, have gotten lost in the maze of conflicting information about weight loss, building muscle, and fitness.

This site is our comeback. We break down persistent myths by providing clear content grounded in the latest scientific advances and our own experimentation. Our goal is to help our readers achieve their body transformation goals effectively and sustainably.

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