Why Women Need Muscles

This article is written by Kat Sanders, who regularly blogs on the topic of online surgical technician school at her blog iScrub. She welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: [email protected].

Weightlifting Girl

Why Women Need Muscles

There was a time when women were referred to as the weaker sex, but not anymore. While the feminists are doing all they can to prove that anything a man can do, a woman can do better, the women who are endowed with common sense are going ahead and putting their money where their mouth is by doing what’s good for them – training with weights and building their muscle mass even as they go in for regular cardio workouts.

Strength training is no longer a man’s world, and women are building muscles for reasons that vary from good health to looking good. And if you’re a woman who’s reading this and shaking your head that you’re never going to be seen with weights around you, read on to see why you must work on increasing your muscle mass:

• Muscles boost metabolism: When you work with weights or strengthen your muscles with targeted exercises, you build your muscle mass. And while the scales may not show a difference, your clothes will fit better and you’ll feel a whole lot fitter. Besides, muscle uses up more calories than an equal amount of fat, so the more muscle mass you have, the higher your metabolism. A high metabolism allows you to take in a larger amount of calories and not put on any weight as a result.
• Muscles help prevent falls and accidents: They make you stronger, more flexible, and more in control over yourself. You’re able to balance yourself better and regain control faster when you accidentally trip over something and find yourself falling. Muscles help prevent injuries that could otherwise prove to be costly, and sometimes even fatal, affairs.
• Muscles help prevent diabetes: It’s a proven fact that muscle mass in women helps them control and manage diabetes better by stabilizing blood sugar. After a meal, people with diabetes have a higher amount of sugar in their blood that those who are normal because they’re not able to produce the required amount of insulin. A diabetic with more muscle tissue is able to reduce her blood sugar levels faster and more efficiently. Muscles also help boost the production of glycogen, the form of starch in which glucose is stored in the liver and muscle cells. Glycogen regulates the release of sugar into your blood.
• Muscles are important in sexual functions: Women who have had a baby are prone to urinary incontinence and a decrease in sexual desire and pleasure because their pelvic muscles become weak after the delivery. Pelvic floor exercises help them regain strength in these muscles and live life in a normal and infinitely more pleasurable manner.

If you don’t want to develop bulging muscles, you need to reduce the amount of weight you lift and focus on increasing the number of repetitions. But if you want to take the Madonna route, go ahead, it’s the new look that women seem to want these days.

Tags: build muscle, female, women

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