Dont Be Scared Of Lifting Weights

Many women are scared of lifting weights because they think it will make their muscle grow so their physique will look more manly and too muscular, but this is not at all true.

If you ever saw my interview with Lisa Stokes then you will have seen a photo of Lisa that showed her not being a huge, musclebound female even though she lifts a very, very respectable amount of weight. The reason why Lisa has this strength but is not huge in stature is because of the way Lisa trains.

I believe women should not be worried about visiting the gym and lifting weights, truth be told lifting weights can actually support weight loss so should be an addition to any training regime!

Did you know that for every extra pound of muscle that you carry on your body you are burning an extra 60 calories a day without moving?

The best form of training for women who wish to lift weights is actually the powerlifting technique, this means lifting very heavy with low repetitions (upto 5 reps) building your strength without cumbersome, huge muscles.

Bench Press Partial Repetitions

Partial repetitions are an amazing way of increasing your bench press by working on the problem areas in your lift.

When lifting a heavy weight on the bench press you will feel through the lift that at a certain section you feel weak, but when you get passed that part of the lift you can power out the rest of the repetition without any problems. It is because of this we carry out partial repetitions.

Partial repetitions are where you will not carry out the full repetition from start to finish but only carry out a certain section of the lift for reps and sets.

The two main places where people fail on their bench press due to a weakness are either at the very bottom of the lift trying to power the weight off the chest or towards the top of the lift after getting the bar just over half way up.

Partial Repetitions - Lower half

To improve the lower half of your lift we do partial repetitions starting with the bar resting at chest height and having a stopper placed about 6 inches (15.5 cm) above your chest. A top tip is to use the power rack as your stopper.

Once your set up push the bar from your chest to the stopper, bring down slowly and repeat for your full repetitions and for how many sets you wish.

Partial Repetitions - Upper half

To improve the upper half of your lift we do partial repetitions with the bar starting in its normal position at the top of the lift and having a stopper placed about 6 inches (15.5 cm) below your full bench lockout (where your arms are extended at the top of the lift). A top tip is to use the smithy for this partial repetition exercise as it has safety stoppers that can be used.

Once your ready pick up the bar as you would in a normal bench press and lower the bar to the stoppers slowly before powering the bar back up to your starting position. Complete the amount of reps and sets your happy with.

You should find you can lift heavier than your normal bench press one rep max on the upper half partial reps.

Summary

You should incorporate both partial rep exercises into your workout as training the lower part of your bench press will build your starting strength while training the top half of the rep will build that important power needed to push the bar to the top of the lift.

Video of Andy Bolton training with partial reps

Building Bigger Lats

Everyone knows the secret to building bigger lats is to carry out back exercises, but exactly what exercises will increase the size of your lats and how?

Well firstly the lats are a big muscle and building big lats will give you a good sized back you can be proud of, but you need an overall workout on the lats for this to work.

The size of a person back comes from the width of the upper part of the lats, this part of the lats is built with wide grip pulling movements. The best way to improve your back size is to include some wide grip exercises such as the barbell row, wide grip lat pull down and wide grip seated row in to your work out.

To gain a good overall V shape to your back you also need to work on the lower parts of the lats, to do this carry out the following exercises, close grip lat pulldown, close grip seated row and dumbbell bent over row.

As you can see it is important to have a mix of narrow grip and wide grip exercises in your back workout to gain a big, well proportioned, V shape back.

Back Muscles