How To Achieve Fat Loss Fast and Safely: Best Weight Loss Exercises for Women

Lateral Raise

Best Shoulder Exercises for Women
By Mae Barraclough

The Lateral Raise is the best shoulder exercise for isolating the lateral deltoids.You’ll understand why targeting the lateral delts should be a priority in your shoulder workout. The Lateral Raise is very often performed incorrectly, with straight arms lifted directly out to the sides. To perform a Lateral Raise more effectively and safely, bend your elbows ever so slightly and angle your arms slightly in toward your chest as you raise them rather than straight out to the sides. This is called a “scaption”, and it will help to take excessive stress off the joint while still delivering all the benefits of the exercise.

To correctly perform a Lateral Raise, stand with feet shoulder width apart with the dumbbells grasped by your sides, palms facing in. Raise your arms upward to shoulder level, remembering to bend your elbows a bit while doing a slight scaption.

Weight Training for Weight Loss for Women

Weight Training and Weight Loss for Women

By Rochelle Ramirez:

You’ve probably heard it said before that building and maintaining muscle mass is one of the vital parts of a healthy body, and that it should be a goal in any well-rounded fitness program. But have you ever wondered why? What’s so important about building muscle, and why isn’t cardio enough? Or, Ladies, have you ever thought, “why not just stick with my cardio classes that I enjoy so much?

Cardio is fat burning, right?” Maybe you understand that there is an important difference between cardiovascular exercise and strengthening exercise but don’t know how to explain why you’re including it in your program.So, what does this mean for you and your exercise program? It means you should regularly activate your muscles to manage your weight.

It also means that you should not focus on only cardiovascular exercise to burn fat. Even though cardio exercise burns more calories during the workout, weight training workouts continue to burn calories several hours after the workout; something steady state cardio does not do. We need both weight training and cardiovascular exercise to maximize fitness.

Many people, women especially, only focus their time on cardio machines and cardio classes. What we Ladies should do is see weight training as our highly effective secret weapon to achieve our goal. By building more muscle mass with intense weight training and activating it properly with regular weight training workouts, you’ll be able to use your muscle to your advantage to keep those extra calories from being stored as fat.

Best Butt Exercises for Women

By Mae Barraclough

I have always thought that a pair of well-developed glutes is the best accessory for any outfit. A curvy derriere will draw gazes ranging from admiring to envious wherever you go; and of course, strong glutes are absolutely essential for functional movement and for high-powered athletic performance.

In our sedentary culture, many people’s butt muscles are weak and elongated. No, your butt doesn’t get a workout when you sit on it.

Strengthening the glutes can help correct muscle imbalances and postural problems, which means butt workouts have the additional benefit of helping to prevent injury. While few body parts are higher on the priority list for most women than the butt, many of us still have no idea how to get the butt we want. Read this article to finally discover what you must do to get the glutes you are wishing for.

You will learn all about, butt exercises and the myth of spot reduction, tips and exercise guidelines for maximizing butt workouts, and the best butt exercises for women.

Best Butt Exercises for Women

Here we have four of the best butt exercises for women, including a couple variations for different situations. It may sound simple, but these four exercises are the key to getting the best butt ever. You don’t need any fancy gym equipment to get your butt into excellent shape; in fact, I recommend staying away from any glute-building machines in the gym since they are a waste of your time when compared with the highly effective butt exercises described below. Those looking to lose body fat should take note that weight machines also burn far fewer calories than free-weight or body weight exercises.

Body-Weight Squat

To perform a basic Body weight Squat, stand with feet hip width apart and squat back as if you are going to sit in an invisible chair behind you. Attempt to sink down until your thighs are parallel to the ground or even lower if you can do so without sacrificing form. See the first video for exercise instruction.

9 Essential squat form tips YOU MUST FOLLOW to avoid injury and get the most out of your squats:

1. Toes pointing straight ahead at all times

2. Full foot in contact with the floor from heel to toe

3. Knees never passing the toes as you squat down: keep the knees stacked above the ankles

4. Knees in alignment with the feet, not caving in or bowing out

5. Top of pelvis tilted slightly forward

6. Low back neutral, not excessively arched or rounded

7. Arms can be out in front for balance, crossed over the chest, overhead, or hands braced on the thighs if you need more support

8. Gaze straight ahead, not at the floor or the ceiling

9. Squeeze the glutes firmly and exhale on the way up

Do a set of 20-30 Body-weight Squats.

Body-Weight Lunge

The basic Body weight Lunge is another fabulous anytime, anywhere exercise that works the butt muscles alongside the thigh muscles. Like the squat, there are a great many versions of the lunge. We will focus on the basic version, which is an excellent lower body toning exercise in itself, requiring only your body weight for resistance.

To perform a lunge, step forward a couple feet and stabilize your core while you lower your back knee toward the ground. Keep the weight in the front foot toward the heel and off the toes. As you sink into your lunge, make sure that the front knee stays stacked right above the ankle, never passing the toes. At the bottom of the movement, your back knee should be hovering an inch or so off the ground.

To rise back up, push your hips forward and squeeze your glutes while bringing your back foot up alongside the front foot. Perform a set of 10 lunges for each leg.

Best Back Exercises for Women

Back exercises should be a priority for women looking to lose weight. Since the back houses a fairly large muscle group, back exercises burn a ton of calories and building your back muscles helps raise your metabolism, allowing you to burn more calories even while at rest.

Most of the best back exercises for women focus on one of two types of pulling motions: vertical pulling and horizontal pulling. You can think of horizontal pulling as any pulling that is horizontal to the body, such as the motion to pull a drawer open or perform a bent over row if you are already familiar with that back exercise. Vertical pulling, on the other hand, is pulling along a parallel line with the body, such as doing a pull-up exercise.

When training your back, you must split your time and focus between vertical pulling and horizontal pulling exercises to maximize your results. I will be sure to let you know what type of pulling is involved in each of the best back exercises for women so you can make sure your back workout is balanced.

Key aspects of proper form during back exercises include:

Stabilizing through the core to avoid arching the lower back
Scapular retraction: shoulder blades drawn back and down as if you’re trying to tuck them into your back pockets
Ideal spinal alignment, meaning your ear, shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle form a straight vertical line when you’re standing; ear, shoulder and hip form a straight vertical line when sitting or a horizontal line when doing bent-over rows

Lat Pull-Downs

Lat Pull-Downs are the best lats exercise for the majority of women (trumped only by pull-ups for those able to perform them). The Lat Pull-Down machine is found in virtually every gym for this reason, and it’s one of the only weight machines I strongly recommend, preferring free weights for most other exercises.

To do Lat Pull-Downs, simply sit on the provided bench, grab the bar hanging overhead, and pull it down in front of your chin (not behind your head as used to be the norm).The wider your grip on the bar, the more work is delegated to the lats instead of the deltoids and biceps. Keep your lower back straight and your shoulder blades retracted to avoid injury.

Perform 12-20 reps of Lat Pull-Downs..NOTE: If you are able to perform Pull-Ups, feel free to do Pull-Ups instead of (or in addition to!) Lat Pull-Downs. Pull-Ups are an even better vertical pulling exercise than the Lat Pull-Down. Pull-Ups are difficult for many women, but you can definitely work up to them. The best way to build up to being able to perform pull ups is to get a boost to the top and then very slowly lower down unassisted. The boost can come from a spotter or from a stationary object you can push off against with your legs.

Dumbbell Pull-Overs

Dumbbell Pull-Overs are another excellent vertical pulling exercise. The main differences between pull-overs and pull-downs are that pull-overs require you to lie on your back and that pull-overs work the back, triceps, and chest instead of back, shoulders, and biceps.To set up Dumbbell Pull-Overs, lie on your back on a straight weight bench. The base of your skull should rest on the very edge of the bench, allowing you to look slightly backward. Press your lower back into the bench at all times to maintain spinal alignment.

Holding a dumbbell in both hands directly above your chest with elbows slightly bent, slowly lower it backwards until it is slightly lower than the level of your head. Without pausing, slowly pull the weight back over top of your chest. Keep your eyes on the weight to make sure it clears your head on its way up and down. Perform 12-20 reps of Dumbbell Pull-Overs.You can better isolate the lats by keeping your arms as straight as possible. Start with a lighter weight if you choose this variation to avoid over-stressing the shoulders.

One-Arm Bent Over Rows

Also known as iso-lateral rows, One-Arm Bent Over Rows are one of the best horizontal pulling back exercises, effectively involving mid-back muscles such as the rhomboids which are super important for posture. To perform Bent Over Rows, place a dumbbell alongside a straight weight bench.

Place one knee and one hand on the weight bench and the other leg on the ground behind your dumbbell. Grasping the dumbbell in your free hand, pull it straight up toward your shoulder, allowing a slight natural torso rotation at the top. Slowly lower the dumbbell back to the starting position.