Women’s bodies undergo a lot of changes throughout their lives due to hormonal ups and downs, pregnancy and childbirth, and the process of aging. It all leads to obesity, poor muscle mass, weakened bones and joints, and body pains in later stages. Eating a nutritious diet along with proper exercising helps to maintain fitness and strength in women even as they age.
Here are some benefits of exercising for women.
- It increases stamina
- Prevents osteoporosis, a disease that leads to the weakening of bones and bone-breaking
- Maintains bone density
- Helps to achieve healthier lungs and respiratory muscles through aerobics
- Reduces obesity and weight gain
- Eliminates stress and depression
- Boosts overall mental health by providing self-confidence
Most women report that adding workouts to their routines helps them to do their daily jobs better. It is because physical activity promotes the release of endorphins in the body which elevate mood.
Hitting the gym may not always be possible for everyone, and it gives people a need to look out for exercise machinery that they can add to their homes. Equipment like dumbbells and GHD machines may be required.
Dumbbells:
These equipment for strength training offer many advantages. To start, you can use moderate to heavy dumbbells if you’re looking to increase your muscle strength and mass. However, if you want to increase your strength, you can perform a vigorous workout with heavy dumbbells.
Lifting lighter dumbbells also helps you build muscle endurance. You are said to have high muscle endurance if you are capable of performing repetitive motions for a long time without exhaustion. As you build your muscle endurance, you realize that performing your daily activities becomes easy for you.
Dumbbells are great exercise tools that help you build resistance on both sides of your body simultaneously. They help to maintain body stability by uniformly distributing weight throughout the body. Dumbbells allow you to move your arms as you want and they do not confine your exercising style. Dumbbells are flexible and allow great orientation of arms to exercise in a position that you want.
Dumbbells are the finest place to start if you’re a novice who plans to soon increase your workout regimen. They provide the structure for you to exercise more while assisting you in building your base strength. As a result of the stress placed on your bones, your bone cells repair and become stronger. Strength training equipment also strengthens the heart.
Squats, deadlifts, and lunges are dumbbell exercises for the lower body that build the calves, hips, glutes, and hamstrings. Exercises for the arms, chest, and shoulders performed with upper body weights include biceps curls, triceps extensions, lateral raises, military presses, and chest flys.
Halos, Russian twists, and side plank rises are examples of core exercises that aid in strengthening the abdominal muscles.
Glute Ham Developer (GHD) machine
One of the least used machines in the gym is the GHD machine whose benefits in building posterior strength are often ignored.
Women these days sit for a long time glued to their workstations, due to which they may develop problems in the muscles of the lower part of the body. The rear region’s weak muscles are vulnerable to injury and damage, which can cause excruciating agony. With GHD exercises, the muscles in the hips, knees, and lower back become stronger and more balanced.
The following are some of the best exercises you may perform on this equipment.
- Sorenson holds:
This strength training exercise that works like a plank should be done by first setting the machine in a way that you can rest your hips on the support pads, stretching your legs completely with your hands behind your head or on your chest, and then contracting your glutes and abs while staying parallel to the floor. You do not want a hyperextension of your lower back, therefore you need to engage your core well in this exercise.
- Hip extensions:
Let the top of your legs lay straight on the support pad while you do this exercise. Your machine should be adjusted in a way to accommodate it. Let your hips be fully extended, your arms remain on your chest, and the head and torso in a parallel plane to the ground. In this position, ridge your spine and flex your hips, and while you return to see your upper part of the body returning to the starting position, you need to contract your hamstrings and glutes.
- Back extensions:
Let your spine muscles become strong with back extensions. Adjust the machine settings to let the support pad position your hips, and keep a neutral spine with legs straight, hips extended and arms crossed. Tuck your chin to flex the spine, and let the movement begin with the neck and roll towards the upper back and then the lower back. To return to the starting position, carefully go for the reverse motion starting from your lower back and culminating at the neck.
- Reverse hyperextensions:
These exercises mainly help to strengthen the glutes and flex your lower back portion. You can begin by lying with the pad supporting your abdominals as you lie with your face downwards and hips let free. Support the footpad with your arms as you squeeze your glutes and raise your feet such that your whole body is parallel to the floor. With contracted hips and legs directed to the floor, return to the beginning position.
- GHD situps:
You do not want to miss these if you want a strengthened core, hip, and back. Stay seated on the support pad with relaxed hips, extended legs with a slight knee bend, and hands on the footpad, while you perform the situps.
Additionally, you also need to have the correct accessories to be able to do a great workout. Special clothes and shoes for exercise are available in online stores.
These women’s fitness apparatus can be shopped online at decent prices to enable you to add the comfort of the gym to your home.