This article is a complete mini guide for exercise for women.

It is more difficult for women to start afresh with an exercise routine. Firstly, they have got to squeeze out time for themselves and secondly, they are mostly clueless about where to start! This article tries to answer this issue and lays out a basic exercise routine which you can follow.

We are going to put forth a 5-day workout plan for women to get strong and toned. Always remember to stay hydrated, take care of your nutrition, increase protein intake and stay consistent for good results. Having patience and keep delivering your best is the key.

1. Warming up
2. 5-day workout routine for women
3. Diet and nutrition
4. Tracking progress
5. Progressing with this workout
6. Yoga and meditation

1. Warming up

Whenever you are going to do any exercise, it is important that you first warm up your body because if you do any exercise without warming up the body then your joints start to ache, muscles ache and stretch. When this happens, you stop exercising or you exercise even after having pain, due to which your pain increases. So before doing any exercise, it is important that you warm up your body. Warming up improves your flexibility and mobility, and helps reduce the risk of injury. By stretching the muscles before training, you help to increase muscles fiber elasticity and it means that the muscles fibers are far less likely to rip and tear.

2. 5-day workout routine for women

Now we will tell you about a 5-day workout plan. If you follow it properly then your extra fat will disappear in a few days and your body will come in shape as well as your body will be toned, getting stronger. The focus is to lose excess body fat, resulting in good inch loss, weight management and muscle building shall follow.

Monday: Chest and arms

• Flat bench barbell press - 4 sets of 8 reps
• Push ups- 4 sets of 10 reps
• Cable crossovers - 3 sets or 15 reps
• Incline dumbbell flyers - 4 sets of 12 reps
• Barbell biceps curls - 3 sets of 15 reps
• Alternate arms hammer curls- 4 sets of 12 reps per arm
• Triceps rope overhead extension - 3 sets of 20 reps
• Triceps dips - 3 sets of 15 reps
• 10 minutes on the elliptical machine

Tuesday: Shoulders and back

• Standing barbell military press - 4 sets of 10 reps
• Dumbbell lateral raises - 4 sets of 15 reps Ez bar upright rows- 3 sets of 15 reps
• Seated dumbbell shoulder press - 4 sets of 10 reps

Wednesday: Cardio circuit

• 10 burpees
• 10 push ups
• 15 crunches
• 20 squat thrusts
• 3 sets of 10 hanging leg raises
• 3 x 1- minute rounds of plank
• 20 minutes low intensity cardio on the treadmill.

Thursday: Strength Day

Incline dumbbell press - 5 sets of reps

Flat bench barbell press - 5 sets or reps

Deadlifts - 5 sets of 5 reps

Friday: Legs

• Barbel squats - 4 sets of 8 reps
• Pin on exercising
• Leg press machine - 3 sets of 12 reps
• Leg extensions- 3 sets of 15 reps
• Hamstring curls - 3 sets of 15 reps

3. Diet and Nutrition

Workout will be successful only when you take full care of your nutrition and your diet because most of the health is made in the kitchen, as per the saying. You have to come in shape with lots of strength and not to become slim and weak – keep this in mind and feed your body all the necessary carbs for energy to workout, good amount of protein to help your muscles grow along with vitamins and minerals for robust health and immune system. Make sure that you are getting full sleep of 7-8 hours and fulfil the calorie requirement of your body. On your rest day, you can have any food of your choice, without worrying about calories once a day, so that you can kill any cravings in the middle of the week.

BMR calculator will help you know how to many calories you need to maintain your current body weight.

 

If your goal is to lose weight, subtract 250 calories from this number. If you are underweight, try to add 250 calories to this number. And if you are already at your ideal weight, make sure to eat the proper amount of calories to maintain your weight while increasing strength.

4. Tracking progress

Without tracking your progress, you won’t know how far you are from achieving your goal and what are the areas you need to focus more on. It helps you in changing your strategy, workouts and nutrition plan according to changing needs of the body. These measurements can include progress pictures, scale weighing, tape measurements and skinfolds caliper measurements. You can start with what you are most comfortable with first and adding more as you feel comfortable.

The more data you have about yourself, the better because you will understand things better from it and after checking your progress, focus on your improving your shortcomings. It can be anything - increasing reps, sets, or weight used during your workouts, increasing the hours you sleep each night, increasing the amount of cardio you do each week, and increasing or decreasing the amount of calories you eat each day. It is up to you on how many days you measure your progress, but it is generally advised to check your progress once in 6 weeks.

5. Progressing with this workout

Every week, you should try to increase some variable in whatever exercise you do, that is, you should try to add more weight every week to the weight you lift. One way you could go about it is to start off with the low end. Then each week add a single set on one exercise each day of each week. Once you're doing all the maximum amount of recommended sets for each exercise, you could then add in 1-2 reps to each set of each exercise for the remaining weeks.

6. Yoga and meditation

To kill the every day stress and keep your consistency intact, it is important to balance your inner self and yoga is the best way to bring flexibility and balance to your body. It has been proved instrumental in stress handling when combined with meditation forms like pranayama. So give yourself a little tranquil time in the one hour you give to your workout, with yoga and meditation. This session once a week, will increase quality of your sleep and will help in muscle recovery as well. If you have time, you can give half an hour to yoga asanas daily. It works wonders for working women to balance out life and keeping mind stress free.