How to Start Strength Training: A Beginner’s Guide for Women

Thinking about starting strength training but not sure where to begin? You don't need to be fit before you start, spend hours in the gym to achieve your goals or know your way around every piece of equipment.

Strength training can be surprisingly simple, and it can be adapted to your body, your experience and the time you actually have available.

In this article, I'll walk you through what you need to know to get started, from understanding what strength training actually is and choosing the right equipment to learning the basic movement patterns, deciding how often to train and putting together your first simple strength session.

You don't need to know everything before you start. You just need to start somewhere.

Why should women strength train?

Strength training is about much more than building muscle or changing the way your body looks.

Having stronger muscles helps you do the things you want to do in everyday life, from carrying shopping and lifting your suitcase to getting up from the floor, climbing stairs or playing with your children or grandchildren.

Strength training also helps support your bones, joints and overall physical capacity. And perhaps most importantly, having a good level of strength gives you more options as you age: more confidence in your body, more independence and a greater ability to keep doing the activities you enjoy.

As women, we naturally lose muscle mass and strength as we age. This is one reason strength training becomes increasingly important as we get older.

This type of exercise is about asking your muscles to work against resistance and gradually become stronger at doing so.

Strength training can also help support bone health and the capacity of your muscles and joints to handle everyday demands.

So building and maintaining strength is something worth investing in throughout adulthood.

Whether you use your own bodyweight, resistance bands or a pair of dumbbells will depend on what you have available, the exercise you're doing and what feels right for you.

The most important thing is the challenge you're giving your muscles.

What actually counts as strength training?

Strength training simply means working your muscles against resistance. And that resistance can come in many forms.

You may use things like:

• Your bodyweight, for exercises such as squats, lunges and push-ups

• Resistance bands, useful at home and easy to store

• Dumbbells and other free weights, which are more versatile and available in a wide range of weights.

• Weight machines and cables, which are normally found in most gyms and offer adjustable resistance and lots of exercise options.

So, when we talk about “strength training”, we're not talking about one particular type of workout.

You don't have to lift a barbell.

You don't have to join a gym.

And you certainly don't need to look like someone who has been strength training for years.

If you're challenging your muscles with resistance, you're strength training.

Gym or home: what do you actually need?

You can start strength training almost anywhere.

A gym gives you access to a wide range of equipment, including machines, cables, dumbbells and barbells. That variety can be useful, particularly as you become stronger and want more options for challenging your muscles.

But you don't need a gym to get started.

At home, you can begin with bodyweight exercises, resistance bands or a few pieces of basic equipment. A pair of adjustable dumbbells, for example, can give you plenty of options as you progress.

And if you already have access to some equipment, you don't need to buy more simply because you think you “should”. The best setup is the one that makes it easier for you to train consistently.

If you want to explore what I recommend for strength training at home, you can read this article about the equipment I have found most useful for beginners as well as other levels of fitness.

The basic movement patterns

You don't need to memorize dozens of strength exercises to start strength training.

In fact, it's more useful to understand a handful of basic movement patterns.

Most beginner strength programs are built around some combination of these:

Knee bend (squat): Important for getting down to and up from your chair.

Hinge: This pattern is important for strengthening the muscles at the back of your body. You use this when lifting something off the floor, for example.

Push: You push a resistance away from you. Like when you are pushing a cabinet to make room for your new plant.

Pull: You pull a resistance towards you. Like pulling on your dog’s lead so they don’t run away after the birds.

Unilateral exercises (single-leg or single-arm movements): These exercises challenge your strength, balance and coordination. Think about carrying your laptop in one arm while trying to keep hold of your child's hand with the other.

Carry and brace: This is essentially core work. You learn to stabilize your body while carrying or resisting movement. In real life, carrying groceries is a great example of this.

You don't need to include every one of these movements in every workout.

The point is simply to understand the basic patterns so that your training can cover your body in a balanced way.

​How often should you strength train?

You don't need to strength train every day to get stronger.

For most beginners, two strength-training sessions per week is a very practical place to start. This gives you enough opportunity to practice the movements and build strength while still allowing plenty of time for recovery and everything else in your life.

Your sessions don't need to be long, either.

A focused 20–30 minute session can be enough to make a useful contribution to your strength, particularly when you're starting out.

If the idea of spending hours in the gym is one of the things putting you off, have a look at You Don't Need Hours to Get Stronger for more on making strength training fit into a busy schedule.

As you become more experienced, how often you train and how much you do in each session can change depending on your goals, your schedule and how well you recover.

We'll get into the details of sets, reps, volume and progression in Part 2

Your first strength workout: a simple beginner session

I wanted to close this guide with a simple full-body session idea that you can start doing.

Your first strength workout doesn't need to be complicated. Make sure you include:

• Squat, like a goblet squat or chair squat.

• Hinge, such as a Romanian deadlift.

• Push, such as a dumbbell chest press or wall push-up.

• Pull, like a banded row.

• Single-leg/core, such as a split squat or plank hold.

And that's it. You don't need ten different exercises. You don't need to finish completely exhausted. You don't need to feel sore for three days afterwards.

The goal of your first few sessions is to learn the movements, build confidence and give your muscles a reason to adapt.

Go on to Part 2 to read more about this as well as answer questions like “How heavy should you lift?” and “How much of each thing should I be doing?”

And if you're wondering whether you need to choose between strength training and cardio, you don't. Both have a place in a well-rounded approach to fitness.

If you're not sure how to combine them, you can read Cardio vs Strength Training and learn more details.