Women’s bodies react differently to stress than men’s bodies do. In general, men’s bodies respond to stress with a “fight or flight” response. An increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension is characterized by this response. These stress responses make it easier for men to engage in physical activity.
On the other hand, women’s bodies tend to react with a “tend and befriend” response. They are tend and befriend response characterized by a decrease in heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension. This makes it more challenging for women to engage in physical activity. These different stress responses can also affect females’ hormones.
For example, stress can increase the secretion of the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn can lower the secretion of the sex hormone estrogen. Because of these physiological differences, training programs for females need to be slightly different from those for males.
By understanding the common pitfalls of training females and designing programs that are specifically tailored to female athletes, fitness professionals can increase the number of female clients they attract and retain.
Women have their own fitness challenges that need to be addressed differently than men. The natural tendency for many fitness professionals is to look for similarities between men and women when approaching fitness.
This can lead to a few common mistakes made by fitness professionals when training women. Below are some of the most common mistakes that fitness professionals make when training women and suggestions on how you can avoid them.
If you’re a fitness professional, then chances are you’ve come across a few of these yourself.
The good news is that these mistakes are easy to avoid. If you’re ready to start training your clients in the right way, then follow the advice below to start.
Training with Female Clients
Working with female clients presents fitness professionals with a number of challenges. Some of these challenges make it difficult for female clients to participate in a fitness program. Others challenges have nothing to do with the clients themselves; they have to do with the fitness profession as a whole.
In order to succeed in working with female clients, fitness professionals must take a closer look at how they approach training women. Despite making up nearly half the adult population, women aren’t exactly well represented in the fitness industry. This is down to a combination of factors, such as the fact that women are less likely to participate in exercise and the fact that they have different goals and values when it comes to fitness.
For example, they tend to be less concerned with toning, bulking, and so on, and are instead more interested in being able to perform everyday tasks such as climbing stairs and carrying bags. In order to better cater to the female client, fitness professionals must be aware of the common mistakes that they tend to make in their training. These mistakes will more than likely have a negative impact on your female client and their results.
I was lucky enough to interview Fitness Media Dominator, Dustin Maher when I was at a conference in California.
Dustin shares with you the mistake that fitness professionals make when training females.
To learn more about Dustin Maher’s Fitness Media Dominator program, click here.
Rick Kaselj, MS
