If you’re an active, weightlifting women out there, chances are you’re goal is to build more muscle.
In fact, no matter what your weightlifting goals are, more likely than not, they rely on you building muscle.
For example, whether your goals are to body recomp, boost your metabolism, lose fat, or any of the other benefits of weightlifting, building significant muscle is crucial to see these results.
However, the key to building significant muscle is to find the most effective strength training exercises.
Then, once you find these exercises, you can implement them into your routine to see maximum muscle growth.
In this post, I want to talk about the top muscle building exercises for weightlifting women, so that you can optimize your muscle gains.
The impact certain exercises have on your muscle growth
There are a lot of factors that go in to building muscle for weightlifting women.
One of these factors happens to be the exercises you do as part of your routine.
Of course, other things like how you train or how you eat are important as well.
For example, you likely won’t be able to much muscle without training intensely. No matter what exercises you’re doing.
However, by doing effective exercises with correct form, you skyrocket your potential for maximum results.
Then, once you implement these exercises into your workout routine, you start regularly doing effective, muscle growth stimulating workouts.
The importance of effective exercises in your gym routine
In order to build muscle in the gym, it’s critical to have effective exercises as part of your gym routine.
The reason for this is because you want to be doing the most effective exercises possible during every workout.
Essentially, you want to maximize your time spent in the gym. By doing this, you can see the best results for all the time and effort your put into the gym.
Too often I see people, including myself, spending time on exercises that aren’t optimal for muscle growth.
And don’t get me wrong, there’s room for any exercise you want in your routine.
However, if your goal in the gym is to build muscle, then chances are you don’t want to be spending a lot of time on exercises that aren’t the best for stimulating muscle growth.
The most effective weightlifting exercises for women to build lean muscle mass
Add squats in to your routine for maximum leg growth
Squats are one of the best, most effective exercises to grow your legs in the gym.
Being most effective when you practice deep, proper squat form with a full range of motion.
One thing I like about squats is that they target many different leg muscles at once.
Working your quads, glutes, adductors, and hamstrings in just one exercise.
Because squats work so many different muscles at once, this makes them an extremely effective compound exercise to stimulate leg growth.
Additionally, squats allow you to add a lot of weight on the bar at once. This means you can really focus on overloading your muscles and potentially train to failure.
However, training to failure, especially on a heavy compound exercise like squats, can be dangerous.
Because of this, you want to make sure you practice proper safety strategies to prevent injuries from working out.
Doing things like using safety bars, squatting on a smith machine, or having a spotter can make a huge difference when it comes to preventing injuries.
Implement hip thrusts/glute bridges to effectively grow your glutes
If there’s one exercise I never go a glute day without, it’s one of these two.
Hip thrusts and glute bridges are some of the most effective glute exercises you need for glute growth.
Glute bridges are basically the same thing as a hip thrust. However, you do glute bridges with a smaller range of motion.
By not lowering your hips down as far, you can keep the tension fully on your glutes throughout the whole movement.
Doing this, the tension never comes off your glutes and on to your quads, but stays on your glutes the entire time.
Hip thrusts and glute bridges are again excellent exercises for leg growth, primarily your glutes, because you can load so much weight onto them.
By practicing slow and controlled reps, and really squeezing your glutes, you can increase your glute mind to muscle connection and see huge results from these.
Add lat pulldowns in to your routine to build your upper back
Lat pulldowns are one of the most simple, effective exercises to target your lats.
Your lats are the muscles on the sides of your back, under your arms.
Growing your lats makes your back appear wider and can help give you more of an hour glass shape.
One thing to keep in mind is that it’s easy for your arms to takeover on any back exercise.
This is especially true if your lats are weaker to begin with.
Because of this, it’s important to begin with a light weight, and focus on a mind to muscle connection in your back.
The best way to do this is by practicing slow and controlled reps, especially on the eccentric portion.
Try out barbell rows to build significant back muscle
Barbell rows are one of the most simple and effective ways to target the middle portion of your back.
Implementing these into your back routine is an extremely effective way to grow significant back muscle.
To do barbell rows, you’d grab a barbell and send your hips back like you would during an RDL.
However, instead of continuing to lower down, you lift the bar up and perform a rowing motion.
Focus on squeezing your back muscles as you bring your arms up.
And lengthening and stretching them as you bring your arms down.
Implement lateral raises to easily grow your shoulders
Lateral raises are hands down my favorite shoulder exercise.
It can be tricky to get the form down with these, especially if your shoulders don’t have much muscle to begin with.
That’s why it’s so important to practice slow and controlled reps, so you can perfect your form.
Additionally, lateral raises are meant to target the outer part of your shoulder, so it’s important to focus on a mind to muscle connection there.
However, most likely, your traps will often try and take over the exercise.
Especially now, since they’re typically stronger and more dominant than shoulder muscles.
That’s why it’s so important to focus on your mind to muscle connection in your outer shoulder, to really focus in and prevent your traps from dominating the exercise.
How to make lateral raises more effective and maximize shoulder growth
One tip to make lateral raises more effective is to raise the cable up, to just below knee height.
Doing this shifts the point of highest tension from when your arm is at it’s highest point, and moves it to when your arm is lower and closer to your body.
This allows you to load more weight onto the exercises and maintain maximum tension as well as proper form during a shorter range of motion.
Add bicep curls into your arm day for maximum bicep growth
Bicep curls are one of the most simple, effective exercises to target your biceps.
All weightlifting women can benefit from hitting upper body. However, there’s no reason to get overly complicated when it comes to upper body exercises.
The most simple, basic exercises are usually the most effective.
Because of this, a simple exercise like bicep curls is one of the most effective exercises to grow and tone out your arms.
Different bicep exercises target different bicep muscles
You can do bicep curls on a cable, with an easy bar, or with dumbells, all work great and are extremely effective!
However, it’s important to note that each different version of the exercises might target a different portion of your bicep.
This is mainly because of your hand placement and positioning, which plays the biggest role in determining which portion of your bicep is working.
For example, if your palms are facing up during the exercise, then you’ll be targeting the frontal part of your bicep.
This is the biggest muscle and will make your bicep appear largest.
Whereas if your palms are facing inwards towards each other when you’re doing the exercise, then this will target your outer biceps.
Growing this area makes your arms appear wider from the front.
Implement tricep pushdowns into your arm day for effective tricep growth
Just like with your biceps, growing your triceps doesn’t need to be anymore complicated.
Keeping it simple is usually best, and in this case, tricep pushdowns are one of the most simple and effective way to grow your triceps.
You can do tricep pushdowns by either pushing down on a bar, or doing an overhead motion.
Both work just as effectively, so it really depends on your personal preference and which one you feel works better for you.
It’s important to keep in mind that when doing the pushdown version, where you push down on a cable machine, your traps are more likely to get involved and takeover.
Whereas with the overhead variation, your traps don’t usually have as likely of a chance to engage.
Takeaways
Growing muscle in the gym isn’t a complicated process. However, some of the things you do can make the process harder or easier for yourself.
One of the things that happens to make this process so much easier is selecting the most simple and effective exercises for muscle growth.
By doing this, you allow yourself to maximize your routine while also avoiding overcomplicating things.
Allowing yourself to optimize your workouts and build more muscle than ever before!
More of my posts on women’s fitness and weightlifting
How to know it’s time to change up your weightlifting routine
Why women need to be training upper body
How often women should lift weights to build muscle
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