GIRLS CAN LIFT BIG WEIGHTS TOO (I'M SHARING MY FAVORITE FEMALE FOCUSED STRENGTH TRAINING EXERCISES)

There is so much that I am enjoying about my new adventure. I love supporting my incredible community. I love learning from top professionals in the area. I love helping others grow within their own fitness journeys. But I think my favorite part has been the talented and awesome people that I have met in the few short months that I started this blog. One of them is Nisha Meyer.

Nisha is a physical therapist at the Malvern location of Precision Performance PT. I went to Nisha for an initial physical therapy assessment, but it's Nisha's extensive background in women's strength training that caught my attention. Recently, I have been very focused on strength training for my own personal fitness goals after seeing the significant results of a few months of my virtual "Rachel Fitness" classes (see blog post).

I really want to educate and encourage women, especially women of my age, to start lifting weights. For us girls, it's crucial to strengthen our muscles and bones now for injury and illness prevention in the future. And Nisha is the perfect person to help me deliver that message. She focuses on female athletes and osteoporosis prevention. Her practice runs the gamut from prenatal and postpartum care to helping women while in various stages of menopause. Nisha co-founded a female only strength training program in Washington DC called Girlstrong. Girlstrong is still going strong today. Check out this impressive article that features Nisha's program, as well as some other popular female strength training classes.

Female to female, I feel very comfortable openly discussing issues from hormones and menstruation to diastasis recti (that separation of the stomach muscles after pregnancy) with Nisha. She just seemed to get me right off the bat-- understanding where I carry my stress as a mom and why I feel certain things in my hips as a female runner. Nisha recently received her doctorate in physical therapy from Temple University (go Owls). She is freshly versed on all of the latest and greatest studies and healing technologies. She focuses her practice on a holistic, person-centered approach. I found Nisha to be very observant, empathetic, insightful and smart.

After my physical therapy session with Nisha that focused on my hip flexibility and mobility, I just had to go back and train with her. So I met her in Malvern again. While her PT studio is attached to a gym, she has her own strength training equipment in her private studio. Because Nisha had already done an assessment on me during my previous physical therapy session, she was familiar with my lifestyle, my activities, my restrictions and my basic strength. So we jumped right into the work out. Nisha tailored my training session based on the following:

🌟 Strengthening my core and building stability to support my pelvic floor because I am a mom who carried and birthed three children in my 30's;

🌟 Enhancing leg strength and hip mobility because I am a distance runner; and

🌟 Promoting bone mineral density, as part of osteoporosis prevention, since I am a female in my early 40's.

For our warm up, I did banded side walks across the turf, and forward facing banded step touches back. After the first round, she upped the ante with a cute little kettle bell that actually wasn't as light as it looked. This is a female focused warm up, working on hip and knee strength. Women suffer from more knee injuries than men due to our wider hips, hormones and the fact that we generally take on more activities without the proper strength training to support it. By throwing the kettle bell in there, Nisha was targeting that tough back arm area that only gets worse with metabolic and hormonal changes as we age. Fun stuff to look forward to, ladies.

After 3 rounds of the warm up exercises across the turf, we were off to have some real fun! She set me up inside the trap bar for a trap bar deadlift. That bar alone is 65 pounds. When I say that I have been strength training for the past few months, I'm talking about using 10 pound weights... maybe 15 pounds on a really good day. Nisha loves putting women on the trap bar because by stepping inside the bar, it forces proper form to keep the bar balanced. Women naturally lift in this position. We lift bags, babies, toys, etc. all day long. You have to stay lifted when you bend to grab the bar and drive your legs into the floor to raise your body up. It's kinda like lifting two really heavy bags of groceries. It did feel natural and because of that, it was way easier than I thought. So much so that she piled on the weight and added 20 more pounds to the bar for me. For strength training, Nisha says women should be doing 4-8 reps with heavy resistance. We should work at an 8 out of 10 when we lift-- whatever an 8 out of 10 feels for that particular day. I happened to have my period so I was more sluggish than usual. An 8 out of 10 for me on that day was at 85 pounds and not 105 pounds. Maybe next week, the extra weight will be doable for me. Nisha totally understands how our cycles and hormones affect our performance level.

Next, targeting my core, we did a kettle bell farmer carry with a march across the room. Not really the core exercise you think of, right? But here's the kicker-- The kettlebells are of different weights.

In one hand, I held 18 pounds. In the other, 26. Working the oblique and entire side of the body that is holding the lighter weight to stay centered and balanced is what turns the core on. So cool! Nisha uses functional core exercises to strengthen our core and pelvic floor. Core involves so much more than those six-pack abs you may think of. This exercise gets it all involved-- the legs, the glutes, the groin, the lower back. Building core strength involves everything that attaches to the pelvis.

Another functional core strengthening exercise that Nisha loves -- and the hardest exercise I did that day -- is the Copenhagen adductor side plank. I held this side plank for a few counts and did a few reps, again focusing on quality, not quantity (4-8 reps). By engaging the inner groin and the obliques, this challenging exercise is helping to rebuild stability in the pelvic floor. It's a great exercise for postpartum women. And even today, 3 days after the workout, I am still really feeling it in my inner thighs.

It is with Nisha that I finally got to use the sled for the first time. Nisha loves to give women the chance to push and pull the sled along the turf. It truly makes you feel like you are so bad ass and can move anything in your way. As the saying goes, "There is no force more powerful than a woman determined to rise." In fact, when my young daughters saw the images of me pushing the sled carrying those huge metal plates across the room, I got some high fives from them. Yep, girls, mommy pushed 100 pounds today! The sled gets the heart rate up and involves every muscle. Plus, you feel really strong and accomplished after.

We finished the 50 minute workout with hamstring bridge lifts and jump squats to burn out my legs, hips and core.

I can sit here and talk about the importance of building up bone density to prevent future illness, but I know I'm not going to get most of your real attention until this little fact here: When you strength train, you burn more calories for longer periods of time following your workout than with cardio. After strength training, your body is working hard to rebuild muscle and in turn, you are continuing to burn calories during that time. You may notice that you are hungry -- really hungry -- an hour after you lift. And your muscles could be rebuilding for the next 24-72 hours. The soreness that you feel after lifting, that is your muscles rebuilding. I've always loved to feel sore after a good work out because I feel like I really did something. But now that I know just what that soreness is and why I feel sore, I love that feeling even more.

Nisha is the only female PT with Precision Performance, and she works out of the Malvern location. Precision Performance has three locations around the Philadelphia area and several other PT's. Nisha is not only teaching her clients physical strength. She is empowering women by building confidence. She is inspiring females to do more. She is helping to eliminate the stigma and intimidation of lifting weights in a regular gym setting. "Here's to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them." Michelle Obama