Women these days don’t simply want to lose weight. They also want to be lean, muscular and to have low body fat.

Getting lean muscle can be a bit more tricky for a lady, which is why I am a big advocate for ladies wanting to start that journey. And this is why I am sharing the best exercises for lean muscle.

An example is a client who enjoys running and is confident in the shape of her lower body but feels too skinny and unshapely in the upper body.

My solution is to add speed, power, and strength in any running during our sessions. Which will be brief and part of the interval circuit structure mixed in with weights.

Working weights on the primary movers, the glutes, and the back. In case you want to shape your arms more, I put in the most aesthetically effective tricep exercise.

The skull crusher. Also known as tricep extensions.

So, a workout may look like this:

3-5 minute run starting at 50 % effort, scaling up to 85 % at the end, and also setting up my interval speed for her, once we set the weights up.

For the back, I will get her to do paused bent over rows, first doing warm-up sets, perfecting the technique, then loading the bar up to find an 8-10 maximal repetition weight.

For the glutes, I’ll use the abductor machine and set up the right weight by doing some warm-up sets. Then, finding a working weight for 12-15 reps and then superset that with a glute bridge.

Hold on to the swiss ball to do an isometric contraction of the bottom. And while on the floor, do a warm-up set for the tricep extensions until I have found the right weight to create full intensity with the right weight for 8 reps.

And then rinse and repeat x 4-6 times. Tweaking the intensity each round by raising the weight speed or rep range if it’s too easy and lowering the speed weight or reps if it’s too hard.

And if any movements are off weak or inefficient, I’ll add exercise to help her tune in and feel that body part more confidently!

So at this point, each set will look like a circuit except that each exercise will be done with correct and corrected technique so it’s not rushed and poor in form like circuits can sometimes have;

  1. SprintBent over barbell
  2. RowAbductor extensions
  3.  Swiss ball glute
  4. Bridges Tricep extensions
  5. Any supplemental helpful and additional exercises to create better progress.

If you have any questions, contact me for a free consultation and I will be more than happy to help.

Happy Training,

Adam