8 Benefits of Strength Training for Women (2026 Guide)

The benefits of strength training for women are many and impactful.

Did you know that hitting the weights two to three times per week can make you 25% stronger, feel more confident, and decrease your risk of diabetes type 2 by 30% in just 15 weeks?

In this guide you’ll discover how strength training boosts:

• Bone density
• Lean muscle & functional strength
• Cardiovascular health
• Body image & confidence
• Pregnancy & post-partum wellbeing

…and more.

You’ll also get beginner-friendly training plans to get you started right away.

Strength Training Builds Bone Density & Fights Osteoporosis in Women Who Lift

One in two women over 50 will break a bone due to osteoporosis.¹

While men can and do get osteoporosis (brittle bones), it’s far more prevalent in women, who lose bone up to twice as fast as men.²

One reason is that women naturally have smaller, thinner, and less dense bones than men. There’s less bone to begin with.

But hormonal changes are the main culprit. Estrogen fuels the cells (osteoblasts) that build new bone, and it takes a dramatic nosedive during menopause.

The Office on Women’s Health says some women can lose up to 25% of their bone mass in the first 10 years after menopause.

Hormone therapy slows the slide, but lifting weights can reverse it, sending your bones a powerful message: “Hey, grow stronger!”

How Strength Training Builds Stronger Bones

When you lift weights, your muscles pull on your bones. Squats or deadlifts pull on the femur and spine; overhead presses load the arms and upper back.

That good stress, or “mechanical loading,” flips on bone-building genes and increases mineral deposits.³

A 2025 Nature meta-analysis found that progressive resistance training, especially when you combine it with some impact exercise, provides the largest gains in lumbar-spine bone mineral density (BMD) for post-menopausal women.⁴

Lift heavy enough to challenge yourself: more weight, more reps, or more sets over time. A 2022 systematic review showed that programs using 70–85% of your 1RM (a weight you can only lift once) increased hip and spine bone density by 2–5% in 12 months.⁵ That might sound small, but even a 3% bump cuts hip fracture risk nearly in half.

In addition, strength training indirectly helps prevent fractures, too (not just directly by strengthening your bones). It’s great for balance and coordination, and stronger muscles mean more support for joints and bones. That means less chance of falling, and if you do fall, you’re more likely to get away unscathed.

If you have osteoporosis, it’s a good idea to run your plan past a physio or doctor before jumping into heavy weight training to ensure it’s safe and effective. They can help design the routine, exercises, and loading that best fits your scan results and confidence level.

Best Bone-Building Exercises

The bones you load in your resistance workouts benefit the most.

• Hips & spine: back/front squats, deadlifts, hip thrusts
• Arms & shoulders: overhead press, weighted push-ups
• Impact add-ons: box step-downs, jump rope, farmer’s carries

In summary, women face a higher risk of bone loss, but the good news is that lifting 2–3 times a week gives your skeleton the “grow stronger” memo it needs to stay fracture-free for life.⁶

Strength Training Builds Lean Muscle and Improves Body Composition in Women

Women can build impressive amounts of muscle and strength. Often more, relative to body weight, than men. According to the National Institute on Aging, those extra muscle fibers don’t just make you look better; they lower body-fat percentage, boost metabolism, and set you up for healthier aging.

The fundamental principles of muscle growth are the same for everyone. You need to:

1. Practice progressive overload (constantly challenging your muscles by lifting a little heavier or doing one more rep when you can)
2. Eat enough calories and protein
3. Prioritize rest and recovery

Men (not everyone, but in general) gain more absolute muscle (more pounds of muscle) because they start with more muscle mass and have higher testosterone.

Importantly, research shows that in terms of relative gains (the percentage increase in muscle mass compared to their starting point), women can build as much or more muscle, as the American College of Sports Medicine recently confirmed.⁷

Studies show that women can expect to gain an average of 1.45 kg of lean muscle mass and a 25% increase in muscular strength within 15 weeks of consistent resistance training.⁸

The same with strength gains, where women can sometimes exceed men in upper body relative strength, partly because they often start further from their potential “ceiling.”

Getting “bulky” from lifting weights is a concern for many women.⁹

But no, it’s not going to happen. Not unless you want to and train for it.

Gaining muscle takes consistent, dedicated effort over a long time.

It does not happen by accident or after a few weeks or months of lifting.

Unless you’re actively trying to put on a lot of mass, it’s highly unlikely you will “get bulky.”

Even if you have the world’s best genetics for building muscle, it’s still a slow process. You will never wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and see that you have suddenly gained “too much” muscle.

I have been in the fitness business for close to forty years, working with hundreds of female clients, and I have never met anyone who got bulkier than she wanted to.

Should the unlikely event occur that you start to think that you’re getting bigger than you want (which, again, is highly unlikely for most women without specific efforts), simply dial back on the intensity. Train for fun and maintenance instead of going all-out with the weights. You’ll get the health benefits even if you don’t exert yourself as much as possible in the gym.

Bottom line: Want to build muscle? You can. With effort and consistency, women can build as much as or more muscle than men (without accidentally getting “too big”).

Weight Training Boosts Confidence, Body Image & Mental Health in Women

Can a deadlift session rival therapy? Evidence is piling up that it can help.

In more than 200 randomized trials, strength training improved women’s anxiety, self-esteem, and body-image scores, and the World Health Organization lists muscle-strengthening exercise three times a week as a strategy to reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression.

• Two large meta-analyses published in 2024, covering teenage girls through post-menopausal women, report significant drops in both anxiety and depressive symptoms. Unlike many strength training studies, most participants here were women.^{10 11}
• Another 2024 meta-analysis of 218 studies found that strength training can be considered a core treatment for mild to moderate depression, along with psychotherapy and antidepressants.¹²
• Speaking of big studies, a preliminary 2022 systematic review on women’s happiness found predominantly beneficial or neutral effects, none adverse.¹³

These findings align with what women experience in real life. A 2023 study discovered that women find resistance training to be the most empowering type of physical activity, with more than twice as many votes as the number two selection, running.¹⁴

Why Lifting Helps

Researchers don’t fully understand the reasons why pumping iron builds your brain just as effectively as your muscles, but these are some of the top contenders. Lifting weights:

• Increases feel-good chemicals like BDNF, endorphins, and mood-related brain messengers and neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine.¹⁵
• Boosts confidence and provides a sense of control when you can add more weight each week and see constant improvement.
• Helps you focus less about how your body looks and more on what it can do (like lift heavy stuff).
• Builds a sense of community and keeps you motivated if you train with others or with a coach (some like to lift solo, and there is nothing wrong with that).
• Make you feel more satisfied with your body and life as you gain muscle, improve your body composition, and move easier.

Bottom line: For most women, lifting weights is a triple win: it eases anxiety and depression, builds real-world confidence, and shifts focus from how your body looks to what it can do.

For clinical depression or eating disorders, strength training is best used alongside professional care and therapy/medication, and anyone with severe depression should consult a mental-health professional before changing treatment. But for mild to moderate depression and anxiety, weight training itself can often make a big change all on its own.

Starting with a simple, progressive routine twice a week is enough to begin seeing mental and emotional pay-offs within a couple of months or less.

Join close to 1M users and track your workouts, gain strength, and boost your mood with StrengthLog for free:

Strength Training Eases Menopause Symptoms in Many Women

Hot flashes keeping you up at night? Strength training might turn down the heat. One Scandinavian RCT found a close to 50% drop in moderate- to severe hot flashes after 15 weeks of lifting.

Research shows that regular, progressive strength training is an effective, low-risk way to improve menopause-related issues like bone loss, declining muscle mass, metabolic health, and mood.

Virtually every menopause guideline recommends at least two weekly strength-training sessions as part of a healthy lifestyle. For example, the American College of Sports Medicine has recognized strength training as particularly important for decades.

That’s terrific for bones and muscles, but what about one of the most immediately bothersome menopause symptoms: hot flashes?

Evidence that strength training directly reduces vasomotor symptoms (VMS) is promising but mixed.

Menopausal hormone therapy is the fastest and most reliable way to quell severe VMS, but a number of studies show that strength training can be a safe and effective adjunct treatment (if not a stand-alone) for hot flashes and night sweats.

How Strength Training Helps Hot Flashes

Several studies over the last decade examine whether resistance training can help manage hot flushes.

In one study, weight training programs (15 weeks, ≥ three sessions/week, progressive overload) cut moderate-to-severe VMS by about 45%.¹⁶

Sample 15-Week Program

Here’s the program researchers used, a combination of compound exercises (that work several major muscle groups at once for time-efficient benefits) and isolation movements:

1. Chest press
2. Leg press
3. Seated row
4. Leg curl
5. Lat pull-down
6. Leg extension
7. Crunches
8. Back raises

Three workouts per week for 15 weeks, two sets per exercise, 8–12 reps per set.

Our Beginner Strength Training Workout for Women at Home uses different exercises but also trains your whole body as effectively, with the added bonus that you can do it at home without equipment.

After 15 weeks, moderate and severe hot flashes had decreased by 44% in the group that lifted but not in the control group.

A follow-up two years later didn’t replicate the benefit long-term.¹⁷

Less-supervised or longer follow-up studies often fail to show the same benefit as controlled short-term trials.

A 2024 meta-analysis that goes through the available studies nudges the evidence bar to “moderately strong” for vasomotor issues, with resistance training significantly reducing symptoms.¹⁸

It finds that strength training reduces both the frequency and the severity of hot flushes. But gaps remain. It also notes that there are a limited number of studies and that we need more research for any definitive conclusions.

Another 2024 review agrees that strength training looks like the most promising form of exercise to combat hot flashes.¹⁹

Bottom line: Progressive resistance training is a low-risk strategy to recommend alongside established therapies.

Track your hot-flush frequency in a diary or app so you can see whether you’re responding, and be aware that you have to keep lifting to keep the flashes down.

Then again, even if VMS relief is modest for you, resistance training still delivers proven gains for bone density, lean mass, metabolic health and mood, with very low injury risk, so it’s a good idea for everyone to strength train regularly.

Lifting isn’t just okay during menopause; it’s one of the best non-hormonal tools you have, especially since not everyone can or wants to use the latter.

Strength Training Supports Healthy Pregnancy & Speeds Postpartum Recovery

Strength training is linked to healthier pregnancies and faster, more complete postpartum recovery. Major professional bodies, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), now recommend it for most pregnant and postpartum women.

Why Lift While Pregnant?

Research overwhelmingly supports resistance training as beneficial for both mother and child during and after pregnancy.^{20 21 22}

Systematic reviews show that 2–3 60-minute sessions/week for at least 12 weeks trims excess gestational weight gain and lowers gestational diabetes risk.

It also:

• Improves muscle strength
• Helps with sleep
• Increases energy levels
• Mitigates fatigue
• Decreases low back and pelvic pain
• Reduces anxiety

Importantly, there is no rise in miscarriage, pre-term birth, or growth restriction, even with higher-intensity lifting; some studies show improved uterine blood flow and lower odds of macrosomia.

Does It Actually Speed Postpartum Recovery?

Not only does strength training prepare you physically for labor, but it also helps you recover after delivery.

Improves Pelvic Health After Pregnancy

Pelvic floor muscle training (Kegels) builds the muscles supporting the bladder, rectum, and uterus.

Doing Kegels during pregnancy reduces the chances of accidental urine leaks by 37% and lowers the risk of your pelvic organs slipping out of place by 56%.²³

Some research also suggests that training your core can help with diastasis recti (when the abdominal muscles separate during pregnancy), but the quality of those studies is low, which means the evidence is, too.

Reduces the Risk of Postpartum Depression

Postpartum exercise programs that include strength training can be very helpful for new mothers when it comes to depression and anxiety.

They can reduce feelings of depression by about half, lower anxiety levels, and cut the chances of developing postpartum depression by about 45% compared to not exercising at all.²⁴

Helps With Weight Loss

Studies show that regular exercise after giving birth can help women lose a small but noticeable amount of weight.²⁵

Sixty-four different studies followed women who exercised (a mix of cardio and strength training) and found that they typically lost about 1.3 kilograms (around 2.9 pounds) and saw their BMI (Body Mass Index) drop by about 0.7 units compared to women who didn’t exercise.

You start to see these benefits when you do about two hours exercise per week, lifting weights or doing bodyweight exercises and cardio combined.

Can Relieve Back and Hip Pain

Strength routines that build up the muscles in your trunk (your core and back) and hips can be very effective if you have pain in your lower back or around your pelvis, which is common after giving birth.²⁶

Training these muscles can reduce your pain levels by about 2.2 points on a 1–10 scale and cut down how much the pain affects your daily activities by half.

Who Can Lift During and After Pregnancy?

• According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, all women with uncomplicated pregnancies should be encouraged to do some form of strength training before, during, and after pregnancy.
• The World Health Organization concurs and adds that there is no increase in the risk of stillbirth, newborn complications, or adverse effects on birth weight from exercise, including strength training, during and after pregnancy.

Any complicated pregnancy should be cleared by a health professional before starting an exercise routine.

Bottom line: strength training is a safe and proven way to help your body recover and feel better during and after pregnancy. Grab our free week-by-week plan to get started.

The best part is that you can start or continue training both during pregnancy and after giving birth. Both long-time lifters and those who have never picked up a weight before get the benefits.

Resistance Training Reduces the Risk of Heart Disease & Type 2 Diabetes in Women

One of the significant benefits of strength training for women is that it slashes the odds of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. More so than in men.

Large prospective cohorts report 20–40% lower risk, and controlled trials confirm that lifting weights improves the metabolic and vascular markers that drive both conditions.

What the Latest Population Studies Show

A National Institutes of Health-supported study followed more than 400,000 US adults for 20 years and found that heart disease mortality fell by more than 30% in women who lifted weights at least once a week. The researchers also found that it reduced their overall risk of death from any cause by 19%.²⁷

The Women’s Health Study followed 35,754 healthy women (average age 62.6 years) for over 10 years and found that any amount of strength training reduced the risk of diabetes type 2 by about 30% compared to women who didn’t lift.²⁸

The same study also showed that strength-training women had a 17% reduction in cardiovascular disease risk (e.g., heart attacks and strokes).

But those who saw the greatest benefits were women who did both weight training and cardio:

Type 2 Diabetes Risk	Cardiovascular Disease Risk
65% reduction	39% reduction

That’s with at least two hours of combined cardio and strength work per week.

Evidence From Trials & Scientific Statements

Because cohort studies are observational, they can’t prove cause and effect.

However, clinical trials show direct, positive effects on heart health and blood sugar control.

Key Mechanisms: Why Lifting Works

• Increased lean muscle mass
• Reduced organ and liver fat
• Better hemodynamics and endothelial function, like lower resting blood pressure
• Improved blood fat levels

The American Heart Association scientific statement confirms that resistance training independently improves mechanisms that reduce CVD and T2D risk: lower blood pressure, improved lipid profiles and endothelial function, and better insulin sensitivity.

2022 and 2023 meta-analyses show that strength training lowers long-term blood sugar reliably and in line with earlier research: a relatively small but significant effect. The best glycaemic gains occur with 2–3 weekly sessions and around three sets × 8–10 reps at 70–80% 1RM.^{29 30}

In other words, you don’t have to spend hours in the gym; a few short sessions per week do the trick. You do have to exert yourself a bit, though.

How Much Is Enough?

• The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans suggest you do some form of strength training at least two times per week.
• The American Diabetes Association agrees and adds that you should aim for two to three weekly weight workouts if you have diabetes.

Even one weekly session gives you measurable benefits, but two is better.

Bottom line: adding just one or two muscle-building workouts to your week is a time-efficient and evidence-based way for women to cut their odds of both heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

The effects are comparable in magnitude to many medications, and they become even greater if you combine lifting with aerobic exercise and healthy eating.

Strength Training Boosts Metabolism and Helps Burn Fat in Women

Lifting weights burns calories even while you sleep, setting the stage for meaningful fat loss.

It’s not something you’ll notice in a week. The effects are real, but they’re usually modest and gradual. They work best when you keep lifting regularly over time and combine it with a healthy diet (if fat loss is your primary goal) and a moderate caloric deficit.

How Strength Training Boosts Metabolism

Strength training boosts your metabolism by increasing your resting metabolic rate, RMR.

A large part (but not all) of this effect is lean muscle.

Muscle is active tissue and burns calories 24/7. Each kilogram of new muscle adds 10–15 kcals of daily resting expenditure.³¹

That means gaining two kg (4.4 pounds) of muscle could raise your RMR by roughly 20–30 kcals, meaning a free kg of fat loss over a year without you lifting a finger.

A 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis discovered that weight training, on average, increases metabolic rate by 96 kcals per day.³²

Ninety-six kcals might not sound like a lot (it’s like a medium banana). But muscle doesn’t stop working in the background when you leave the gym. Those 96 kcals per day add up to 35,000 calories over the course of a year.

Over time, that slow-but-steady burn translates into visible results: less fat, more lean muscle, as stated by the American College of Sports Medicine.³³

One study of 109 strength-training women found that each additional day they worked out per week was associated with 1.3 percentage points less body fat and 656 grams more lean body mass. Also, the more intensely they trained, the better their body composition.³⁴

Also, you might have heard that lifting weights gives you a big “afterburn,” known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), that your body keeps burning calories after your workout.

EPOC is real, but the claims that it amounts to a considerable number of calories after training are not factual.

For example, in one study, young women burned an additional six kcals per hour for 14 hours after a circuit-style weight workout.³⁵

While EPOC does help increase the number of calories you burn, it’s not the big driver of fat loss some make it out to be.

Fat-Loss Tips For Women

To burn fat, women should…

1. Prioritize protein at every meal to keep you full, maintain, and boost your metabolism.
2. Eat fewer calories than you burn, but avoid drastic cuts that can hurt your energy and performance.
3. Do some cardio like brisk walks or interval sessions a few times a week to crank up your calorie burn.
4. Get quality sleep and manage stress because these two things can seriously mess with your fat loss efforts if they’re out of whack.
5. Lift consistently to maintain or build muscle mass, your best friend for burning fat.

Note: Intensity matters. For the best effects, you want to use relatively heavy weights (70–85% of your 1RM). For example, a 2025 trial with overweight college women found the greatest fat loss in the high-intensity group.³⁶

Bottom line: Strength training is one of the most effective tools women have for increasing daily energy expenditure, maintaining or gaining calorie-hungry muscle, and improving body composition.

The metabolic boost isn’t huge in isolation, but it adds up. It combines with a higher RMR, the calories you burn during training, EPOC, better insulin sensitivity, and more favorable hormone levels.

Combine consistent strength training with sensible nutrition, and you have an evidence-based path to burning fat and keeping it off.

Strength Training Builds Real-World Strength for Women (Groceries, Kids & Sports)

The eighth benefit of strength training for women is also my favorite: how it makes your body better at doing things.

Not just in the weight room, but in life.

One of the best things about strength training, whether you use barbells, resistance bands, kettlebells, or machines, is that you can use the strength you gain very directly in “real-world” actions you do every day, from car-seat lifting to carrying heavy things to holding your infant in one arm while opening the fridge.

Most benefits apply to everyone, but women (especially older women) are still less likely to lift.³⁷ That makes it even more essential to emphasize the importance of strength training for women.

Why Strength Training Carries Over to Daily Life

Real-life stuff	Strength exercises that build the same quality	What changes after a few months of training
Hoisting your toddler onto your hip	Goblet squats, front squats, farmer’s carries	Better leg/hip strength and trunk stability, so your child feels lighter
Lugging grocery bags up the stairs	Farmer’s carries, deadlifts	Stronger grip, shoulders, and core mean less strain and fewer trips
Pushing a heavy door or stroller	Bench presses, overhead presses, push-ups	More upper-body pressing power and joint control
Sprinting for a bus or doing weekend sports	Deadlifts, kettlebell swings, sled pushes	Higher force production in your glutes/hamstrings = faster acceleration
Protecting your lower back while gardening or other bent-over work	Romanian deadlifts, bird dogs, side planks	Greater posterior-chain strength and spinal stability

Evidence From Recent Research

A 2024 meta-analysis found that just 6–12 weeks of strength training with machines significantly improved Timed-Up-and-Go and Sit-to-Stand scores. Those are classic measures of getting out of a chair and walking quickly: functional capacity in its purest form. And a 2024 systematic review reported that traditional or functional strength programs maintain or improve activities in daily life.^{38 39}

These studies looked at adults over 60, but you certainly don’t have to wait until then to get the functional benefits of weight training. Everyone from children to the oldest old can lift weights in some form and improve their strength, mobility, and balance.

How to Make Your Workout Routine “Functional”

Strength training is inherently functional, but including at least some of these points into your workouts make them even more so.

• Emphasize compound, multi-joint patterns: Squat, hinge, push, pull, carry, rotate. These are the planes and ranges you use outside the gym.
• Train through a full, pain-free range of motion: Strength is mostly usable in the angles you’ve practiced. If you only do a short part of a movement, you get strong in that part, but not necessarily the full movement.
• Use progressive overload: You need to increase load (or speed, or volume) when you can to continue to improve. Stick with comfy weights, and your body stays comfy, not stronger.
• Include unilateral training: Split squats, single-arm presses, and suitcase carries even out left–right imbalances most of us have.
• Do some locomotion-based drills: Farmer’s carries, sled pushes, or sandbag holds teach your body to stabilize under moving loads. Real life isn’t static like a bolted-down weight machine.
• Include some power work: Exercises like medicine-ball throws or kettlebell swings improve your rate of force development, helpful for sudden kid-catching or sprint starts. Power training becomes more and more important as you age.

Bottom line: If you do exercises that look like real-world tasks and load them progressively, strength training doesn’t just build strength in traditional gym exercises but improves your performance in everything regular life might throw at you.

Benefits of Strength Training for Women: Final Words

You have reached the end of the article. Thank you so much for reading.

So, what’s the takeaway from all this strength training talk?

It’s not just about looking better, although that is one of the benefits.

It’s about building a stronger, healthier, and more confident you. From dodging osteoporosis to kicking everyday stress to the curb, the benefits of strength training for women are massive.

And when you need a helping hand, you can count on our workout log app, StrengthLog, to be there. When you track your training (essential for steady progress), want to check how to perform an exercise with proper form, or see how far you’ve come, it’s like a personal trainer in your pocket.

And, you’ll find the perfect training program for you, whether you want to build muscle, lose fat, or get and stay fit and healthy. All the programs I have mentioned in this article are there, and they are entirely free.

Free is also the price of the app, so download it today for iOS or Android.

Now grab some dumbbells (or a barbell, or a resistance band, whatever floats your boat), and start building the strongest version of yourself. You won’t regret it.

Last reviewed: 2026-01-04

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