Strength Training for Women: Busting Every Myth That's Held You Back

By Life's Peachy Fit | Byford's Boutique Strength & Conditioning Community

Introduction

There's a quiet revolution happening on gym floors across the world — and it's long overdue.

For decades, women were handed the same tired script: cardio to lose weight, light weights to "tone," and above all, avoid the barbell unless you wanted to look like a bodybuilder. That script wasn't written for women's health. It was written by an industry that misunderstood female physiology, underestimated female ambition, and ultimately kept millions of women training below their potential.

The research tells a different story. Strength training is one of the most powerful tools available to women at every life stage — for body composition, hormonal balance, bone density, metabolic health, mental resilience, and longevity. The problem isn't that women haven't been willing to lift. It's that they've been given bad information, watered-down programming, and myths dressed up as science.

Here in Byford, we see it every week at LPFIT. Women walk through our doors carrying years of gym hesitation — afraid of the barbell, unsure where to start, worried they'll end up looking "too big." And within a few months of consistent strength training, they don't just look different. They carry themselves differently. They move through life differently. That's not a coincidence. That's the science working exactly as it should.

This article is a direct response to every myth that's held women back. We're going to dismantle the most persistent misconceptions about women and resistance training, explore the real hormonal and physiological case for lifting, and show you exactly what an effective beginner strength program looks like in practice. Not a modified version of a man's program. The real thing — designed around how female bodies actually work.

If you've ever held back in the weights room because of something you heard, read, or were told — this is for you.

Chapter 1: The "Bulky" Myth — Why It's Biologically Impossible for Most Women (And Where It Came From)

Let's start with the biggest one, because it's the myth that keeps more women away from the weights room than any other.

"I don't want to lift heavy — I'll get too bulky."

It's understandable. The images that dominated fitness media for years — extreme female bodybuilders with dramatic musculature — became the shorthand for what strength training does to women. But those images represent the extreme end of a very long spectrum, and they almost never reflect what happens to the average woman who picks up a barbell.

Here's the biological reality: testosterone is the primary driver of significant muscle hypertrophy (growth in muscle size). The average woman produces roughly 15 to 20 times less testosterone than the average man. This isn't a minor difference — it's a fundamental physiological constraint that makes the kind of dramatic muscle bulk men can achieve essentially impossible for most women without pharmaceutical intervention.

What the research says: A landmark study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology by Staron et al. (1994) followed women through a 20-week progressive resistance training program. Despite significant increases in strength — some participants doubled their squat — muscle cross-sectional area increased by a comparatively modest amount. Strength improved dramatically. Physique changed in ways participants described as leaner and more defined. But bulk? Not the kind they feared.

More recently, a 2019 meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine reviewed 49 studies on resistance training and body composition in women and found that while fat-free mass did increase with training, the dominant effect on overall body composition was a reduction in fat mass — meaning women got leaner, not larger.

So where did the myth come from? A few places. Early fitness marketing deliberately steered women toward low-weight, high-rep "toning" programs — not because they worked better, but because they were easier to sell. The other factor is water retention. When you begin strength training, muscles retain water as part of the adaptation process. In the first few weeks, the scale might not move — or might even go up slightly. This is temporary and is frequently misread as "getting bulky." It's not. It's your body adapting.

What strength training actually does for most women is reduce body fat, increase muscle density (muscles become firmer and more defined, not dramatically larger), and create the kind of physique shift that hours on a treadmill simply cannot replicate.

The "bulky" fear isn't a reason to avoid lifting. It's a reason to understand what lifting actually does.

Chapter 2: How Women Build Muscle Differently — The Hormonal Reality of Female Physiology

Understanding why women build muscle differently to men isn't just interesting — it's practically useful. It changes how you train, how you recover, and how you interpret your results.

The hormonal environment in women is fundamentally different to men's, and those differences have real implications for training. Oestrogen, the dominant female sex hormone, is not — as many assume — a hindrance to strength development. In many respects, it's a significant advantage.

Oestrogen has protective and anabolic (muscle-building) properties. It promotes satellite cell activity, which supports muscle repair and regeneration after training. It reduces muscle protein breakdown. It also appears to reduce exercise-induced muscle damage, which partly explains why many women experience less severe delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) than men after equivalent training sessions. Practically, this may mean women can recover faster and handle higher training frequencies than is often prescribed.

What the research says: A 2020 review published in Sports Medicine by Enns & Tiidus examined oestrogen's role in skeletal muscle health and concluded that oestrogen has significant direct effects on muscle protein synthesis and satellite cell proliferation — effectively supporting muscle maintenance and development throughout a woman's reproductive years. The review also noted that the decline in oestrogen during perimenopause and post-menopause accelerates muscle loss (sarcopenia), which is exactly why resistance training becomes even more critical as women age.

The menstrual cycle also plays a role that is only beginning to be properly researched. Oestrogen peaks in the follicular phase (roughly days 1–14 of the cycle), and emerging evidence suggests this phase may be associated with greater training adaptations — women may respond particularly well to higher intensity training during this window. The luteal phase (days 15–28), when progesterone rises, may be better suited to moderate intensity work and prioritised recovery. This isn't a reason to train less — it's a reason to train smarter.

What this means practically: Women don't need to train like men to get strong. The hormonal environment is different, the recovery profile is different, and the adaptive responses are different. A well-designed program accounts for these realities rather than ignoring them. At LPFIT, programming isn't just pulled from a generic template — it's built around how your body actually works.

The goal isn't to train harder than the science supports. It's to train in a way that works with your physiology, not against it.

Chapter 3: Strength Training Across the Lifespan — From Your 20s Through Menopause and Beyond

One of the most important things to understand about strength training is that the case for it doesn't diminish as you get older — it strengthens. The benefits shift and expand across different life stages, but at no point does resistance training become less relevant for women. If anything, it becomes more urgent.

In your 20s and 30s, strength training builds what researchers call your "physiological reserve" — the baseline of muscle mass, bone density, and metabolic capacity that you'll draw on for decades to come. This is your investment window. The muscle you build and the habits you establish now compound over time. Women who strength train consistently through their twenties and thirties enter their forties in fundamentally better shape — not just aesthetically, but metabolically and structurally.

In your 40s, hormonal shifts begin in earnest. Oestrogen starts to fluctuate, and the downstream effects on body composition, mood, energy, and sleep become increasingly noticeable. Strength training is one of the most evidence-backed interventions for managing these transitions. It supports hormonal regulation, combats the gradual increase in visceral (abdominal) fat that often accompanies perimenopause, and maintains the lean muscle mass that keeps your metabolism running efficiently.

Through menopause and beyond, resistance training becomes a genuine health imperative. After menopause, the rate of bone density loss accelerates significantly — women can lose up to 20% of their bone density in the five to seven years following menopause. Muscle loss (sarcopenia) also accelerates, with women losing approximately 3–8% of muscle mass per decade after 30 if no intervention is in place. The consequences of unchecked muscle and bone loss — fractures, falls, reduced independence, metabolic decline — are serious. Strength training is the most effective non-pharmaceutical tool we have to counter all of them.

What the research says: A landmark study by Fiatarone et al. published in the New England Journal of Medicine (1994) demonstrated that even frail nursing home residents in their 80s and 90s achieved significant gains in muscle strength and functional mobility through resistance training — walking speed improved, balance improved, and stair-climbing power increased. If strength training produces meaningful results in 90-year-olds, the argument that it's "too late to start" at 50 or 60 collapses entirely.

A 2021 systematic review in Experimental Gerontology confirmed that progressive resistance training in postmenopausal women produced significant improvements in muscle strength, lean mass, and physical function — with greater effects seen in women who trained more frequently and progressively overloaded over time.

The message is simple: There is no life stage at which a woman is too old, too out of shape, or too far gone to benefit from strength training. The starting point changes. The fundamentals don't. At LPFIT Byford, we work with women across every age bracket — and the most consistent feedback we hear from women who start later in life is that they wish they'd started sooner.

Chapter 4: The Metabolic Advantage — Why Lifting Rewires Your Body in Ways Cardio Can't

Ask most women what they'd do to lose body fat, and the instinctive answer is still: cardio. More running. More cycling. More time on the elliptical. It's a deeply ingrained fitness narrative — and it's incomplete at best, counterproductive at worst.

Here's what the research consistently shows: while cardiovascular exercise burns calories during the session, resistance training creates metabolic adaptations that continue working long after you've left the gym.

The mechanism is muscle tissue itself. Skeletal muscle is metabolically expensive — it requires energy simply to exist and be maintained. Every kilogram of lean muscle tissue you carry burns approximately 13 calories per day at rest, compared to roughly 4.5 calories per kilogram of fat. This doesn't sound dramatic in isolation, but across the course of weeks, months, and years, the cumulative effect on resting metabolic rate (the number of calories your body burns doing nothing) is significant. Women who build and maintain lean muscle mass through resistance training are effectively raising the floor of their daily calorie burn.

There's also the EPOC effect — Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption, sometimes called the "afterburn." Intense resistance training elevates your metabolic rate for up to 24–48 hours after a session as your body works to repair muscle tissue, restore energy systems, and manage the hormonal response to training. A moderate cardio session doesn't produce this effect to the same degree.

What the research says: A study by Westcott (2012) published in Current Sports Medicine Reports reviewed the evidence on resistance training and metabolic function and found that adults who replaced fat with muscle through resistance training increased their resting metabolic rate by approximately 7% and reduced fat mass significantly — without any dietary changes. The same review found that resistance training improved insulin sensitivity, which is a critical marker for long-term metabolic health and a significant factor in weight management.

A 2017 study published in Obesity by Willis et al. compared women performing aerobic training alone versus a combined aerobic and resistance training protocol. The combined group showed significantly greater reductions in body fat percentage and better preservation of lean mass — even when total exercise time was held constant.

The practical takeaway is this: Cardio has real value, and we're not suggesting you abandon it. But if the goal is a lasting change in body composition and metabolic efficiency, resistance training is not optional — it's central. At LPFIT, our programs integrate strength work as the foundation, with conditioning built around it. That's not aesthetic preference. That's what the evidence supports.

Your body is an adaptive system. Give it a reason to maintain muscle, and it will. Give it only cardio, and it will optimise for endurance — often at the expense of the very muscle tissue that keeps your metabolism running hot.

Chapter 5: Bone Density, Hormonal Health, and the Hidden Benefits Nobody Talks About

The conversation around women and strength training tends to focus on physique — which is understandable, because it's visible. But some of the most significant benefits of resistance training for women operate entirely beneath the surface, and they're the ones that genuinely change long-term health outcomes.

Bone density is the one most women don't think about until it becomes a problem. Osteoporosis — characterised by low bone density and increased fracture risk — affects one in three women over 50 in Australia. Hip fractures alone are associated with significant mortality risk in older women: research suggests up to 24% of hip fracture patients over 50 die within 12 months. These are sobering numbers. And they're largely preventable.

Bone is living tissue that responds to mechanical stress. When you load a bone — through weight-bearing exercise, and particularly through the compressive and tensile forces generated by resistance training — it adapts by becoming denser and stronger. This is called Wolff's Law, and it's one of the most well-established principles in exercise science. Cardio alone, unless it's weight-bearing (running, for example), produces a much more limited stimulus for bone adaptation. Resistance training, particularly exercises that load the spine and hips — squats, deadlifts, lunges, rows — directly stimulates the bone sites most at risk from osteoporosis.

What the research says: A meta-analysis by Kelley et al. (2001) published in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation examined 17 randomised controlled trials on resistance training and bone density in women. The results were consistent: progressive resistance training produced significant positive effects on bone density at the lumbar spine and hip — the two sites most commonly affected by osteoporotic fractures. The effect was most pronounced in pre- and perimenopausal women, but postmenopausal women also benefited.

On hormonal health: Beyond oestrogen and the menstrual cycle discussed in Chapter 2, resistance training produces a broader hormonal cascade that deserves attention. Acute strength training stimulates the release of growth hormone, which supports tissue repair, fat metabolism, and skin health. It improves insulin sensitivity, which reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes — a condition disproportionately affecting women after menopause. It also modulates cortisol (the stress hormone) over time: while a single heavy session temporarily elevates cortisol, consistent training is associated with a lower chronic cortisol baseline — meaning trained women tend to handle stress more physiologically efficiently than untrained women.

A 2014 review in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research by Kraemer & Ratamess confirmed that resistance training produces favourable adaptations in the hormonal environment of women across age groups — including reduced resting cortisol, improved insulin sensitivity, and enhanced growth hormone pulsatility.

The summary: You can't see your bone density in the mirror. You can't feel your cortisol baseline dropping. But these are the adaptations that determine your quality of life at 60, 70, and 80. Strength training is one of the few interventions that improves all of them simultaneously — and it does it without side effects. In Byford and beyond, this is the work we believe every woman deserves access to.

Chapter 6: The Psychology of Lifting — Confidence, Body Image, and Reclaiming Your Strength

The physical benefits of strength training are well-documented. What gets less airtime — and what many women tell us matters just as much — is what happens in the mind.

There is something qualitatively different about getting stronger. It's not the same feeling as burning calories on a treadmill or completing a yoga class (both of which have genuine value). It's the experience of setting yourself an objective, physical challenge — and meeting it. Adding weight to the bar. Completing a set you couldn't finish last month. Feeling your body do something it couldn't do before. These experiences accumulate into something that begins to shift how a woman sees herself — not just in the gym, but everywhere.

The research on exercise and mental health is extensive and consistent: physical activity of all kinds reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety. But resistance training specifically shows some unique psychological effects that are worth highlighting.

What the research says: A 2018 meta-analysis published in JAMA Psychiatry by Gordon et al. analysed 33 randomised controlled trials involving 1,877 participants and found that resistance exercise training was significantly associated with reduced depressive symptoms — regardless of health status, age, or frequency of sessions. Crucially, the effects were independent of strength gains, suggesting the psychological benefit isn't contingent on becoming a competitive powerlifter. Showing up and doing the work is enough.

A 2004 study by Tiggemann and Williamson published in the Journal of Health Psychology found that women who engaged in strength-based exercise reported significantly better body image than those who engaged in appearance-focused exercise — even when their actual body measurements were similar. The mechanism appears to be a shift in self-evaluation: instead of judging the body purely on how it looks, strength training encourages women to assess it on what it can do. That's a fundamentally different — and healthier — relationship with your own body.

What we see at LPFIT: The mental shift is often more dramatic than the physical one, and it tends to arrive quietly. A member who started six months ago to "lose a bit of weight" telling us she's just registered for a charity run because she finally feels like she can. A woman in her fifties who came in feeling invisible discovering a confidence she hasn't felt since her twenties. A young mum who started postpartum saying she finally feels like herself again.

This isn't marketing copy. It's the consistent pattern of what happens when women are given a training environment that actually supports them — where the focus is on building capacity, not burning calories; on progress, not perfection; on community, not comparison.

Strength training doesn't just change your body. It changes your relationship with it. And in our experience, that's often the more important transformation.

Chapter 7: What a Beginner Female Strength Program Actually Looks Like — Week by Week

This is the chapter that matters most for anyone reading this who's ready to start but doesn't know how. The fitness industry has overcomplicated what a good beginner program looks like — and in doing so, has made starting feel more intimidating than it needs to be.

Here's the truth: a well-designed beginner program for women is simple, progressive, and built around a small number of fundamental movement patterns. You don't need 27 different exercises. You don't need to train six days a week. You need to move well, load progressively, and recover properly.

The foundational movement patterns every program should include:

• Squat (e.g., goblet squat, back squat) — loading the quads, glutes, and core

• Hip hinge (e.g., Romanian deadlift, conventional deadlift) — loading the posterior chain: hamstrings, glutes, lower back

• Push (e.g., push-up, dumbbell bench press, overhead press) — chest, shoulders, triceps

• Pull (e.g., lat pulldown, seated row, assisted pull-up) — upper back, biceps, rear delts

• Carry or core (e.g., farmer's carry, plank, pallof press) — trunk stability and total-body integration

A beginner doesn't need to master all of these in week one. The goal in the first 4–6 weeks is movement quality: learning to hinge, squat, and press with control before chasing heavier loads.

What the research says on beginner programming: A 2011 study by Rhea et al. in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that beginners respond optimally to 2–3 resistance training sessions per week, with 2–4 sets per exercise at moderate to moderately-high intensity. The key variable for beginners isn't volume — it's progressive overload: systematically increasing the challenge over time, whether through added weight, more repetitions, or reduced rest periods.

A 2017 position statement from the American College of Sports Medicine confirmed that for untrained women, even a single set per exercise performed consistently and progressively produces significant strength and body composition improvements in the first 8–12 weeks. This is important context: you don't need to be in the gym for two hours to get results as a beginner. You need to be there consistently, working with intention.

A sample beginner week at LPFIT:

Session 1 — Lower Body Focus

• Goblet Squat: 3 x 10

• Romanian Deadlift (dumbbells): 3 x 10

• Reverse Lunge: 3 x 8 each leg

• Glute Bridge: 3 x 12

• Plank: 3 x 20–30 seconds

Session 2 — Upper Body Focus

• Seated Row (cable or machine): 3 x 10

• Dumbbell Press (flat or incline): 3 x 10

• Lat Pulldown: 3 x 10

• Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 3 x 10

• Dead Bug: 3 x 8 each side

Session 3 — Full Body / Conditioning

• Trap Bar Deadlift or Sumo Deadlift: 3 x 8

• Push-Up (modified or full): 3 x 8–12

• Dumbbell Split Squat: 3 x 8 each leg

• Single-Arm Row: 3 x 10 each side

• Farmer's Carry: 3 x 20m

Progression in weeks 5–8: Add small amounts of weight (2–5% increases), or add a rep per set before increasing load. Track your sessions. The log is your programme.

What to expect in the first 12 weeks:

• Weeks 1–3: Learning phase. Muscle soreness is common. Strength gains are primarily neurological — your brain is getting better at recruiting muscle fibres. The scale may not move.

• Weeks 4–8: Momentum phase. Loads increase. Movement quality improves. Energy and sleep often improve noticeably.

• Weeks 9–12: Compound phase. Real structural changes become visible. Clothing fits differently. Functional capacity — carrying groceries, managing stairs, picking up kids — feels notably easier.

The most important thing about your first 12 weeks isn't what's on the bar. It's that you show up.

Chapter 8: Common Mistakes, Red Flags, and How to Know You're Progressing in the Right Direction

Knowing what to do is only half the equation. Understanding the common errors — the things that stall progress, cause unnecessary frustration, or increase injury risk — is equally important. Here's what to watch for.

Mistake 1: Going too light for too long

This is arguably the most common mistake women make, and it's a direct consequence of the "I don't want to get bulky" myth. Perpetually light weights with high reps produces minimal stimulus for strength adaptation. If you can perform 15+ reps of an exercise without genuine effort by the final few reps, the load is insufficient to drive meaningful change. A working weight should feel challenging in the last 2–3 reps of each set — not impossible, but definitely not easy. The technical term is training close to your "repetition maximum." Research consistently shows this is the zone where meaningful adaptations occur.

Mistake 2: No progressive overload

Doing the same workout with the same weights for months is maintenance, not progress. Your body is adaptive — it will find the minimum effort required to handle a given stimulus, and then stop adapting. Progressive overload — gradually increasing the demand on the body over time — is the non-negotiable mechanism behind getting stronger. Track your sessions. Add weight when you can. Add reps before adding weight if the load feels right. The log tells you whether you're progressing.

Mistake 3: Insufficient protein intake

Muscle protein synthesis — the process by which your body builds and repairs muscle tissue — requires adequate protein in the diet. The current evidence-based recommendation for women engaged in regular resistance training is approximately 1.6–2.0g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day. Most women eating a typical Western diet fall significantly short of this target. If training is the stimulus for muscle adaptation, protein is the material. Without it, progress stalls.

What the research says: A 2017 meta-analysis by Morton et al. published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine — one of the most comprehensive analyses of protein and resistance training outcomes ever conducted — found that dietary protein supplementation significantly augmented gains in muscle size and strength in people engaged in resistance training, with the effects most pronounced in those who were previously undershooting protein targets.

Mistake 4: Neglecting recovery

Muscle is not built in the gym — it's built during recovery. Training provides the stimulus; sleep and nutrition provide the environment for adaptation. Women who train hard but sleep poorly, eat inadequately, or manage high chronic stress levels will consistently underperform their potential. Aim for 7–9 hours of sleep. Manage stress actively. See recovery as part of training, not a break from it.

Mistake 5: Chasing soreness as a proxy for progress

DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is a poor indicator of training quality. It reflects tissue novelty — your body's response to unfamiliar stimulus — not the effectiveness of a session. As you become more trained, soreness decreases even as results continue. Don't chase soreness. Chase progressive overload.

Red flags to watch for:

• Sharp joint pain during or after lifting (distinct from muscular discomfort) — stop and seek guidance

• Persistent fatigue and declining performance — may indicate overtraining or under-fuelling

• Irregular or absent menstrual cycles — can indicate underfuelling relative to training load, a condition known as Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S). Seek medical advice.

How to know you're on track:

• Loads are increasing over weeks and months

• Movement quality is improving — exercises feel more controlled and confident

• Energy levels outside the gym are improving

• Sleep quality is improving

• Functional tasks in daily life feel easier

• You want to come back

Progress in strength training is rarely linear. There will be weeks that feel harder than they should, sessions that don't go as planned, and stretches where the numbers don't move. This is normal — and it's not a reason to change everything. Consistency and patience produce results. Reactive programme-hopping doesn't.

At LPFIT Byford, our coaches don't just write programmes — they watch, adjust, and guide. That accountability and expertise is what bridges the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it in a way that works for your body, your life stage, and your goals.

Summary

Strength training isn't a "man's sport" with a women's modification — it is one of the most evidence-backed interventions available for female health, at every age and life stage.

The myths that have kept women away from the weights room — fear of bulk, confusion about hormones, uncertainty about where to start — don't hold up under scrutiny. What the research consistently shows is that women who train with progressive resistance:

• Build lean, functional physiques without the bulk they feared

• Regulate hormones more effectively across every decade of life

• Protect themselves against osteoporosis, sarcopenia, and metabolic decline

• Improve insulin sensitivity and resting metabolic rate

• Experience measurable reductions in depression and anxiety

• Report significantly better body image and self-confidence

The physiological differences between men and women in response to training are real — but they work largely in women's favour. Lower testosterone means the dramatic muscle growth many women fear is biologically out of reach for most, while the strength, body composition, and health benefits are very much on the table.

A well-designed beginner program isn't complicated. It's built on compound movements, progressive overload, adequate protein, and recovery. It respects where you're starting and builds toward where you want to go — whether that's feeling better at 28, managing perimenopause at 47, or maintaining independence and vitality at 65.

The only thing standing between most women and the results strength training can produce isn't biology. It isn't age. It isn't starting fitness level.

It's information. And now you have better.

Ready to start? At Life's Peachy Fit Byford, we work with women at every stage — from complete beginners to experienced athletes — in a community-driven environment built around real results, genuine connection, and coaching that takes your physiology seriously. Come in and find out what your body is actually capable of.

[Book a free intro session at LPFIT Byford — lifespeachyfit.com.au]

References cited in this article:

• Staron, R.S. et al. (1994). Strength and skeletal muscle adaptations in heavy-resistance-trained women after detraining and retraining. Journal of Applied Physiology.

• Enns, D.L. & Tiidus, P.M. (2010). The influence of estrogen on skeletal muscle. Sports Medicine.

• Fiatarone, M.A. et al. (1994). Exercise training and nutritional supplementation for physical frailty in very elderly people. New England Journal of Medicine.

• Kelley, G.A. et al. (2001). Resistance training and bone mineral density in women: A meta-analysis. American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.

• Westcott, W.L. (2012). Resistance training is medicine. Current Sports Medicine Reports.

• Willis, L.H. et al. (2012). Effects of aerobic and/or resistance training on body mass and fat mass in overweight or obese adults. Journal of Applied Physiology.

• Gordon, B.R. et al. (2018). Association of efficacy of resistance exercise training with depressive symptoms. JAMA Psychiatry.

• Tiggemann, M. & Williamson, S. (2000). The effect of exercise modality and intensity on body dissatisfaction and self-objectification in young women. Sex Roles.

• Morton, R.W. et al. (2017). A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength. British Journal of Sports Medicine.

• Kraemer, W.J. & Ratamess, N.A. (2005). Hormonal responses and adaptations to resistance exercise and training. Sports Medicine.