Best Gym Workout Routines For Women (2023)

You walk into the gym and you see that same old visual. Girls on the treadmills. Guys over on the deadlifts. You don’t really want to be grunting and screaming as you power lift 400 pounds, yet you also don’t really want to just walk around on a treadmill for an hour. Here are the best gym workout routines for women….

There has to be something in the middle, right?

Well thankfully, there is!

We have a few great workouts for women, each depending on what you’re looking to accomplish. So whether you want to drop weight, build up that killer booty or just tone up around the entire body, we’ve got the best gym workout routines for women.

Diet Tips For Women

Before we get into the best workout routines, we want to dig into the diet. We’re not going to tell you what diet to use right here.

However, you do need to focus on your diet in addition to workout out.

You’ll never see abs if you don’t fine-tune your diet, because as the saying goes: your abs are made in the kitchen. Alright, so that’s not entirely true. You’re perfect and strengthen your abs through workouts, but you shed the fat and show off your abs through diet.

So drink plenty of water (at least eight glasses of eight ounces) a day, cut the sugar and fats and focus on lean proteins, non-processed grains (100% whole wheat), veggies and fruit. Supplements like Bio Complete 3 are amazing for women’s bodies and can aid in a workout routine.

This, combined with your workouts, will begin to improve your overall physique in no time.

Perhaps you’re not really sure what kind of workout you want or what would be best for you? Maybe you’ve just gone with the flow but never really focused on one type of workout over another. If you have specific goals keep reading on.

However, we’ve got some tips for you for what to workout based on your body type.

Do you have a pear shape?

If so, you know your booty gets more of the attention. With this body type, you’ll want to really focus on your shoulders and your arms. Plus, getting generally tighter will help turn the pear into an hourglass.

If you have very few curves you’ll want to target your glutes and thighs. This booty centric workout will not only help lift your butt and strengthen your legs, but it will help give you a bit more curve in the midsection.

If you have an athletic body type your shoulders are broader and your hips are narrower. You’ll want to tighten the core muscles while focusing on your booty to give it a bit more shape.

Perhaps you have more of an hourglass or curvy figure. When this happens you’ll want to work your entire body and add some tone and shape to your arms and legs. This will help tighten everything and emphasize your curves.

These are just some general guidelines for what you might want to focus on while working out. We highly recommend a full body workout as it will prevent one area of the body from over developing and another area of the body under developing. However you decide to move forward though, always keep your current body shape in mind (Mayo Clinic, 2018).

Booty and Legs Workout

If you want to strengthen and target your butt, you’re going to need weight. Here’s how to have a big booty and tone up your legs.

Even if you want to go lighter on weight for your upper body, going heavier with your legs is totally fine. If you have a body where curves or a larger butt is not your strong suit, you’ll want to go heavier as this will help break down the muscle fibers.

As your muscle fibers rebuild, it will help strengthen and increase the size of your butt. What’s great about the lower body is because the muscles are larger, you can put more weight on it and increase the size faster.

Each of these following lifts performs four sets of eight to 12 reps unless otherwise noted:

• Leg press
• Barbell squat
• Barbell deadlift
• Seated leg curl
• Bulgarian split squat (4 sets of each side)
• Side leg raises (3 sets of 20-30 reps each side)
• Weighted glutebridge (3 sets of 20-25 reps)
• Jump squat (3 sets 20-25 reps)

This booty, leg and hamstring heavy workout are perfect for when you want to increase the strength and/or size of your butt. If you want to simply tone, go lighter on the weights. If you want to increase size, increase the weight.

If you can push out more than the 12 reps, your weight is too low (International Osteoporosis Foundation, 2017).

Chest and Back

If you have the straight figure, you’ll want to add some curve not only to your butt and legs but to your shoulders, chest, and back.

You want to do the same if you have a pear shape. As with the other cases, if you want to simply tone, go with lighter weights. If you want to increase size, go for heavier weights. Also, some of these lifts you can either do on the floor or on a bench (like the chest press).

We highly recommend always using a bench. You’ll get a greater range of motion and you’ll increase your stretch. When you lower the weights down, this works your back. If you do the lift on the floor you won’t have this kind of range of motion, which cheats your back muscles. So even if you’re looking to tone, try to use a bench when available.

The following lifts you’ll want to perform three sets of eight to 12 reps unless otherwise noted.

• Chest press
• Chest fly
• Pullover
• Shoulder press
• Bent over row
• Pushups (3 sets of as many as you can do with 60 seconds rest in between)

Have you noticed sagging in your breasts?

Perhaps after nursing or maybe you’ve just looked in the mirror and your breasts are just not as perky as they use to be. An upper body chest workout routine is just what you need. Workout out your pectoral muscles will help give your chest added support while lifting the muscle. It will also help reduce some of the fatty tissue buildup (as you burn more calories), but of which will aid in lifting your breasts naturally.

So you’ll not only look great but you’ll save on those costly cosmetic procedures as well (The Strength Clinic, 2016).

Hitting Those Abs

If someone tells you they spend 30 minutes a day on as they are doing it wrong.

There’s no reason at all to spend this much time on abs. If you’re really hitting your muscles you can get it in eight to 12 minutes. You can check out YouTube for some great ab workout videos (remember, if it’s longer than 12 minutes, it’s not worth your time).

Here’s a little ab workout you can do to tighten your core though.

And here’s the deal. Don’t shoot for a set number. Go 45 seconds at a time, then take 15-second breaks. You’ll get these nine moves done in nine minutes, will feel the burn and will have your abs all done for the day.

• Crunches
• Bicycle crunches
• Leg Lifts
• Toe touches
• Crunch claps
• Elbow to knee touches
• Mountain climbers
• Dynamic plank
• Side V-up (30 seconds each side, no break in between)

Being A Cardio Bunny

Always, always, always do weight workouts. You’ll never achieve your fitness goals if you don’t bring in weights. Resistance training is a must, even if you don’t want to build muscle. You’ll burn calories working out, boost your metabolism and your body will burn further calories as it repairs your muscles. It’s a triple win. But you’ll also need cardio to sprinkle in.

What kind of cardio should you do?

We’ve got a few tips.

First, ditch the static running. If you like to jog, we’re not going to stop you. It’s a great way to burn off stress. However, if you’re at the gym and you have a set time frame for cardio, skip the treadmill and go for something different. A stair stepper is a great machine that is like walking uphill non stop. If you want to build that booty this is a good one. If you’re looking to tighten and tone your upper body, check out the rowing machine.

This is one of the best cardio workout machines out there.

We also like cardio routines that bring in a medicine ball. Jumping jacks are fine, but a jumping jack with a medicine ball is even better. Pilates is a nice option as well as it often brings in medicine balls and subtle weight usage.

As for yoga, well here’s the down low on yoga. We love it. It’s great for stretching out the body, improving posture and fixing some of those kinks in the spine. But it’s not cardio. It’ll never be cardio. So if you like and enjoy yoga, by all means, continue on, and if you haven’t tried it before give it a whirl. However, don’t swap it in for your cardio. There’s a reason stretching is part of the warmup of other workouts and not the actual workout.

Frequency Of Your Workouts Being A Chick

Your frequency is going to depend a bit on how heavy you’re lifting. If you’re lifting heavy and really challenging yourself, you’ll want two days in between hitting the same muscles. If you’re going lighter but to stay tuned, you can go every other day.

So, for example. If you’re lifting heavy, start Monday off with your primary lifts (if you’re looking to increase your booty size, start with legs, but if you want to increase your chest or shoulders, start with this on Monday. You can alternate if you want an all-around body workout).

Primary is on Monday.

The secondary is on Tuesday. Take Wednesday off from weights. Thursday is Primary, Friday is secondary, take Saturday off, then begin the next week on Sunday.

If you’re not going heavy with the weights, then go every other day and don’t take Wednesday off from weights.

You’ll want to put in cardio every day. Focus on about 30 minutes during your on days and 60 minutes on the off days. Now, if you just did a leg based workout, you don’t want to add a leg based cardio workout, as this prevents your muscles from recovering. So if you did legs, go for the rowing machine. If you did arms, go to the stair stepper or another lower leg option.

As for your abs, try to do this every day (or at least every day you’re doing weights). Because abs are core muscles you use these every day and it doesn’t take as long to recover. This way, you can really blast your abs every day to see faster results.

A Little Something on Those Workout By Number Workouts

Chances are, you’ve seen people post what we call workout by numbers on Facebook, Instagram or so on.

Basically, it a “do 50 squats, do 20 push ups, do 20 lunges” workout.

Sounds alright, doesn’t it?

It’s right to the point.

But here’s the problem with those workouts. It might start off difficult, but after a few weeks, you’ll blow through the workout in a snap and you won’t be challenging yourself at all. Your body will be used to the workout and you’re done in no time. It really doesn’t help your body out if you’re not challenging yourself.

You’ll need to continually increase your numbers, which will just increase your workout time. That is not a great way to achieve your goals. It’s far better to increase resistance than to just do the same, mindless workout, over and over.

So it might sound challenging, but in a few weeks, it won’t be (WebMD, 2018).

Conclusion

These are a handful of the very best gym workout routines for women. Feel free to tinker and adjust to help it fit your personal needs. What’s important is you push yourself and strive for your very best.

Because when you strive for perfection, you’ll continue to make yourself better and better. In no time, you’ll look into the mirror and see not only a brand new you, but a fully confident new you as well.

-Terry Asher

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