More women trying strength training for toning up

• Getting hurt is a legitimate concern, but proper training and form will diminish the risk, and well-developed muscles generally protect your body from injury.
• Having more lean muscle mass helps burn calories, so while the scale may not budge (it may actually climb) losing fat means losing inches.
• Ravenholt works with Seattle personal trainer Nancy Jerominski, who is both passionate about the subject of strength-training and critical of the media's body-beautiful obsession.
• She acknowledges the importance of assessing a client's goals, limitations and health concerns, but maintains that, done correctly, anyone can benefit from weight training.
• "I think it is deeply etched into our cultural state of mind that strong women are somehow manly --- unless you are some kind of all-star athlete," says Jerominski, who credits weight training with helping her overcome a series of personal problems.
• Mandy Cordova, a personal trainer at the Seattle Athletic Club at Northgate, fuses weights and aerobics in a popular class.
• The high-energy Cordova believes that adding resistance while in an aerobic state incorporates immediate fat burning with the long-term benefit of lean-muscle mass and strength.
• She started lifting weights when she was 14 and is still in tremendous shape in her 40s.
• Cordova says some people just don't work hard enough in the gym and, worse, they never learned the proper techniques and fundamentals.
• "The problem with people who may have lifted weights in high school and are now in their 40s or 50s is they tend to forget their bodies have changed!"
• Elderly women should approach weights cautiously, but trainer Laura Martin says maintaining strength helps fight age-related loss of muscle mass and bone density, and proper, targeted work, say on quads and glutes, can help with daily living activities.