Swimming cycling jumping-up-and-down classes will help you get fit to a certain extent

“Swimming, cycling, jumping-up-and-down classes will help you get fit to a certain extent, but by doing resistance exercises you lose fat quickly and become very healthy. “It’s a myth that you have to spend hours and hours in the gym,” she explains. “All the top athletes use weights as part of their training programmes.” Now she spends 45 minutes to an hour, four or five times a week, on weight training, working on a different body part in each session; legs one day, back one day, shoulders one day. “I used to do judo and I started to use weights to supplement my training,” she says.

Andrulla Blanchette runs a training gym, Dowe Dynamics in north London, and has built herself up to competition standard (to see how far you can take it, check out her website, www.andrulla ). “Going to a usual gym is a social thing, people spend a lot of time chatting, but the women here are dedicated to getting in shape,” she says.Andrulla has been working out for 14 years. “Weight training is fantastic for bone health,” she says.Weight-lifting can become a major hobby. And, aesthetics aside, she points out that there is a very specific woman-friendly health benefit to weight-bearing exercise: it is good for the bones and can stave off osteoporosis.

It’s a very positive look compared to that victim-waif image that was so big a few years ago. Feeling stronger can increase your confidence and it’s good to see women looking vital and empowered.”Developing some muscle, adds Mary Comber, is the best way to control body-weight – muscle takes more calories than fat to maintain, so the more muscle you have the more calories you burn. Now it’s body conditioning and body pump classes, with a lot more women using weights.”Women have tended to avoid muscle-building exercises in the past, she says, because too much muscle has traditionally been seen as unfeminine – but defined muscle tone is the look of the moment. “You see it on actresses and models – look at Madonna and the girls from Friends. “Before, a lot of women used to stick to step classes, aerobics, bums-and-tums classes.