Unrelatable Extremes
For one reason or another weights and women never seem to go together. When they do they are always advertised to us as one of two extremes. The vascular, pumped up female bodybuilder who competes on stage or the extremely thin model type who refuses to lift above 2kg as she will bulk up if she does.
Unfortunately neither relate to the real world. The female body builder lives and breathes weight training, training multiple times a day and on an extremely strict nutrition and supplement regime. Her Friday nights are spent prepping food and thinking about her next session. Good for her. However, totally un-relatable to you.
At the other end of the spectrum of the thin model type whose genetics dictate the way she looks regardless of what she does anyway. Her diet of 500 calories or 2000 calories a day will not matter either way. She can do any type of training and she will look the same. Annoying, but true.
Another unfortunate fact is that both ends of the spectrum will have disordered eating with food with either extreme calorie restriction being one or bingeing habits being the other.
So what about the people who are in the middle who want to get into better shape than they are now? What is the best way to do it? Cardio? Dance classes? Weight training? Swimming?
Well the truth is, all of them, but I would like to focus on the weight training part as its something I often get asked and would like to explain how it actually works.
When I have women start training with me, it is usually one of the first conversations I have. I get a lot of comments such as " I do not want to bulk up, so what do we do?", "I bulk up really easily when I lift weights", "I only like running and classes as weights are scary" or "I am terrified of weights because I don't want to look like one of those bodybuilders!".
These are great comments actually as they help me understand whats happening with my clients and when they don't understand whats happening with their bodies it can certainly look that way. .
So to educate you on bulking
When women lift weights, they tend to lift lighter weights with higher reps until they get a burn. This encourages excessive blood flow to that body part and causes a swell in the muscle. This is great as it causes the belly of the muscle to tear and as a result of training, repair itself and grow.
What is scary is that most of the women lifting weights, will be carrying a little or a lot of body fat on certain body parts. This "pump" makes the muscles look chunky and bulky rather that slender and toned especially after a workout. This is what gives women the impression that they have massively bulked up after a couple of sessions.
The truth is they actually have slender and ,now becoming, toned muscles under the subcutaneous body fat. They just have to let the training and diet work its magic until the body fat drops enough to show off their hard work.
I would also like to add, that hormonally men are more predisposed to put on muscle and spend a large portion of time in the gym trying to do it, which I can tell you from experience is bloody hard work! If there was a trainer out there who could bulk women up by putting 10kg of muscle on a women is 6 weeks they would be extremely rich and famous.
When it comes to lifting heavy weights, it has the opposite effect to bulking. The lighter weights and high reps causes more swelling. Heavier lifting trains the nervous system and actually change the composition of the muscle fibres themselves. They become denser, not bigger. When I say dense I mean harder looking and more toned.
The benefits weight training has for women's movement, posture, aesthetics and sense of well being is huge!
So the takeaways are...
1- Lifting heavy gives women a stronger more toned looking aesthetic.
2- Creating a burn and subsequently a pump will actually benefit women in the long term as they are sculpting their muscles, but just need to stay patient enough to benefit from this later on.
3- The media presents us with extremes, neither of which is relatable or realistic for most women training
4- For every 1Lb of muscle you put on, you will burn an extra 50 calories doing nothing.
5- Weight training is the fastest and best way to sculpt and body and help people lose body fat. Combining this with cardio at the right times is also very effective, but should be used as a tool later on.
Yours in Health
Patrick Fallis