So yeah, it's been a while since I've posted, and I have no decent excuse...suffice it to say that I've just been busy getting into a new routine here in Charlotte, part of which involves waking up on the early side to accommodate a new gym routine, so I'd like to partially blame my blog slacking on being more tired at night. Blah, blah, blah. Oh, that and my amazing mother has been bringing us dinner once a week, so that's one fewer night I have to cook! Yes, she is most definitely the bomb.com, as I like to say.
Anyway, I'm slowly getting back into the saddle with cooking and creating new recipes, so no need to worry that my blogging has come to an end (b/c I know y'all were all keeping yourselves awake at night worrying about that).
But this post has little to do with cooking. Instead, I'm feeling the need to address a topic that comes up time and time again with women and weight lifting. I don't purport to be an expert on anything I write on here, including exercise. I do know a thing or two from personal experience and some schooling on the matter, but not enough to start bossing people around in the gym. What I do know, however, is that lots of women don't want to lift weights for fear of "bulking up." Or whatever ya wanna call it. I presume they're afraid of getting arms like Madonna:
Yeah, I could understand why some people don't dig that look. But hey, whatever floats your boat.
Some women might be afraid they'll get Madonna muscles all over and look like a female body builder. Of course, if these people had any idea what body builders go through (both in terms of exercise and extremely regimented diet), they'd know there's not a chance in hell you can look like that by accident. I've been lifting weights for years, and my arms don't look anything even close to Madonna's...much less a body builder's. (I'm still scarred from when I was a kid and my brothers told me my arm muscles were like mashed potatoes.)
Anywho, the point of this post is to help dispel this common myth that a woman who lifts weights as part of a balanced workout regime will bulk up. There's goo-gobs of online commentary on this, and any certified trainer can give you the same info. Below is an article entitled "Top 10 Reasons Heavy Weights Don't Bulk up the Female Athlete." Again, you can find this type of info in lots of place, but I like how it's organized here. And seems to track most of what I've read and heard on the subject. I've provided a link to the original site at the end of this post.
So read on and then get your booty over to the weights section in the gym. And don't shy away just cuz it's full of grunting dudes getting their lift on. Half of them don't know what they're doing, and the other half will be intimidated by a chick who knows how to pump some iron.
Top 10 Reasons Heavy Weights Don’t Bulk Up the Female Athlete
By Tim Kontos, David Adamson, and Sarah Walls
David Adamson and I were driving to the IPA Nationals this past weekend
talking training (yeah we’re pretty passionate about what we do) when the
subject of training women with heavy weights came up. I’m in my ninth year at
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) as the head strength and conditioning
coach, and David has been in strength and conditioning for three years. This is
a subject we deal with every year regardless of how much training information is
available to the public.
The best way to get information is to go to the source. So we asked Sarah
Walls, another strength and conditioning coach at VCU. Sarah is also a writer
for Muscle and Fitness Hers, a former figure competitor, and a women’s
tri-fitness competitor—not to mention a strong female athlete who isn’t bulked
up. Therefore, she has a great perspective on the subject.
We, being a good team, put our heads together to find a way to combat this
never-ending dilemma. Our way of doing that is through education. And, only one
answer to a question is never enough. If you know your job well, then you know
that there is more than one way to skin a cat. So we came up with the following
list:
- Women do not have nearly as much testosterone as men. In fact,
according to Bill Kreamer in
Essentials of Strength Training and
Conditioning, women have about 15 to 20 times less testosterone than
men. Testosterone is the reason men are men and women are women. After men
hit puberty, they grow facial hair, their voice deepens, and they develop
muscle mass. Because men have more testosterone, they are much more equipped
to gain muscle. Because women do not have very much testosterone in their
bodies, they will never be able to get as big as men.
- The perception that women will bulk up when they begin a strength
training program comes from the chemically-altered women on the covers of
bodybuilding magazines. These “grocery stand models” are most likely
pumped full of some extra juice. This is why they look like men. If you take
the missing link that separates men from women and add it back in, what do
you have? A man!
- For women, toning is what happens when the muscle is developed
through training. This is essentially bodybuilding without
testosterone. Since the testosterone is not present in sufficient amounts,
the muscle will develop, but it won’t gain a large amount of mass. The
“toned” appearance comes from removing the fat that is covering a
well-developed muscle.
- Muscle bulk comes from a high volume of work. The repetition
range that most women would prefer to do (8–20 reps) promotes hypertrophy
(muscle growth). For example, a bodybuilding program will have three
exercises per body part. For the chest, they will do flat bench for three
sets of 12, incline for three sets of 12, and decline bench for three sets
of 12. This adds up to 108 total repetitions. A program geared towards
strength will have one exercise for the chest—flat bench for six sets of
three with progressively heavier weight. This equals 18 total repetitions.
High volume (108 reps) causes considerable muscle damage, which in turn,
results in hypertrophy. The considerably lower volume (18 reps) will build
more strength and cause minimal bulking.
- Heavy weights will promote strength not size. This has been
proven time and time again. When lifting weights over 85 percent, the
primary stress imposed upon the body is placed on the nervous system, not on
the muscles. Therefore, strength will improve by a neurological effect while
not increasing the size of the muscles.
And, according to Zatsiorsky and Kreamer in
Science and
Practice of Strength Training, women need to train with heavy weights
not only to strengthen the muscles but also to cause positive adaptations
in the bones and connective tissues.
6. Bulking up is not an overnight process. Many women think they
will start lifting weights, wake up one morning, and say “Holy sh__! I’m
huge!” This doesn’t happen. The men that you see who have more muscle
than the average person have worked hard for a long time (years) to get
that way. If you bulk up overnight, contact us because we want to do
what you’re doing.
7. What the personal trainer is prescribing is not working. Many
female athletes come into a new program and say they want to do body
weight step-ups, body weight lunges, and leg extensions because it’s
what their personal trainer back home had them do. However, many of these
girls need to look in a mirror and have a reality check because their
trainer’s so-called magical toning exercises are not working. Trainers will hand
out easy workouts and tell people they work because they know that if they make
the program too hard the client will complain. And, if the client is
complaining, there’s a good chance the trainer might lose that
client (a client to a trainer equals money).
8. Bulking up is calorie dependant. This means if you eat more
than you are burning, you will gain weight. If you eat less than you
are burning, you will lose weight. Unfortunately, most female athletes
perceive any weight gain as “bulking up” and do not give attention to the fact
that they are simply getting fatter. As Todd Hamer, a strength and
conditioning coach at George Mason University said, “Squats don’t bulk you up.
It’s the ten beers a night that bulk you up.” This cannot be
emphasized enough.
If you’re a female athlete and training with heavy weights (or not),
you need to watch what you eat. Let’s be real—the main concern that female
athletes have when coming to their coach about gaining weight is not their
performance but aesthetics. If you choose to ignore this fact as a
coach, you will lose your athletes!
9. The freshman 15 is not caused by strength training. It is
physiologically impossible to gain 15 lbs of muscle in only a few weeks
unless you are on performance enhancing drugs. Yes the freshman 15 can
come on in only a few weeks. This becomes more complex when an athlete
comes to a new school, starts a new training program, and also has a
considerable change in her diet (i.e. only eating one or two times per day in
addition to adding 6–8 beers per evening for 2–4 evenings per week).
They gain fat weight, get slower, and then blame the strength
program. Of course, strength training being the underlying cause is the
only reasonable answer for weight gain. The fact that two meals per
day has slowed the athlete’s metabolism down to almost zero and then the
multiple beers added on top of that couldn’t have anything to do with
weight gain...it must be the lifting.
10. Most of the so-called experts are only experts on how to sound like
they know what they are talking about. The people who “educate” female
athletes on training and nutrition have no idea what they’re talking about.
Let’s face it—how many people do you know who claim to “know a thing or two
about lifting and nutrition?” Now, how many people do you know who actually
know what they’re talking about, have lived the life, dieted down to make a
weight class requirement, or got on stage at single digit body fat?
Invariably, these so-called experts are also the people who blame their gut on
poor genetics.
These so-called experts are the reason you see so many women doing sets
of 10 with a weight they could do 20 or 30 times. They are being
told by the experts that this is what it takes to “tone” the muscles.
Instead, they are only wasting their time doing an exercise with a
weight that is making no contribution to the fitness levels or the development
of the muscle.
In case you haven’t figured it out by this point in the article, what is
currently being done in fitness clubs to help female athletes tone their bodies
is not working. It’s not helping these women get toned, and it is definitely not
helping improve athletic performance. Maybe it’s time for a change. Contrary to
the ineffective light weights currently being used, heavy weights offer many
benefits for women including improved body composition, stronger muscles,
decreased injury rate, and stronger bones (which helps prevent osteoporosis).
Let’s try lifting some heavy weights and controlling our diet and watch this
logical, science-based solution make the difference we’ve been looking for.
Tim Kontos is in his ninth year as the strength and conditioning coach for
Virginia Commonwealth University athletes. A certified strength and conditioning
specialist with the National Strength and Conditioning Association, Kontos
designs, implements, and supervises all strength, speed, and agility programs
for all the VCU athletic programs.
David Adamson is in his second year as an assistant strength and
conditioning coach for VCU. He is directly responsible for program design and
implementation for men’s and women’s track and field, women’s cross country, and
field hockey. Prior to coming to VCU, David worked at the University of
Wisconsin-La Crosse, Arizona State University, and Winona State University. In
2003, he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, and in 2006, he
received his masters in sport leadership from VCU.
Sarah Walls is in her first year with the Rams’ strength and conditioning
staff as a graduate assistant working with men’s and women’s soccer, golf, and
men’s cross-country. Graduating magna cum laude, she earned a bachelor’s of
science degree from Virginia Tech in 2003. Since graduation, she has spent time
working at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia in the strength
department. While there, Sarah worked with women’s tennis, men’s tennis, men’s
volleyball, and men’s soccer. At the same time, she also worked for LifeTime
Fitness and helped manage and develop innovative training programs. In addition,
she is a contributing writer for the magazine, Muscle and Fitness HERS.
Elite Fitness Systems strives to be a recognized leader in the strength
training industry by providing the highest quality strength training products
and services while providing the highest level of customer service in the
industry. For the best training equipment, information, and accessories, visit
us at www.EliteFTS.com.
Copyright© 2006 Elite Fitness Systems.
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