A long held belief by woman seeking to lose weight is that weight training will make woman bulky and look like a bodybuilder.
As if it was that easy.
In my many years of experience as a trainer, for most people it’s actually very difficult to add a lot of muscle and be bulky. It doesn’t matter male or female.
Many woman see a female bodybuilder like the Ms Olympia and believe that weight training will make them look like that and as a result will do hours of cardio to lose weight.
Worse still they will avoid protein so that they can’t get too bulky. The education for this sort of thinking I blame on commercial television with exercise equipment that promises to give you that long lean body with weight loss diets that have no scientific basis.
Many of the models in those commercials spend hours in the gym lifting weights. I know because I have seen them compete in bodybuilding contests in figure and bikini categories.
Protein supplements also tend to have muscular men on the container so woman avoid them until they started putting woman on the container and making the colour pink.
The simple idea that woman would become bulky by weight training and eating more protein is just not true.
Many of the larger woman bodybuilders use performance enhancing drugs and train for years with a huge dedication to intense heavy weight training.
For the average female adding 2 to 5 kilos of muscle can take years and will actually result in a leaner more shapely body. Much like those models used
for home exercise equipment.
Adding some muscle will make your metabolic rate faster, make you more functional, improve your shape and improve your fat burning ability.
Like any pursuit, time, dedication and hard work will lead to more results. Yes lifting heavier weights will lead to greater muscle gain over a long period of time. Even in females.
Most people will make the choice not to dedicate themselves to adding more and more muscle mass. Their are also genetic limits to muscle gain especially without performance enhancing drugs.
Rest assured that the majority of females I have trained have lost weight, improved their shape and have become much more confident especially by doing weight training.
In fact some of my female clients have lost many dress sizes without losing a lot of weight, just from the changes in shape.
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