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Bulking Up": Is This Really A Problem For Women?

By Shondelle Solomon-Miles

If I had one dollar for every time I asked a woman why she doesn’t weight train, and she responded, “Because I don’t want to get bulky,” I’d probably have enough money in the bank to finance my two-year-old son’s college education. The fear of a masculine, muscle bound physique is the most prevalent myth regarding women and weight training.

This is partly because weight training has historically been a male dominated activity. Fortunately, times have changed and more women are beginning to explore weight training as a means to improve and strengthen their bodies.

Ladies, please don’t be fooled by the women you see on the covers of muscle magazines or prancing around on stage on ESPN or even, your local gym. Lifting weights three times a week for 30 to 45 minutes is not equivalent to eating well over 3,500 calories a day and spending 6 hours a day at the gym after you’ve pumped yourself up with anabolic steroids, as many of these “diesel” women do.

The muscle bound women that you see roaming around the gym dedicate their lives to weight training and getting as big and buff as humanly possible.

It’s very, very difficult for women to bulk up or produce Arnold Schwarzenegger-sized muscles by incorporating resistance training into their exercise program. This is because women don’t produce enough testosterone, which is the hormone largely responsible for one’s ability to “bulk up”.

For some reason, these masculine, muscular women are the ones we tend to identify with lifting weights. We never seem to notice the lean, defined, slender women who also lift weights yet are still able to maintain their femininity.

This “fear of bulk” mentality may be a result of genuine ignorance or perhaps it’s just an excuse for preventing muscle soreness and having to sweat too hard. Whatever the reason, it’s a belief that bears no truth. In fact, women should worry more about not having enough muscle, rather than too much.

If you’re concerned about bulking up, consider this: muscle is denser than fat and takes up significantly less space than fat. This means that if you replace the fat on your butt with the same weight in muscle, your butt will look firmer, smaller and shapelier.

Your body’s composition, your percentage of fat to your percentage of muscle determines how you look. Let’s say you have two people standing side by side who each weigh 170 pounds. One person’s body fat is 35% and the other person’s is 15%. I can assure you without an ounce of doubt, that the person with 15% body fat will have a more defined, lean, and slender physique than the person with 35% body fat, even though the scale says they weigh the same.

This is why using the scale as your primary means of measuring progress is misleading. The scale doesn’t differentiate between fat and lean muscle.

The bottom line ladies, is that you’ll not bulk up by lifting weights. Any woman who’s interested in losing fat, sculpting her body and transforming her physique must weight train and in fact, it should make up a significant portion of your exercise regimen.

About the Author:

Shondelle Solomon-Miles is the owner of Synergize Training Studios in Hollywood, FL. She is also the author of The Ultimate Fat Loss Guide. Her website is www.Synergizeweightloss.com