If I received a ten dollar bill every time a woman said something to the effect of " but I don't want to get bulky I just wanna get toned" I would be capable of purchasing an OPEC nation. Frankly, I am sick of hearing that phrase. I have no idea where women get the idea that if they touch a barbell that suddenly they scale up to burly man status. How ridiculous. It leads me to believe one of two things, either all the popular sources of information on weight training have failed to educate woman on how the growth mechanism works in the human body OR that people are just to lazy to do even the most remedial amounts of research and would rather that someone just hand them the magic solution to all their problems. Honestly, if it is the latter then there is a distinct lack of discipline and a person that is using this philosophy will never stick to a regimen regardless of how effective it is. However, on the off chance that there is someone that simply does not know where to look and is a dedicated soul I will write this out to its completion so that one may make their own decisions about how to further themselves.
So why don't women get big on weights? Well there is a fundamental difference between men and women that it would seem no one considers when they start flapping their gums about getting "bulky". Any ideas? If you said " why yes Thinking Dragon one of the fundamental differences between men and women is the hormone Testosterone" then you are a winner, please throw a party in honor of your incredible grasp of the obvious. If you made some reference to the reproductive organs and titled me with some profanity, then then stay in school you might still make something out of yourself. The big T is the hormone that makes men grow large amounts of hair and muscle, without large amounts you won't get far. This fact is illustrated by the huge steroid blackmarket that exists world wide. Androgenic steroids are nothing but fancy testosterone compounds that break down into Test after a pass through the liver. Conclusion: if you are a woman and don't want the "bulk" from weight training, don't use steroids. Sound simple enough? Good. Moving on.
If you find yourself asking "but Thinking Dragon what about all natural body builders who never use steroids and still get large." Well, panda cub, I have yet to see a truly large bodybuilder that NEVER touched a steroid but that is entirely a different matter. The next factor you have to consider is protein. I am sure that you have probably heard in the media all the stuff about protein but I would lay money that if you have never been educated just how much protein it actually takes to build a body that people tremble to look at. The recommendation for muscle growth is 1.5 to 2 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass a day. That means that if you estimate your lean mass( I use BMI) as 100 pounds then you would have consume 150 to 200 grams a day everyday. I hope you like eggs muscle head. The average egg has about 6 grams of the good stuff and chicken breasts average about 20. Look at the labels of what you eat now and add together how much protein you consume in one day, you will be surprised at just how little you actually eat in a given day when compared to these numbers. I like to put it like this, large buildings take lots of building material to construct as do large muscles. If you don't want a large building you don't keep heaping up the building supplies you buy just enough to get he job done same is true for this. How much is that? Depends on the person and their blood type but no more than your lean mass in grams and no less than 70 percent of your lean mass a day. If you are going to be using weights you will still need some extra protein to help you recover but not the tons you would need to actually increase muscle size. Any questions?
The last thing I want to address is volume. ARE YOU LOUD ENOUGH!?..... Just kidding. Volume is a term used to denote not just the number of reps or amount of weight but the combination of the two using this equation: Volume= weight on bar x the number of total reps. The larger the volume the large the muscle. Easy enough? Good, I knew you were a sharp lot.
In conclusion, unless you are going to start shooting Dianabol, eating 3000 calories or more a day and lifting for two hours a session, I don't really think that you need to worry about "bulk". I will see you in the next post when I will write about muscle tone, strength and how one is necessary to get he other. Keep thinking.
