Very often you have to deal with young ladies who, for one reason or another, have a very incorrect idea of strength training. More precisely, what resistance training can do to anavar cycle for men them and their bodies. The general picture looks something like this: “As soon as a girl starts touching a barbell, kettlebell or dumbbell, it immediately turns her into a competitive bodybuilder.” This performance scares women away from gyms long before they realize the real benefits of such activities. Therefore, today we will analyze the 10 myths about strength training for women.
Table of Contents
Myth 1: Bodybuilding Makes a Woman Look Masculine
Many trainers are already tired of repeating that this is impossible physiologically. First of all, because the female body produces much less testosterone, which is responsible for male-type muscle growth. In order to become overly muscular and masculine, you will either have to be born with a genetic defect, being the predominance of male chromosomes, or carry out a complete replacement of your hormonal status with synthetic hormone replacement. So, if you are a woman and do not use anabolic steroids, then you will never become masculine.
Myth 2: Strength Training will Make You Massive
Muscles can be made not massive, but shaped, which will have a healthy defined muscle tone. Excess fat provides a bigger figure. Since fat is much lighter than muscle, then having 1 kg of fat instead of muscle, you will become much bulkier and more massive than by building 1 kg of muscle mass.
Myth 3: Aerobic Training is Better than Strength Training
Undoubtedly, aerobic training is very beneficial. It will improve the efficiency of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, speed up metabolism and help to get rid of excess fat. But it does not have the ability to build muscle tissue at all. Therefore, if somewhere you do not have enough mass, aerobics will not help you in this. However, overuse of aerobic activity sometimes leads to muscle sluggishness. Muscle tone is given by the development of those fibers that are responsible for speed-strength qualities and not for endurance. Therefore, aerobic exercise can really improve your appearance in only one way; to help get rid of excess fat, and then, connect power loads.
Myth 4: Can’t Lose Weight Using Strength Training
If we talk about purely strength training, then, yes. But with barbells and dumbbells, you can not only train strength, but also do aerobics. Hardware is just a tool and how you use that tool will determine the end result. With less weight, more intensity and more repetitions, strength training becomes very effective in losing weight.
Myth 5: Muscle Turns to Fat as Soon as You Stop Strength Training
Remember that muscles cannot turn into fat, just as an apple cannot become a pear or an orange. These are completely two tissues of the human body that are completely different in composition and functions.
However, when you stop exercising, the muscles simply shrink because they are not receiving additional stimulus. And fat, if it grows at the same time, is the result of an incorrect approach to organizing the daily diet. More specifically, this increase in body fat is the result of an inactive lifestyle and lack of discipline in terms of nutrition. Therefore, muscles are useless here.
Myth 6: You Need to Exercise a Lot and Often to Improve Your Figure
In fact, to make the figure slim, the muscles elastic and the amount of fat acceptable, it is enough to train no more than 3-4 times a week. Too frequent and strenuous training leads to overtraining. At the same time, a woman, due to her hormonal characteristics, gets tired more easily from strength exercises than from aerobic ones. This stops the growth of muscle tissue and destroys the hopes for a beautiful physique.
A few competent workouts a week are enough. At the same time, each lesson should not exceed the limit of 40-60 minutes. The “less is more” rule should be followed. The word “better” means high-quality concentrated work on the shaping muscle groups and not just mindless jerking of simulators, without a definite idea in the content of the classes.
Myth 7: Barbell is a Men’s Equipment
The anatomy of men and women is not very different. In the gym, to a large extent, there are no “male” and “female” exercises. There are also no “male” and “female” shells. Both exercises and equipment are just tools to improve your body. The barbell will not make a gorilla out of a girl just because she took the free weight dumbbell in her hands and did not sit down on the simulator. Remember, the same exercise or the same equipment can serve completely different purposes.
Myth 8: Exercising on Machines Can Increase Breast Size
Unfortunately, this is not the case. On the contrary, intensive exercises, especially those aimed at releasing fat deposits, will reduce the size of the breast for the simple reason that the female breast is glandular plus adipose tissue. Resistance training is not able to increase the size of the fatty tissue, and therefore the breasts too. However, resistance training can reshape the pectoral muscles over which the breasts lie and give them a very different shape. Well-designed workouts raise the chest, form an even posture and thereby visually improve the shape of the breasts.
Myth 9: You Need to Build Abs to Get Rid of Belly Fat
The process of getting rid of adipose tissue is based on 2 conditions: constant physical activity plus a small calorie deficit (no more than 10% – 15% of the daily diet). Muscle training and fat loss are two different processes. If you create conditions for burning fat, then it will be burned evenly throughout the body. If not, then even the daily 20 approaches to the press will not help, because the body is unlikely to remove its fat in only one area .
Myth 10: You Need to Use a Lot of Bodybuilding Supplements
This is not entirely true. Indeed, nutritional supplements have revolutionized competitive and conditioning bodybuilding technology, but that doesn’t mean you should replace your diet with them. Bodybuilding supplements are supplements and they are great at helping you better meet the challenges you might have in the gym. Their use should be thoughtful and fully correspond to the immediate goal and training regime.
Conclusion
Of course, there are many more myths about strength training for women. But we have tried to cover the most common ones. we hope those who doubted weight training in the gym, will now look a little differently at the process of forming a beautiful figure with the help of “iron”.
Once upon a time we saw a quote that very accurately reflects our thoughts: “I train with iron not to become a stronger sex. I remain weak next to a strong man. Weak, but with a good figure.”
All health and beauty!
