“Don’t get too bulky”! “My body doesn’t respond well to weights!”
There was a time when I was covering this subject on a daily basis. Many gym goers, old and new. The subject of training with “weights” seemed to raise a lot of fear.
Thankfully, this stigma is actually dying an overdue death. It is, however still a fear held by many. It certainly doesn’t help when there are industry personalities seeking to sell their online programs by tapping into that fear.
Let’s fire off some of the facts.
✔️Women produce barely 1/6 of the testosterone that men do. Manliness is all in the hormones 😉
✔️ A widely accepted fact is, once you reach your 30’s onwards, you lose lean muscle tissue. In fact you can expect to lose 6-7kg of muscle between the ages of 30-60! Left unchecked, this process continues to accelerate and is associated with a host of ageing characteristics and a heightened risk of many illnesses.
✔️ 60% of the energy you burn every day is consumed to keep your muscle tissue alive and functioning. Less muscle = less energy consumed.
✔️ “Tone” You may have already guessed, is muscle. The only way to change your shape is to increase the size of muscle. More muscle and less fat, gives you tone.
Muscle = tone and shape
Only 2 Weights sessions per week helped Carolynn completely transform her body shape.
Ok but what if my body shape isn’t the same as others? What if I personally got bigger when I used weights? There are some answers for you.
- Bone structure and length can mean some people carry their body fat better than others. What this means is, they’re carrying much more fat than they realise and don’t have nearly as much muscle as they think. Looking strong doesn’t mean you have muscle. “Shape” isn’t always a foregone conclusion. Weight training can work wonders for these body shapes, as we’ve seen in the gym before.
- The “trade off effect” intensifies. We tend to reward ourselves for exercise or perhaps use it to offset poor choices over the weekend. With weight training being quite intense, this can and often does go to a new level. You’re only burning 300-400 calories in a session so this is a habit that must be controlled if you wish to change your body shape.
- High reps, low weight and no progression isn’t weight training. It’s not FIRE. It’s cardio in disguise. Some cardio is fantastic for results and is essential to achieve a transformation. Too much however, may be detrimental to results. These classes can also develop imbalances in posture and shape.
- The devils in the food detail. Whatever keeps you on track and in control of those little habits, will get you results.
Time to put that myth to the sword once and for all.
That’s why we love lifting and why it can be the closest thing to the fountain of youth! Get stronger to get leaner 😉💪
Andrew Emmett
MP Transformation Specialist
For heaps more information on the science of body transformations, checkout these recommended articles from mpbody.com
What’s the best exercise for fat-loss