I think this is a great question and an important one to ask. If you are impatient and don’t want to read the post, the answer is no.
People under thirty all grew up in an environment where weight training for both men and women are accepted as one of the best ways to change your body, prevent injuries and improve sports performance. They take it for granted that this is something they should do.
I train people 40-70 years old and many of my clients are women who come from a different mindset. The era we grow up in can have positive benefits shape our lives but we can also have negative ones. I tend to write a lot of stories about women becoming empowered through strength because I see how it changes them for the better.
Example: Here is a picture of Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon in 1967. In the picture the race director is attempting to pull her off the course because women weren’t allowed to run long distances. It was deemed dangerous because the repeated impact would cause their uterus to fall out. No I am not making this up.
That wasn’t all that long ago. Today many of the best ultra runners are women and as far as I know there haven’t been any uteruses found on the trails.
My point is that running for women is accepted as the norm in 2019 and lifting weights should be too. Not multi-colored dumbbells but real weights.
It is an absolute travesty that mainstream media took so long to recognize this. How many people have diseases like osteoporosis that could have been prevented with a little knowledge. Back in the day we all knew women weren’t going to get “bulky” or “musclebound”.
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Women and Hormones
Men and women have the same hormones but in different ratios. If you want to build muscle you need a lot of testosterone which guys have in their teens and twenties. Women have more estrogen which helps with fat storage. From a biological perspective this makes perfect sense. Men had to have muscles to protect the tribe and women needed to reproduce to make more members of the tribe. Up until a hundred years ago a plump women was seen as healthy and thin women were sickly and malnourished.
Times are different now but we have the same biology. This is a major reason why women can’t create as much muscle as men.
I think what really freaked out the general population was the introduction of bodybuilding. All of a sudden the average woman saw women bodybuilders with veins, deep voices, mustaches and massive orange bodies walking around and they didn’t know what to make of it. All they knew was they didn’t want to be like that. The connection was made that bodybuilders lifted heavy weights, therefore the average woman would look like that if they did the same thing.
I can see the logic except for the huge muscle size wasn’t from lifting weights. It was from taking steroids and lifting weights. Steroids that gave women more testosterone and reduced estrogen levels. In effect, they were taking hormones to become more like a man. Hence the deep voice, facial hair acne.
Lifting weights will not make you bulky or unfeminine. Look at it this way, the average guy can’t get big muscles and they are trying. The average person just can’t get that big without a lot of work and sometimes a little extra chemical help.
But looking bulky isn’t about building muscle.
So what about bulking up?
Bulking up is a term that gets confused with muscle building. They are two different things. If you lift weights with moderate to heavy weights you will build muscle. Generally men will build a lot more muscle than women. If you have layers of fat, you won’t see the muscle but you will appear bigger. This is bulking up. I see why this terrifies some people. The excess fat covers up the muscle and gives a person a blocky appearance.
Guys used to do this on purpose. The theory is that you need to have enough protein and calories in your body at all times to maximize muscle growth. After you build the muscle you can diet and lose the fat while trying to keep the muscle. This style of training has gone out of favor but it certainly made people bigger.
If you are concerned about bulking up, the issue isn’t with the training. It is an eating issue. Eat too much and you will put a layer of fat between the muscle and skin. Keep your eating at the correct level and you will grow muscle and burn body fat at the same time revealing a more desirable appearance.
Does that make sense?
The Bottom Line
- Lifting moderate to heavy weights will not make you bulky.
- A high body fat percentage will make you look bulky.
- Lifting weights will help burn body fat and add muscle if you eat the right stuff in the right amount.
- Light weights don’t burn a lot of calories and they don’t provide enough stimulation to grow muscle. So it is basically a useless way to workout.
- Go and run a marathon. Your uterus will not fall out. ( I just had to throw that one in).
