A Perfect Fit: Why heavy weights don't bulk up female athletes
By: Ken Wheeler, Fitness Columnist

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Anonymous user Tue Jan 9, 2007 10:09:48 PST
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0 responses 0 comments It makes perfect sense that women would be concerned about getting bulky from lifting weights.
Unless it was a specific goal — as in bodybuilding for bodybuilding’s sake — most women I have talked with over the years are more concerned about losing inches and firming up. The majority of those women have also expressed concerns about using weights to achieve those goals.
“I don’t want to get bigger.”
“I don’t want big muscles.”
“I don’t want to look like ‘those’ women in bodybuilding magazines.”
All legitimate comments, but all unfounded worries.
I ran across a great article recently, “Top 10 Reasons Heavy Weights Don’t Bulk Up the Female Athlete,” by fitness experts Tim Kontos, David Adamson and Sarah Walls that I’d like to share with Southwest Voice readers. The following points are taken from the article.
1. Women do not have nearly as much testosterone as men. According to some sources, women have about 15 to 20 times less testosterone than men. Without testosterone, no big muscles — simple biology.
2. The perception that women will bulk up when they begin a strength program comes from pictures of chemically-altered women on the covers of certain magazines.
3. For women, toning is what happens when muscle is developed through training. This is essentially bodybuilding without testosterone. Without sufficient amounts of testosterone, muscle will develop but without the mass. The resulting “toned” look is the goal.
4. Muscle bulk comes from high-volume training. In other words, lots of reps. For example, you might do three or four different movements for your chest consisting of eight to 15 reps per set. That adds up to lots of repetitions (over 100 in some cases), which in turn adds up to a lot of “damage,” or muscle breakdown, which in turn results in hypertrophy, or mass. On the other hand, heavier sets for less reps will build more strength and minimal bulking (see next point).
5. Heavy weights primarily promote strength, not size. This has been proven time and time again. When training with weights over 85 percent of one rep max, the primary stress is on the central nervous system, not on muscles themselves. Therefore, strength will improve through a neurological effect while not increasing the size of the muscle.
According to Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky and William J. Kreamer in their book “Science and Practice of Strength Training,” women need to train with heavy weights not only to strengthen the muscles but also to cause positive adaptations in the bones and connective tissues.
6. Bulking up is not an overnight process. You are not going to wake up the day after a heavy training session, look in the mirror at your naked self and see a mass of bulging muscles. It has taken years for people with huge builds to get that way, and a large number (especially women) have had chemical assistance.
7. The bulking process is calorie dependent. If you are eating more than you are burning, you will bulk up. If you eat less than you are burning, you will lose weight. It doesn’t matter if you lift light or heavy, your weight still depends on what and how much you eat. Simple, but often ignored.
8. Sometimes what a personal trainer is prescribing doesn’t work. I may hurt a few egos and lose a friend or two over this one, but I’m only the messenger here. I just happen to agree with the message. Some trainers hand out easy workouts and tell people they work because they know if a program is too hard the client will complain. If a client complains, there’s a chance the trainer might lose the client. Plus, designing and teaching a program of heavy training requires a lot more work on the part of the trainer. Trainers are just people. Some are reputable, some are not, and some are still learning the benefits of training women with heavy weights.
9. Closely related to No. 8, many of the so-called experts are only experts on how to sound like they know what they are talking about. These “experts” are the reason you see so many women doing sets of 10 with a level of weight they could do 20 or 30 times. They are being told that is what they need to do to “firm and tone.” They will continue to be told this week after week without progress, or after hitting a sticking point. No intensity increase, no weight increase, no rotation of exercises — no results.
10. The freshman 15 is not caused by strength training. It is physiologically impossible to gain 15 pounds of muscle in only a few weeks unless you are on performance-enhancing drugs. Yes, the freshman 15 can come on in only a few weeks. This becomes more complex when an athlete comes to a new school, starts a new training program, and also has a considerable change in diet (i.e. only eating one or two times per day in addition to adding six to eight beers per evening for two to four evenings per week). They gain fat weight, get slower, and then blame the strength program. Of course, strength training being the underlying cause is the only reasonable answer for weight gain. The fact that two meals per day has slowed the athlete’s metabolism down to almost zero and then multiple beers added on top of that couldn’t have anything to do with weight gain. It must be the lifting.
There you have it: 10 reasons why women don’t have to worry about bulking up by lifting heavy weights. Still, nothing in fitness training is true for everyone, and if you are one of those women who bulks up using heavier weights, re-read No. 6 and relax. Just make a change when and if you need to. In the meantime, stay with the program — only those who quit will fail.