• Girls are terrified of putting on bulky muscle by lifting weights.
• This fear is understandable given the images and historical association with weight lifting.
• If you want to gain muscle mass, you need to eat!
• A great bum isn’t formed by lucky genetic distribution of muscle and fat! Weightlifting allows you to change your genetic makeup!

Girls are often told that they’re ignorant for thinking that lifting weights will make them bulky, but given the fact that all top level male sportsmen who need to be muscle bound do lift weights, its not such a stupid assumption.

So lets deal with these concerns and hopefully ease some of them:

Firstly, there is NOTHING wrong with asking questions. It’s a really good idea to be comfortable with the exercise programme you’re starting before diving in headfirst.

Its true that rugby players lift weights to get bigger and stronger. You can’t develop these muscles without lifting weight. There are, however, three very important things that girls need to understand about this:

1 – In order to put on size, you have to follow a very specific programme. It’s called ‘hypertrophy’, and in involves very specific repetition and set structures. Traditionally, it will involve 8-10 sets of 8-12 repetitions at around 70% of your one rep max. WE WILL NEVER EVER MAKE YOU DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS!

2 – If you want to put on size, you have to EAT! If you want to get bigger, you have to eat an excess of carbohydrates – usually 3-7 grams of carbs per kilogram of bodyweight. (NOTE: please don’t jump down my throat about exceptions to rules; this is piece that is designed to help the average girl understand how things work.)

3 – Testosterone. You need buckets of it to grow without feeding your muscles with protein and carbs. We promise you that you aren’t the one in a billion exception to the rule – women simply don’t possess enough testosterone to suddenly sprout muscle from nowhere.

To sum up the above, if you want to put on size you have to follow a hypertrophy programme for at least 8 weeks while eating an excess of carbohydrates.

Finally, the weight training. If you want to have toned legs and arms with a toned bum and stomach, you NEED to lift weight. The girls who have had the best aesthetic and athletic gains in our gym are the ones who have become strong. It takes time – but you need to dispel the fear of lifting weights.

SO HOW DO YOU DO THIS?

We understand that it’s scary holding a barbell for the first time. We blame commercial gyms for that though, because they usually only have four of them and they’re almost always occupied by men. It’s that scary corner of the gym where musclebound men are lifting large amount of weight using some sort of rack.

But let us help. We genuinely care. We want so badly to help women see what ACTUALLY works. Getting stronger using very basic and safe movements like the squat and deadlift will result in you having a firmer and stronger body – and we teach you these movements before starting with us.

If you’re going to lift weight on your own, please make sure you do so with the correct form. The final piece of the puzzle is lift weight with FOCUS and INTENSITY. Find the environment which allows you to do this, and take ownership of your body

What a beautiful thing it is to be a strong woman! You will burn more fat lifting weights while also saving yourself hours of boring time on a treadmill or other cardio machine. Come and talk to us about any concerns you may have, or drop us an email at info@roarkgyms.com

Not a member yet?