Amped Training

Women and the Mythology of Strength Training

First, we need to understand exactly what goes into developing the physique. At heart, it's two key things: the development of the musculature, and the removal of subcutaneous fat stores.

If you're an uninitiated woman, you just read “development of the musculature” and ran straight to the treadmill because for years you've been bombarded with the idea of toning with light weights so you don't get bulky.

Here's where a little science comes in handy. Men get large because they have about ten times more testosterone in their bodies than women do. It just so happens that the particular type of muscle fibers that are the most susceptible to massive growth are also the ones that are most responsive to testosterone and other androgens.

What this means is that while women can grow muscles to an extent, without taking androgenic (male) drugs they won't experience massive hypertrophy (muscle growth). That huge bodybuilder girl you saw in a magazine? Her body contains more androgenic chemicals than (at least) 4-5 average men, and is likely more receptive to them on top of that. Unless that applies to you, you just aren't going to become a huge muscle-bound beast.

We know, at least in terms of what to do in the gym, what it takes to develop the muscle. It's pretty simple really; the use of progressively heavier weights that are above the minimum threshold required to stimulate growth. The typically assigned optimal range is 60% to 80% of your single-rep maximum in an exercise. This has been evaluated and re-evaluated to death in both the research and in real-world gym results.

In practice, this means you'll be using anywhere from one rep to 20 reps, averaging somewhere in the 4-12 range depending on personal responses, preferences, and exercise choices. It also means that over some time frame, you'll be working to add working weight to those exercises. It is this progressive overload that is the ultimate determinant of muscular development.

Since it is muscle that gives the body its look and shape, it is muscle that you'll need to attain a “lean and sexy” look, as so many have taken to calling it.

So women have different goals? From the look of things so far, women have the same goals. They need to develop muscle in an efficient manner; the physiological realities of the female body preclude “getting bulky”.

Some have suggested that exercise selection plays a role. It does, but not as some would have you believe. What is required is a selection of basic barbell and bodyweight exercises that are practically universal for every goal, and a pool of assistance exercises that can be added into a workout for the sake of variety.

In other words, what you want is to have the various muscle groups of the body stimulated with your workout.

The basic exercises will vary according to who you ask, but since you're asking me, my list is the squat, the deadlift, the overhead press, the bench press, and the barbell row. Assistance lifts in this instance would include things like pullups (using varied grips), back raises/hip extensions, lunges and other forms of single-leg training, and whatever mess you feel you need to do for your arms. Arms are a vanity thing for most people, so adding in a little work for completeness won't hurt anything.

This list isn't comprehensive. It covers basic movement patterns, but as far as variations on the exercises, things like grip, implement used (barbell, dumbbell, whatever), range of motion, stuff like that really isn't that critical so long as the movement patterns are accounted for. Some degree of variety here is a good thing, so don't get caught up in the details.

This brings me back to the original point. If you're using major exercises that cover every muscle in the body, where are you going to develop weak points? Where are you going to “overdevelop” any single muscle group?

Imbalances occur in the kids you always see at the gym doing 30 sets of bench press and 30 sets of curls. They might have a big chest, shoulders, and arms (most likely not), but nothing else is developed. On a woman, that same sort of syndrome exists in terms of working the legs/butt/abs, and in some cases you might see imbalances occur.

But in a balanced routine? You start to see the fallacy of the logic.

This isn't to say you never ever need to do any bodypart-specific exercises, or never need to change your larger exercises. These are still useful strategies. The take home here is that this should not be the focus of your training. This is considered accessory work, something to add on to your foundational training. Your physique is built by getting stronger in the basics.

The key point to remember is that the body doesn't like imbalances, and ultimately how you end up looking is going to be determined by your genetics. Even drugs can only manipulate physiology so much when compared to what genetics will determine.

So really, the outcome of “looking good” isn't so much a factor of training in a certain fashion; you're not going to shape your muscles to any significant degree (while this isn't entirely true, but unless you're a very advanced lifter with a lot of experience, it's not something you need concern yourself with).

What it boils down to is the proper use of tools to 1) build and maintain muscle across the body with a balanced routine and 2) drop body fat using a combination of nutritional and exercise strategies. In terms of training for physique goals, that's all you're doing. How you end up once you've built muscle and gotten lean is determined by the genes you inherited.