When women start strength training, almost every development in their fitness level is somehow comparable. If you then use the scales as an indicator of your own training success , it’s your own fault. It is probably the worst possible instrument that allows a correct conclusion to any training progress. Why? Well, the training progress doesn’t behave the way you would like it to.
Most women start training with the goal of “burning local fat”. As soon as you have realized that hours of sessions on the cross trainer, stepper or treadmill do not lead to success and that you should rather combine cardio training and strength training, the first real training successes come.
However, the (useless) scales rise again and again when climbing again. Logical. As a beginner, you gain a lot more muscle than you can burn fat. At least the water content of the muscle mass is much higher, which means a higher absolute weight. In addition, through a change in diet and progressive training, more glycogen and creatine can be stored in your muscles, which implies (deliberate) water retention in a woman’s muscles and can thus ensure a significant gain in weight, while the actual fat still blesses the temporal.
But now at the latest, when the first blazers, pants and jackets no longer fit as they did before strength training, almost all girls ask themselves: How much muscle can women build?
Why women don’t have to be afraid of mountains of muscles
“If I train like a man, then surely I look like a man too !?”
“Muscle building training makes my muscles grow so much that I will soon no longer look feminine enough …”
“When I do strength training, I look like one of those bodybuilders without breasts and with an extremely defined six pack …”
SERIOUSLY: THAT’S BULLSHIT !?
As you can see, I quickly drift into emotional regions when it comes to strength training for women. But that is primarily because we are bombarded with countless questions about this topic every day!
That wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the suggestion on every corner of the Internet, television, radio or in various print media that you can do weight loss drinks, relaxed training sessions on vibration machines (no, not the ones you are thinking of now) or XY-weeks-tummy-legs-butt-courses to achieve your absolute hammer bikini beach dream figure.
Your ignorance will be exploited, you will be cashed in, you will starve yourself with torture-like diet methods that international intelligence services would be proud of, sometimes into depression and then end up exactly where you started. You could have avoided the whole drama.
All you have to do is complete targeted strength training, understand the important basics of training, physiology and nutrition and you will achieve your goals. Assuming the necessary discipline and a bit of ambition. But if you weren’t on this page, if you didn’t want to change something about yourself.
The fitness industry’s sales systems are very sophisticated and work extremely well, especially for women. Why? Because they are based on your greatest fear: You are afraid of not looking feminine anymore!
If all women knew that you just had to do adequate strength training and a training-goal-oriented diet in order to achieve your personal dream body, the big pharmaceutical and fitness companies would be missing millions of euros in sales.
It’s a lot easier to make yourself believe that you should never train like a man if you want to stay a woman. Or?
Why can’t women build as much muscle as men?
As we have already mentioned in many other articles about muscle building in women, the steroid hormone testosterone has the greatest influence on growth processes in men and women. Many also call it the “male sex hormone”.
Up to adolescence, the testosterone level in boys and girls is at a similar level, which is why the relative muscle strength at this age is also comparable. The difference in testosterone levels in men and women only increases exponentially with the hormonal surge that occurs with puberty. While the increase in testosterone levels in girls between the ages of 14-15 is minimal, in boys an increase of around 10 times the amount can be observed, which continues until the end of puberty. From this point on, strength and muscle mass diverge considerably between men and women.
This natural testosterone deficiency persists with age and makes it impossible for women to gain muscle growth comparable to men. If you don’t use anabolic steroids as a woman, you can’t build massive mountains of muscle either !?
How do I train properly as a woman?
Since you now know that your natural muscle growth is very limited due to hormonal or genetic differences to men, you no longer have to worry that you will build massive mountains of muscle as a woman through regular and intensive strength training.
So if you want to achieve really impressive and visible training success , you can’t avoid strength training. It doesn’t matter whether you want to tighten your buttocks, legs or back or want to lose weight on your stomach, hips or legs – it all starts with targeted strength training. If you have already gained a lot of experience and are familiar with the fundamental basics of muscle building training, you can download one of our free training plans for women directly and start your training.
If you need help and support with training and have not yet mastered the essential basics of training, nutrition and physiology of women, you can use our hypertrophy guide for women to help! This article is a small excerpt from the guide.
