Will Weight Training Make Me ‘Bulky’?
Most women have undoubtedly been told at one point in their life ‘don’t lift weights, they’ll make you bulky!’ In actual fact, we should all be participating in at least 2 strength training sessions per week, and we can do it without the fear of becoming ‘too bulky!’ Weight training will likely lead to some muscle growth in order to increase our strength, but creating significant amounts of muscle ‘bulk’ is actually really quite difficult and not something that is going to happen accidentally (unless you modify your training and lifestyle to specifically meet this goal).
Many studies in females have found that when asked why they were reluctant to participate in weight training, the fear of ‘getting too bulky’ was their major barrier. This idea is outdated because with the research that we have access to today, we know that strength training is essential for good health and healthy ageing. This gender ideal from the literature that states that women shouldn’t be bulky also states that they should lift lighter weights to ‘tone up’ and men should lift heavier weights to ‘get buff’. It’s easy to get caught up in this ideal and conform because for many of us, it’s what we’ve grown up hearing! It’s time that we started looking past this idea, and focus on what the facts are surrounding exercise.
The concept of ‘toning up’ is really just increasing muscle size and strength, and decreasing body fat percentage so that we can see those muscles. Toning up does NOT necessarily mean lifting light weights for many repetitions! In order to increase muscle strength we need to implement progressive overload. This means gradually progressing the intensity of our exercise to ensure that we are not plateauing. Our body must receive sufficient stimulus in order to keep increasing strength and reaping the important physiological benefits. By continuing to lift the same light weight for the same amount of repetitions with no progression, we unfortunately aren’t giving our body this stimulus. In order to increase muscle mass and strength we must implement progressive overload and continue challenging our body.
So why should we aim to increase muscle mass/ strength?
Increasing muscle mass has the benefits of increasing/ maintaining bone density, improving metabolism, improving insulin sensitivity and good cholesterol, and improving cognition and self-esteem. It also helps to decrease body fat percentage, risk of falls, blood pressure and levels of depression. It is also an essential part of healthy ageing!
If our goal is to ‘tone up’ (I.e. define our muscles a bit more and decrease our body fat percentage), it’s clear that strength training and lifting weights that are sufficiently challenging is the way to do it!
Fear of not completing exercises correctly is extremely common and an identified barrier for females to starting strength training, but don’t let it stop you.
Our Exercise Physiologists can help educate you on how to exercise safely and correctly.
Keely MacLean