Posted on Jan 02, 2012 | Comments 0
Female bodybuilding in the earlier times is only for lesbians or for people who do it for a living. Little is known that female bodybuilding is one of the secrets to achieving a sexy body that many envy and desire. Gone are those days because you can have that sexy body by working out and working hard with your muscles.
In female bodybuilding there are common myths why a lot of women wouldn’t dare explore this activity and here are some of them.
Common Myths about Female Bodybuilding
1. “Female bodybuilding will make me bulky and manly like Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
The truth is females will not grow as big and bulky like men do because they only have a small fraction of testosterone levels compared with men.
Testosterone is responsible in making huge muscle mass increase in men when they lift weights, in females the real reason why they grow big and bulky like those in female bodybuilding competitions is because they are most likely to be on exogenous testosterone injections and anabolic steroids, which you have no need for.
2. “Doing more cardio workout and several repetitions instead of increasing weights will not build big and bulky muscles.”
Truth is doing more reps with lighter weights will not have any benefits in building muscle mass; rather it strengthens your endurance. You have to increase the weights and challenge yourself if you want to build lean muscles. Here’s a general overview of what rep variations can do:
- 1 to 5 repetitions build strength
- 6 to 12 repetitions build muscle mass
- 12 and above repetitions build endurance
Note: In following this data you also have to take into consideration the weight you are using.
3. Men’s training and diet program is totally different in female bodybuilding.
Female bodybuilding program is much like the program used in men; they only differ with the weights because men have more muscles so they need more weight to challenge and build them up. In diet, men and women have similar metabolism which makes diet components the same.
The difference is that women burn a greater ratio of fat to carbs than men. Also, the caloric requirements are different since women have lesser muscles they need less caloric intake than men.
4. Women’s diet in bodybuilding is different from men’s diet; recommendation is to have more yogurt and banana for breakfast.
There is nothing wrong with banana and yogurt for breakfast, but the problem is – if the diet is composed of that alone it lacks the essential fats and protein needed to build muscles.
5. Female bodybuilding will decrease a woman’s breast size.
Female breasts are made up of adipose fats which are genetically defined and in weight lifting the objective is to lose excess body fats in problem areas only. In the breast area the objective is to develop the underlying muscles to add more curves instead of losing too much body fat.
6. Female bodybuilding when stopped suddenly will turn muscles into body fat making her grow bigger.
This is an absolute mistake because muscles and fats are totally different structures that cannot be interchanged and one cannot take the place of the other. The only thing that makes a woman bigger when she stops is the fact that her calories are not burned anymore and are stored up as excess body fats.
7. Muscles weigh more than fats so a female bodybuilder will be heavier and bigger.
Wrong, one pound of muscle will weigh the same as one pound of fat. However, a pound of muscle will occupy less space than a pound of fat because it is denser. The truth is a female bodybuilder will develop leaner muscles that are more toned, tighter and sexier, which will emphasize more her curves.
Effective Exercises That Focus On The Right Curves In Female Bodybuilding
After correcting the myths and learning of the facts, you are now ready to get on with your female bodybuilding program.
It is true that machines can help stimulate and build more muscles, but the traditional weights can do more benefits in terms of doing the right form and being able to freely adjust the weights as you move on with your program.
Here are your basic but effective free-weight bodybuilding exercises:
A full body exercise that works out the entire body muscles from the arms, back, traps, obliques, legs and basically all the muscles of your body.
It will be beneficial to have a spotter around to check your form while doing the exercise to ensure that you are stimulating the muscles correctly and to avoid injury.
Squats are effective exercises for overall leg development: the upper leg, quadriceps, hamstring and gluteal muscles. This is your way to go in building leaner and sexier legs.
Lunges not only target the leg muscles, but also give you a toned butt for the right curves that you want which is an important part of female bodybuilding.
These exercises give you a sexier back and leaner biceps and forearms. If you cannot do free pull ups with your body weight, there are gym machines that you can use and adjust to a lesser weight.
Dip exercises focuses on the chest muscles, shoulders and triceps. There are also machines you can use if you cannot do it with your bodyweight.
Female Bodybuilding Useful Tips
Here are a few useful tips that you can apply during your bodybuilding exercises:
1. Proper Warm Ups
Prepare your muscles before working them up. A good cardio workout like aerobics or a treadmill run will do and then just before you do your 65 lbs bench press you have to do 1 to 3 sets of 30 and 45 lbs before you hit your 65 lbs, this is to avoid unnecessary injury to your muscles.
2. Take Enough Rest Periods Between Sets
Allow your muscles to have enough rest periods in between sets, but just take 1 to 2 minutes because if it’s longer than that you might lose the flow of your workout.
3. Have a Good Workout
Good workouts usually will last 30 to 45 minutes including the warm up sets. If it’s less the time you may not have pushed your muscles hard enough to stimulate them to grow.
4. What to do when you Miss Your Schedule?
The rule of thumb to get the sexy body that you want is not to miss on your schedule. If you do due to unavoidable circumstances, do it on your off days then return to your routine schedule the following week.
5. How to Get Rid of Arms, Legs and Tummy Fats?
During female bodybuilding, these areas are usually the problem areas for most women because this is where the adipose tissues are located and where excess fats are stored.
One solution is to do the “hi-intensity to low-intensity cardio protocol” meaning you have to double your cardio workout by doing hi-intensity cardio then followed immediately by low-intensity cardio workout to burn more fats, you can also do cardio workouts in your off days; another solution would be to follow a strict diet that is low on non-essential fats to minimize fat storage and lastly concentrate on building more muscles in your problem areas because the more muscles you have the more fats you burn with them.
You can follow this weekly schedule:
Monday: Weight Training
Tuesday: Cardio Workout
Wednesday: Weight Training
Thursday: Cardio Workout
Friday: Weight Training
Saturday: Cardio Workout
6. Muscle Progressive Overload
To build your muscles you have to challenge them constantly; whenever your routine gets easy you have to push harder and stimulate your muscles. You can try increasing the weights, change your sets and reps or you may even change your exercise.
7. Always Perform Your Exercise in Proper Form
Doing your exercises with conscious effort to employ the correct form will yield better muscle growth than doing more sets but in bad form and is an important part of female bodybuilding.
8. Do not Rely on Your Weighing Scale Alone
When you’re building muscles you cannot rely on your weighing scale because it may be confusing to find out that you’re not reducing the scales and yet are already building up. This is possible because muscles are denser so you are losing fats but are not reducing your weight from the scales.
9. Be Wary of Unnecessary Nutritional Supplements
Do your homework and research about what supplements really work and what are useless in your bodybuilding regimen. Do not simply believe the marketing advertisements that you see and hear.
General Nutrition Workout Guidelines for female bodybuilding
Good nutrition is very essential to female bodybuilding and to properly workout your diet here are a few quick notes for you to remember:
1. Caloric Intake
Your caloric consumption should always outnumber your caloric intake if you want to get rid of the excess fats. Remember also that the ratio of protein and carbs you take will dictate whether you will gain or lose muscles or fats.
2. Stay Hydrated
Hydrating yourself with at least 8 glasses of water per day will keep you feeling full preventing you from overeating.
3. Balanced Healthy Diet
Have more fruits and vegetables in your plate, choose to pack foods cooked from home rather than pre-packed processed meats that are high in preservatives and sugar content, adding unnecessary calories in your diet which is not good for female bodybuilding.
4. Sugar Control
A diet high in sugar stimulates more insulin production in the body and when insulin is high, fat burning capacity becomes decreased that redirects fats to be stored instead of being used up.
5. Enough Protein
Protein is very important in muscle building so you should have enough of them. Good protein sources are: eggs and egg whites, chicken, turkey, lean beef, fish and tofu.
6. Essential Fats
The old ruling of low fat or no fat diet is no longer effective because fats are important sources of energy for female bodybuilding. What is important is, knowing what essential and non-essential fat sources are.
Posted in: BODY BUILDING