In this episode, I’m sharing the 12 most common mistakes women make when trying to build muscle. I’ve made each and every one of these, so I know what it’s like to be working hard…and feel like there’s nothing to show for it. My goal with this episode, and all of my work, is for you to get the results you want while having health and fitness take up as little unneeded space in your life as possible. In order to do this, you need to be empowered with education! So, let’s dive in.
Menno Henselmans Muscle Potential
Feedback? Questions? Comments? Head on over to Instagram and let me know in my DMs!
Muscle Mass Academy—mini-course & programming!
Maintenance Masterclass
COURSES
FREE TRAINING
In this episode, I’m sharing the 12 most common mistakes women make when trying to build muscle. I’ve made each and every one of these, so I know what it’s like to be working hard…and feel like there’s nothing to show for it. My goal with this episode, and all of my work, is for you to get the results you want while having health and fitness take up as little unneeded space in your life as possible. In order to do this, you need to be empowered with education! So, let’s dive in.
Menno Henselmans Muscle Potential
Feedback? Questions? Comments? Head on over to Instagram and let me know in my DMs!
Muscle Mass Academy—mini-course & programming!
Maintenance Masterclass
COURSES
FREE TRAINING
[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Jessica Golden podcast. We are talking all things, a muscle gain today. Which is such an important piece of the health puzzle, the physique puzzle, whatever your goals are. Most importantly, I would highlight health. And this is why I think all women should be aware of my talk so much about the education behind the benefits. Of weightlifting that even if you don't love. The aesthetic component of it. You can make adjustments to where you're not gaining a ton of muscle. Although there are benefits to having muscles. But weightlifting itself is so important, but today we're talking about the 12 most common mistakes women make when trying to build. Muscle because a lot of women do have the gold building muscle I myself, and I'm not saying this in a derogatory sense, but I am under muscled relative to my. Goals just in terms of body weight, I would love for [00:01:00] a greater percentage of my body weight to be comprised of muscle mass. And I have a very long frame. I'm almost five 11. And I have very small bones and. Something that's really interesting. I can link this in the show notes below. A. I wouldn't say quiz, but a measurement that you can take via Menno Hanselman. So I took his personal training course. That's phenomenal if anyone's interested. And on his website, he has a, a way to tell what your genetic potential for gaining muscle is. And. This is more intuitive, but the smaller your frame is the smaller your bones are the less surface area. There is for you to have muscle, right? So I have very small bones. My ankles are small. My wrists are small hands feet. Everything is small, which means that I just have less genetic potential than a lot of other people when it comes to gaining muscle. And of [00:02:00] course this varies from. Different body part. Or region of our bodies, as well as some people have bigger bones in different areas or might have more broad shoulders. What have you. But for me, for most of my body, my capacity for building muscle is lesser than others. On top of that, I am a longer than a lot of other women as well. So I have my work cut out for me when it comes to putting on muscle and. A big part of what I'm so passionate about with everything I teach. Is reducing the obsession. And the feeling that health, fitness, or even changing your body, changing your physique is a full-time job. Everything you see on social media. I mean, you would think that I've said this before, but breathing in air is a problem. That consuming water is a problem. Everyone is focused so much on the details that they miss, the bigger picture. And by obsessing about the details rather than getting the big rocks, right. Taking the time to really educate [00:03:00] themselves on what actually moves the needle. They spend their reels and their whole life becomes all the details and they don't make any progress. So my aim with this discussion is how do you get in the gym? Get the biggest bang for your buck because most women. I have a lot of shit to do, and don't want to be spending all their time in the gym. They want to get in, get out, get the biggest bang for their buck while they're in there and then move on with their day. So let's jump in. Shall we. Number one, this is the biggest thing is not following a structured training program. If you're going to orange theory, if you're going to any circuit training classes, Barry's bootcamp. Even CrossFit is not focused on building muscle. It's focused on how can we have you. Be sufficient in several different areas of fitness, endurance, gymnastics, flexibility, et cetera. Hey, so that's not focused on building muscle and certainly not in a way that might be towards your goals. So. When I was doing CrossFit. [00:04:00] I had a developed upper body. Largely in my traps, my traps were much bigger than I would've wanted. It caused a lot of headaches and other issues, but my lower body was not nearly as developed as I would have liked. And we'll go into why that is here in a little bit, but. If you were not following a structured program that is focused on building muscle. So a term for that as hypertrophy, their strength and hypertrophy oftentimes overlap, but just. Find a progressive overload training program and follow it. And you're going to have to follow this program. For months, especially when you're a beginner. The gains come so easily. Just stick with it. You should not be doing random shit in the gym. And feeling like the harder you breathe, the better your workout, the more you're going to build muscle. That's not how it works. Follow up program. Yes, you're gonna be doing the same workouts every single week. That's how it's supposed to be and stop wasting time. [00:05:00] On those classes, if you want to do those for fun, that's totally fine. Just understand that that's not going to be working as effectively towards your goals of building muscle. As a structured progressive overload training program will. Okay, so that's mistake. Number one is not following a program. Now mistake. Number two is expecting beginner gains forever. So when you are new to following a proper strength training or hypertrophy, progressive overload training program. You built muscle so quickly. And he may have even noticed this when you started doing Barry's bootcamp or when you started doing orange theory. Or whatever. Your circuit training, whatever it was, even if you were doing yoga and Pilates, you might think, oh my gosh. I can build muscle doing these things. Most people will build muscle. If they do anything even just spinning on the bike for 15 minutes a day will grow your quads. That will not last forever. If you're following a [00:06:00] program. Oh, well structured program. When you're a beginner, you can go for at least a year and see great gains, but eventually, and by gains, I mean gaining muscle, but also you can add weight to the bar, almost every single session. You get strong very quickly. That plateaus. And then people think, oh my gosh, I'm doing something wrong. Something's wrong with my body because this is taking so long. You're just comparing. Your beginner, self. To the way the body works, which eventually plateaus. You have to provide. More and more stress to your body in order to elicit a response. This is normal. So don't expect beginner gains forever because your expectations are going to be really skewed. You're going to get frustrated and you're going to want to quit.
It's normal.
Mistake number three is not eating enough protein. And I think people have become a little too protein obsessed. I'm gonna make a post about this soon unpopular opinion, because more is not more when it comes to protein and [00:07:00] oftentimes the. Requirements or recommendations are overshooting, what people need in order to see results. And that includes the benefits of satiety with protein, and also, which means that you have better appetite control. And also building muscle. So I recommend for my clients 0.8 grams per pound of body weight. Now while a lot of people are overdoing it these days. And if they want to, that's fine. Just again, be in the know. Make an informed decision. So many women are under eating protein. So people think peanuts are great source of protein. They're an, an addition. I would consider them a boost to a well-rounded structured. Diet that includes a lot of protein. Preferably animal protein. If you're not eating animal protein, you're just going to have to eat more protein in order to get the full amino acid profile. If you need to be eating enough protein, and it's really easy to do. Jump on over to Instagram. [00:08:00] I am about to put up a post on how to eat enough protein without having to track. And there's tips in there. It can be a lot, lot easier than you think, but aim for 0.8 grams per pound of body weight. And if you have excess body fat, if you have obesity or you're overweight shoot for lean body mass. And if you're not sure, just estimate it. And in the end. Your body's going to tell you. If you're seeing progress. Great. Then stop changing things up. If you feel like I'm an experiment with adding more protein, see what happens. Great. Give that a whirl. But aim for, am I eating? A solid amount of animal protein and most of my meals and snacks. If you are. Wonderful. And if you have more, let's see you're on the higher end of body weight in terms of excess body fat. Try just adding in, which means that your protein intake requirements would be higher. Try just adding in a protein shake. Don't make it complicated or just simply [00:09:00] increase the portion sizes of the protein that you're already eating during your meals. It doesn't have to be this big, complicated thing. Take what you're already doing. And make simple adjustments. Okay. So mistake number three is not eating enough protein.
Mistake number four is not understanding how progressive overload really works. And this is one that had me stopped for a long time. And why I feel the need to bring this to your attention. You'll hear people say progressive overload is adding weight to the bar or adding reps to the lift every single week. That's not how the body works, because if you think about it, If we could just add a rep. Or increase weight every single week. We would all be lifting 500,000 pounds. Right. But eventually the body plateaus and you have to provide additional stressors in order to get the body to adapt. So what progressive overload actually is, is it's the result. Not the cause. [00:10:00] So as a result of the programming and the work that you've done thus far, you're able. To increase your weight. The next week. Sometimes for me. I get the same reps, the same weight for three weeks in a row. And then on the fourth week, because of all that work, because I was patient. I didn't go to failure and didn't say, oh, I'm going to get, let my ego get the better of me. I'm patient then my body has adapted enough through that stress. And then finally my body is stronger, but it's not going to happen every single week. So progressive overload is the result of the work that you've done. It is not forcing your body to do something that it just physically can't do because you will plateau very quickly and you will get frustrated, especially once you're an intermediate.
Which brings me to mistake number five, which is not understanding how to keep progressing. After the beginner stage. So when you are a beginner lifter, you can pretty much follow any program and you'll see great results. My program, won't be magical. Someone else's. Program [00:11:00] won't be magical as long as you're following a structured program. And it could be a very. Mediocre program, you will see great results. It's when you become an intermediate that you need to start to change things up. You can change things by switching the exercises, the tempo, the range of motion. The intensity, the volume. There's a lot of different ways that you can go about this. And I go into this in further detail in my muscle mass academy course. It's a mini course, combined with programming. If you want to know everything that you need to do to build muscle, and that'll be linked in the show notes, but. At a higher level here. You need to understand how to keep progressing after the beginner stage, unless you're getting personalized programming done. In which case the person who's doing your programming will know how to do this. They should. But if you're following a program, which I love to do, I love to just purchase programs used to now I do my own programming. But even within my MMA programming templates that I give the ladies. Everyone's going to respond differently. So I tell them if you're running into this roadblock, these are the different options. You have to continue to see [00:12:00] progress, which is important as an intermediate because we all plateau. Like I said, if we all just walked into the gym and were able to increase weight every single time, we would all be lifting insane amounts of weight. And that's not how it works. All of us plateau and those plateaus occur. Much much more frequently as you become an advanced training. I so once you're beyond the beginner stage, You need to know how to continue seeing progress.
Okay. Let's see, where are we? We're on number six, mistake. Number six is doing compound movements for upper and lower body. So combining. Upper body lifts with lower body lifts. And as an example, let's say that you were going down into a lunge and then you have dumbbells in each of your hands. If you can picture that. You get onto a lunch and then you stand up and then you curl for a bicep curl. Or if you're familiar with CrossFit movements, a thruster. Would be a good one. Okay. So that's when you have the barbell and you go down into a squat and then as you come up from the [00:13:00] squat, you press the barbell over your head. Now in these examples, when you're combining your upper and lower body. The limiting muscle group. For the vast majority of people. And that'll only last at the beginning. Eventually the limiting muscle group for everyone will be your upper body. And this is why my upper body was so overdeveloped in CrossFit. Because there were so many of these compound movements. And the limiting factor was my upper body. So, if you were picturing the bicep curls, Okay, maybe I can do 15 pounds, 15 dumbbells. That's not nearly enough weight in order to see a response to my lower body. My lower body needs a lot more weight in order to see enough stress. And grow my lower body muscles. Right. So these can be great for your upper body. To a certain extent, but when it comes to building muscle on your lower body, You are not going to be seeing the progress that you want by any stretch, beyond the beginner phase. Right. Everything here is with the caveat beyond the beginner phase. If you're like, I saw great results going orange theory, and we did those movements. I'm willing to [00:14:00] bet you've plateaued. I know you stopped seeing progress on your lower body development. With your legs with your quads, with your glutes. And that's because our lower body muscles have a much, much higher capacity for strength and muscle. Then our upper bodies, especially for women. Okay, so quit doing those movements. We were trying to combine the two. It's not saving you time. It's actually wasting your time. Because they're ineffective.
Next mistake is doing too much volume. So it's really important to take into consideration. A, the amount of volume that you need to elicit a response more is not always more. It rarely is. You want just enough of a stimulus to get your muscles to adapt. And you also don't want to be doing so much. That you can't recover from it. And this is a big, big, big message that understanding with women, especially those who have more of that type, a really try and push it with exercise. Your body only has a certain capacity. For recovery. And [00:15:00] if you're not really dialed in with your rest and your recovery and your nutrition. And you're trying to train, like you're an Olympic athlete and you're just fucking around on the weekends and you're drinking and you're not watching your nutrition and prioritizing a ton of sleep. You're going to plateau and feel like shit. So you need to consider, okay. How much volume do I actually need to see progress, period, but also how much fun can I actually recover from? Otherwise, you're gonna be hurting your gains big time.
And the next mistake is the opposite is doing too little volume. And this is more pertinent. For my intermediate lifters, once you're beyond the novice and beginner stage. You're doing too little volume. So one of the ways that you continue to see progress, as you progressed into an intermediate lifter is you need to add additional stimulus. And one of those ways is by volume. So at a certain point, you're not gonna be able to add more weight to the bar. Remember our a thousand pounds example, you can't just keep adding weight to infinity. So you add more volume. To provide more of a stimulus, more [00:16:00] stress for your muscles. But we don't want to take that to the extreme. It needs to be measured. It needs to be intentional. It's not just Willy nilly. It's a structured program. So make sure you're doing enough volume. If you've plateaued as an intermediate, it might be because you need more volume. Might also be because you've been doing too much volume, but that's why having a program is so helpful. Mistake number. Let's see, what are we on? I think we're on.
Eight. Or nine, I'm not sure, but too much intensity. So, if you're going to failure each time you lift, you don't need that much intensity to see results. And this is again, when it comes to the ratio of work. To recovery. The amount. Of recovery and resources required for your body to recover. From going to failure. And if you're doing that, every single workout. There's no way. And if you're doing a ton, let's say if you're lifting once a week. Sure. Then your body can probably recover by the next time you're doing your workout. But if you're [00:17:00] doing several sessions a week and you're going to failure each time and you start to feel like, oh my gosh, I'm actually decreasing. Across the weeks in terms of my strength. You may be doing too much intensity. And. To measure this. We use something in MMA. We use reps to failure RTF. So how many reps are left in the tank before you reach failure? We want to be adhering to prescribed number there. Rather than going to failure. And it's very important. You might also hear the term RPE or rate of perceived exertion. And this is another way. It's just the inverse. Of reps to failure to know your intensity, your perceived level of intensity. So make sure that you're not going to failure each time you want to leave a few reps for most lifts for most people. Before you fail.
Conversely to a little intensity. So oftentimes women who are not familiar with lifting they'll get in there and they won't realize how much cool shit they can actually do. So they stop significantly short. Many many, [00:18:00] many reps short. Of what would be even close to failure. And this is because they aren't familiar with how hard you actually have to work. To get close to failure. It's not just when it starts to burn its way beyond the burning sensation. If you say, okay, this is what I have my ladies inside of MMA. Do. If they're new to a lift or they haven't done it in a while at the end of one of their last sets at the beginning of the program, I have them go to failure. So they know what it feels like. For them to go to failure. And that way there. Perceived level of effort, intensity, like we talked about RPE or ups to failure is accurate. And in studies, they often see that women think not just women, both men and women. They believe that they're close to failure, but then when the researchers have them actually pushed to failure, They were only at 50%. If their capacity. So make sure that you're going within a couple of reps. A few reps. Usually anywhere from. Two to four, sometimes one, if it's an accessory lift. [00:19:00] Reps to failure. And if you're not sure, give it a go one time and say, okay, I'm going to go to failure. There's one time. I understand that it's going to take up a lot of my recovery resources.
But I'm going to do it just to see how far I can actually push myself. And that way you'll know what failure actually feels like. Hey, but make sure if you're doing that. That you are adhering to proper form. I don't want you to hurting yourself. Okay.
And the 11th mistake women make is not prioritizing rest recovery and stress management. And this includes sleep. It's pretty damn remarkable. The impact that chronic stress. And lack of sleep Both have, on our capacity to build muscle. When we are in the gym and we are doing this type of program, you can tell, hopefully, by the way, I'm describing this, that you are pushing your body to a certain point where it's going to require a lot of resources to recover. You're essentially causing microtraumas in your muscles. And then they repair. Additional muscles developed. That is a very energy [00:20:00] intensive process. And it's a luxury for your body. It's not an essential thing. So your body's going to prioritize other. Mechanisms in your body, other functions over building muscle. You need to be prioritizing rest recovery and stress management and sleep. If you want your body to say, Hey, let's shuttle resources here to build muscle. It's very, very important. This is why. The volume discussion is important. The intensity discussion is important.
And lastly not resting between sets and I made this mistake and I've made all of these mistakes, which is why I bring them to you. But if you're coming from a background of a lot of circuit training,
Or believing that the harder you're breathing, the more you're sweating, the more you feel like you want to die in a workout, the more effective it is. Uh, everything is turned into a cardio workout. That is going to be hurting your progress. You need to be resting in between sets for me. If it's lower body, I try and walk around a little bit. At the gym, if there's any room, even if that's just two steps forward, [00:21:00] two steps back walking in a circle. Because some research suggests that that can be better for, Getting your body adequate.
Because some research suggests that that is. Better. For recovery in between sets, but oftentimes my ass is just sitting on a bench. I'm just sitting there waiting. Usually around two minutes. Two to three minutes for my bigger lifts and at least 60 seconds, if not 90 seconds for more of my accessory lifts towards the end of my workout. Okay, so make sure that you are resting between sets and if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. You need your muscles to recover. So that you can adequately push for your next set. Does you no good to be running around like a chicken with our head cut off. In between our lifting sets so that our muscles are not ready to go. They're already starting at 50% and then we're expecting them to be able to lift more. It's not how the body works. We must respect the nature. Am I [00:22:00] rights. So there you have it. These are 12. Of the most common mistakes I see women make when trying to build muscle. And as I noted, I've made every single one of these. So you are not alone. And this, this whole conversation of building muscle, there's so much research, so much more research that has come out in the last decade. And so many more researches researchers who actually lift. And are dedicated to lifting. Uh, hypertrophy, hypertrophy strength. So they're developing. Uh, adequate studies for us to actually know more information about this, which is incredible. So. What I'm saying today, we might have more information next month. Okay. So it's, the science is ever evolving, but as of right now, these are. I would argue these will likely be tried and true for a very, very long time. If not forever. Just in simply understanding the way body the body works. But I'm happy to update my perspectives. These are not opinions. These are based on science. I'm more than happy to update my [00:23:00] perspectives. My stance is on these things. As science does evolve, as we learn more. So please take these in a situation. If you don't want to be wasting your time in the gym, if you want to get in, get out, get your shit done and reap the benefits of your hard work, because there's nothing more annoying. I remember from my, my circuit training days and me just jumping around the living room, thinking that I was doing the best thing and I was so tired, so beat up and I literally had nothing to show for it. If anything, I just had a raging appetite and my body did not look any different beyond the first couple of weeks when it was just due to a newer stimulus because I was moving more. So, if you find yourself in that situation, if you do want to learn more. You are welcome to take a look at muscle mass academy, which is linked in the show notes below comes with three plus months of programming, and I will continue to add. Programming to that mini course. As time goes on as well. I hope this is helpful please hop on over to instagram and let me know if it was helpful for you and if you could leave [00:24:00] me a five star rating and a review if you feel so called i would love you forever and i will see you all in the next episode