#50: How to lift weights without getting "BULKY"
[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn, your host. And today we are going to be talking about how to weight train without getting bulky, because I noticed that this is maybe one of the biggest fears that women have. And I feel like online, there's just this categorical No, you won't get bulky that people are answering.
And yet my own personal experience is that I understand what women are talking about when they're talking about this. And I have seen people getting bulkier. So let's talk about it.
So first of all, I have to say I'm 52, so born in 1971, and grew up in a time where thin was the ideal. I remember my friends in high school were already on diets and talking about they'd rather be thin and [00:01:00] dead than fat and alive kind of thing. I'll eat when I'm dead type of language. And these kinds of supermodels who were really long, slender body type was the ideal.
And I think those kinds of ideals, when you grow up with them and you're seeing them when your brain is not yet developed, you know, so when you're in your teens and early twenties, they stick with you no matter how much you try to reason with yourself or understand that, Hey, it's okay not to look like that, and those people are, you know, genetic extremes and that they're dieting a lot to achieve that kind of body type. But it still is somewhere deep in there that we want to be thin. And I, I definitely do feel like that is more of a pressure and I'm glad to see that our daughters and hopefully our granddaughters will be seeing a whole different kind of [00:02:00] physical ideal of beauty. I mean, already today there is booty and, more curves are allowed allowed in quotes, air quotes, than back then.
And by the way, all over social media, you see these fitness influencers who show how they used to be really thin. And actually their really thin is very close to that ideal that we grew up with. And then what they're looking like now, which is, you know, Big legs, big butt, big arms, you know, especially the lower body seems to be really in fashion to get really big down there.
And if you are anything like me, that maybe that's not the aesthetic ideal that you are aiming for.
And then the other piece of this is that [00:03:00] absolutely I have seen people get quite big from weight training. So back when I was playing lacrosse in college, we had a weight coach and we did weight training specific to our sport. So in lacrosse, you need to do a lot of. fast sprinting. So you need power in your legs.
And the whole team was training the same exact program. And there actually were not very many exercises in that program that we did every week to build our strength and power so we could sprint. And it was interesting to see how people's bodies changed or didn't change with the weight training.
Now, my legs definitely did get somewhat bigger and I was really into the training and everything. But I remember there was particularly one woman, our team captain. She was this very short, uh, very quick [00:04:00] woman. Oh my God. She, she was a great attack player because she could just run circles around the, uh, the other team.
But her thighs would grow enormous from the weight training and we would weight train all year round lacrosse is a spring sport. So the minute we hit campus in the fall, you know, our conditioning program would start and we'd have practice regularly every week. And then in the spring because it was our season for playing the sport, we had a little bit less weight training, you know, we'd stay in maintenance mode basically in our weight training and our conditioning work. And then. We would have the summer off and come back the next fall. And I remember so well the difference in what she would look like when she would leave in the spring, like with these very powerful, big thighs.
And then she would come back after a summer of doing nothing. And it was like, she [00:05:00] had these big thighs. That we're no longer, uh, so firm, right? So, because she hadn't been training over the summer and kind of speaks to how you need to maintain muscle, right? It's, you're not going to stay as big and powerful unless you continue to train.
And I also have one of my closest friends now, who is a little bit older than I am. Trying to think, is she 55, 56? Anyway, she is somebody who is genetically gifted as far as building muscle super easily. I was at the weight room with her. I talked about this a few podcasts ago, the day that I had been at the weight room with her. And it was amazing. So I was showing her various things she can do in the weight room and she's doing bicep curls and we're doing shoulder presses and man, the amount of muscle that she would show even [00:06:00] untrained.
Okay. She does do some body pump classes and that kind of thing, but like even untrained, she has big muscles and I've seen her few years back when she had been consistently training. And yes, she builds muscle easily, and there are women like that. They just put on muscle easily. So I would say that it is not like, no, you will not get bulky from weight training because obviously if you look at the evidence and your idea of bulky is not being that kind of slender model ideal then yeah, these women are getting, you know, quote unquote bulky.
Okay. So basically I'm saying I get you. I don't want to be that looking either. I think it's fine that other people [00:07:00] want to do that. I'm not saying that at all, but for me, I want an aesthetic that I like, and I do like to look firm and toned. Those words that so many women in their fifties and beyond are very familiar using to look like you've got some shape, you've got some muscle and. little enough fat that some of the shape and muscle shows through. Okay. So, but how do you stop from getting bulky looking when you start weight training?
Well, it is really about watching how far you go with your weight training, right? So everybody has their own genetics, for those women who are genetically gifted, then yes, for example, the circumference of their arm, if they measure it or the circumference of their thighs, they're going to [00:08:00] grow more quickly because their muscles grow more quickly, and then for women who don't put on muscle so quickly, and that includes women who are in perimenopause and menopause, where you don't have the estrogen helping you out, then that circumference growth is going to happen more slowly. So it's not, it is never going to be the case that today you look like this, you go to the weight room for a week, and then ta da! You're gonna all of a sudden look radically different. That is not gonna happen. Please don't worry that that would happen. It is a gradual process.
So the best way to avoid getting bulky is really to pay attention to what you're looking like over time. And so I really recommend that you take progress pictures, take pictures of yourself now, and then let's say every week or at least [00:09:00] every two weeks and compare and see that, "hey, do I like the way I'm looking?"
"Is this enough muscle for me?" You know, "Am I getting to the point where this is not what I really want to be looking like?" Okay. Because you can definitely adjust how you're exercising. For example, for me, I don't necessarily want to build up my thighs particularly much. So I choose exercises where yes, my thigh muscles get work, but that I'm emphasizing more my glutes and my hamstrings . So you can adjust your training to hit different muscles and control kind of how much they grow or don't grow, but take those progress pictures really, that is going to be your best friend because you're not going to notice it, you know, just looking at your body every day. It's when you see the comparison.
And often. [00:10:00] You know, when you take pictures or some video of yourself, that's when you actually see that, ah, that's what I look like. You're not just looking at that kind of one dimension or that one view of you in a mirror. You see how you actually look when you move. And that's more helpful, I think, in you knowing, Hey, is this what I want to look like or not look like?
So yes, I very much am pro everybody at lifting weights because it is so important for your health and also for you to be able to live an independent life long into the future for your body to function properly. But that doesn't mean that you need to go to your biological maximum muscle growth in order to get those benefits.
So you need to find a place where you're maintaining your strength. You are strong enough that you can do the things you want to do. You know, you can lift that suitcase, you can open that jar lid, you can, you know, [00:11:00] um, move your furniture around. You can carry those heavy bags of dirt when you're gardening and be happy with how your body is looking.
And that is completely legitimate. When you start on a weight training journey, you do not need to continue to progress until, you know, you're as huge as you can get. Right? So when you get to the point where you are happy with how you're looking, Then what you do is you shift more into maintenance mode of your muscles, you maintain that strength.
So I've talked earlier about how, just when you start out, if you were to do the exact same thing every day with the exact same weights, the exact same reps, you would maintain that level, but you wouldn't progress. Right. Just like if you started jogging and you decided that I'm going to jog around my block three times at a particular pace, [00:12:00] and that's what I'm going to do three times a week.
Well, you'll get really good at doing that and you'll be in good shape for doing that, but you won't be in shape for, let's say a marathon. So it depends just on how much you're pushing your body, how much you'll grow.
And now what is maintenance for you is something it's impossible for me to tell you. So when you get to that point where, Hey, I'm really happy with the way I'm looking and I feel strong and my body is staying in good shape. You know, I, I, I can do the things that I need to do, use my muscles the way I need to use them, then start tinkering with it.
So the first thing you might do is not progress your weights as fast or maybe not progress your weights, or maybe you do two sets instead of three when you go to the weight room. You know? So figure [00:13:00] out what works for you. And there are gonna be a lot of factors that play into this. So, for example, if you go on a diet, you're gonna lose some of that muscle.
Right. So that if you're like going on a diet coming into summer, then maybe that's not the moment that you want to cut back on your weight training program. And then stress can affect your muscles as well, and how much you're able to build muscle or maintain muscle. So if you're going through a really stressful period in your life, like divorce, your kids are moving out, you know, you're feeling stressed, you're sleeping less, all these kinds of things. So it really is going to be something you need to play with. And then maybe sometimes you'll overshoot like, oops, uh, now I'm losing too much muscle and then you'll need to pick up again.
And then you notice that, Hey, okay, now like my shoulders are starting to look too big for, you know, for your own aesthetic. And now you want to kind of pull [00:14:00] back on that and just keep taking those progress pictures because that really is going to be easier for you to see from that than just from looking in a mirror . And you can also do measurements like how big your arm is around and everything.
I haven't tried that myself because I think the progress pictures are way easier to do. And then of course, when you measure circumference, it's going to take into account your muscle and fat that you have. So it certainly doesn't tell you what's making up that circumference. It just tells you the circumference as a plain number.
So to summarize, I definitely agree that you can get "bulky" from lifting weights. And that's from the perspective of a 52 year old woman who has been raised at a time where thin was in.
For us, the fact that you put muscle on and you're not just skin and bones. [00:15:00] is bulky. And the ideal that you see on Instagram and other social media channels, where these women are, or these young women, it's mostly the young women, like in their twenties, who have started out being thin, which is kind of the ideal that we grew up with, and then have done a lot of weight training and suddenly they have big booties and big thighs and they, they love that. And it's great, but it's maybe not the aesthetic that I'm after. And maybe you're not after that either. And so you're trying to decide like, how do I not go quite that far when I'm weight training? So what you want to do is you want to take progress pictures as you do your weight training and at the point where you feel like, Hey, I have enough muscle on my body, y you go into more of a maintenance mode.
And what works for you to stay in maintenance mode is going to be different from what [00:16:00] works for somebody else. But you can start with things like if you're working out four days a week, cut back to three days a week. If you're doing three sets, um, of exercises each time you train, maybe do two sets of exercises each time you train.
If you're going to failure very often, then maybe leave one rep in reserve. So don't go quite as close to failure. If you're using progressive overload, then maybe Increase your weights at a slower rate. So when you notice that, hey, I'm, at the top of my rep range, maybe do that for two weeks before increasing the weight a little bit, rather than increasing it every time you go, or you know, every third time you go, just do the increases less frequently.
And see what works for you. But super important is to weight train because you are losing your muscles, you're [00:17:00] losing your power, you're losing your strength, and you need those things for your quality of life. And the past two podcasts, I talk more about those things. So if you miss those two podcasts, I recommend that you go back and listen to those.
Okay, so I hope that clarifies and if you have any questions or comments about this getting bulky part, I would love to hear. So send me a message or comment in my Instagram channel. I really love to hear from you guys. And if you're enjoying the podcast, please tell a friend, I want to get the message out to as many women as possible so that we can all live long, happy, independent, strong lives. And with that, I leave you till next week, happy training.