Woman and Weights: Santa Monica Fitness Instructors Debunk 8 Myths That Could Be Keeping You From Your Goals, PART 2

Welcome to the second installment of our four-part article series on the myths surrounding women and weights. Previously, in Part 1, we spoke to some experienced Santa Monica Fitness instructors about two pervasive myths:

1.      Weight lifting builds bulk and leaves you looking more masculine: Incorrect. Women don’t produce enough testosterone to resemble men from the kind of weights offered by circuit training classes.

2.      Weight lifting can increase breast size: We wish! Breasts are composed of fatty tissue, so working out your upper body doesn’t have any bearing on their size.

Let’s take a look at some more myths:

 

Women and Weight Lifting Myth # 3: It Leaves You Stiff and Inflexible

Sure, you might wake up the morning after a good circuit training session feeling stiff and a little creaky, but it’s a positive sign that you are using muscles that haven’t been challenged in a long time. Weight lifting won’t make your muscles less flexible. The crux of the issue, explains one gym instructor in Santa Monica, is:

“If you’re exercising and weight training is leaving you stiff, then you aren’t training correctly. By performing those weight lifting exercises correctly and by running through the movements as shown to you by your instructor, you will actually increase the flexibility of your muscles and tendons. You must also never forget to warm up before training with weights, and you should stretch afterwards as well.”

Women and Weight Lifting Myth # 4: You Run the Risk of Turning Muscle in to Fat Should You Ever Stop

 

Fat and muscle tissue are two completely different things. You can’t “turn” muscle into fat and you can’t “turn” fat into muscle. It’s biologically impossible. What you can do is build muscle mass and lose body fat through the cardio and resistance (weight) stations in Circuit Training. The end result is that fat melts away to reveal harder, stronger and larger muscles. The opposite can also happen if you don’t exercise regularly enough: your muscles can slowly atrophy and decrease in bulk and you can put on body fat. But one kind of tissue cannot become the other.

Why then do older body-builders tend to look so porky and barrel-chested?

Some body builders who quit the profession also quit the training that comes along with it and instead of protein shakes, they eat unhealthy, fatty foods. The result is that they increase their body fat percentage. This fat layers itself over their bulky muscles making them look huge and caught in the no-man’s land between fat and muscle-bound. This also gives the illusion that their muscle is turning to fat, when in fact they are just putting on fat and losing muscle bulk.

Stay Tuned for Part 3, Coming Next Week!

We’ll be exploring the following myths:

# 5: Weight training allows you to eat anything you want and not get fat.

# 6: Women only really need cardiovascular exercise to stay fit and maintain a healthy body weight.

 

Woman and Weights: Santa Monica Gym Instructors Debunk 8 Myths That Could Be Keeping You From Your Fitness Goals, PART 1

It’s one of the most common misconceptions in women who come to the gym to get fit and/or to lose weight: they stick to cardiovascular exercises because they’re afraid that weight lifting is going to give them a more masculine physique. This is just one of many myths surrounding the use of weights in the gym and, according to many Santa Monica fitness trainers, these myths may be getting in the way of women who are trying to achieve a variety of fitness and weight loss goals.

In order to debunk these myths and provide you with the truth behind weight lifting and its indispensible role in Circuit Training, fitness and fat busting, we spoke to some professional gym instructors and fitness experts on the matter. In this four-part article series, we present to you what they had to say about the 8 popular myths on women and weights.

Women and Weight Lifting Myth # 1: It Builds Muscle and Makes You Look Bulky and Masculine

“So many of the women who come in for circuit training classes express the reluctance to use the weights and certain weight lifting stations because they don’t want to build upper body bulk,” explains one personal trainer in Santa Monica Gym. “They’re afraid they’re going to start looking androgynous and masculine like some of those female body-building athletes. Here’s the thing: unless you are training for six hours per day and pump your body with protein and other specialized supplements, you aren’t going to resemble any of those athletes.”

Why? Because as a gender, women do not naturally produce enough of the hormones (testosterone) necessary to build the kind of muscle bulk that men do. Or at least this isn’t something that can come from regular exercise and weight training. It takes serious dedication to pump your body up to the sizes attained by some of those professional athletes, so you really don’t need to worry about this.

The problem with this myth is that it deters women from incorporating weights into their gym routine and weight lifting is an extremely efficient way of burning fat! By alternating between short intensive weight and cardiovascular exercises – as is consistent with circuit training – you can burn up to 500% more calories than you would by running on the treadmill for the same amount of time. So, cast this myth from your mind and ask your gym instructor how you can start pumping iron to get into fabulous shape.

Women and Weight Lifting Myth # 2: Weight Training Can Increase Breast Size

 

If this were true, there would be a lot fewer successful plastic surgeons in Los Angeles! Unfortunately, lifting weights and working out your chest muscles does not make you more buxom. Women’s breasts are composed of fatty tissue – not muscle tissue – so they won’t increase in size if you workout harder. In fact, if you lose enough fat through weights training, you can end up achieving the opposite effect!

“Most professional female body-builders have less than 10% body fat and as a result, their breasts have shrunk,” explains one female Los Angeles personal trainer. “If you want to get bigger breasts, there are only three things you can do: (1) increase your body fat percentage, (2) see a plastic surgeon or (3) be happy with your fabulous self and if any one ever complains, give them the boot.”

Stay Tuned for Part 2, Coming Next Week!

We’ll be exploring the following myths:

# 3: Weight lifting leaves you stiff and inflexible.

# 4: Stopping weight lifting can allow muscle to turn in to fat.