A collection of things I like: fitness, dance, flexibility, animals, beauty, yoga, coffee, tea, the written word, and circus.
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Ya. You’re right, girls. Lifting weights gives you gross, manly bodies. Totally.
As much as I hate the sterotype that lifting weights will do that, I equally hate the stereotype that it won’t. All women’s bodies are different. All women produce varying amounts of hormones in different ratios. All women have different ratios of fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fibers, and different ratios of type II a to type II b. Most people will probably have no idea what that means. In layman’s terms, it means that some women will bulk, and some will not. And it sometimes also means that some women will bulk in some areas, but in others.
For instance, I can put on muscle mass in my thighs (specifically my quadriceps) and my glutes like it is no one’s business. In less than one month, I can go from being completely sedentary to squatting double my body weight with no drugs and no form of steroids. Before I decided that if I wanted to look at all muscularly balanced I would need to stop doing any and all forms of weighted leg exercises, I was squatting 235lbs (in three sets of eight—this was not a one rep max). At that time, I weighed 116lbs. The beau, who is 6’2”, 200lbs, and built, hasn’t ever been able to squat anywhere near double his body weight—in fact he was squatting almost the same amount that I was. Why is this? I have an immensely high amount of fast twitch muscle fiber in my legs, and he doesn’t. It got to the point where I was able to squat so much weight, that I didn’t feel like my core could properly stabilize it anymore, but my legs easily could have kept squatting more weight. At that point I switched to the leg press, and was able to press more than 500lbs.
Conversely, my back muscles will never be able to “bulk”. I frequently joke that I have no back muscles. None at all. All that my back is skin and bone. While that’s no physiologically true, it may as well be. This would be because my back, unlike my legs, has a high ratio of slow twitch to fast to fast twitch muscle fibers.
Some people, throughout their entire bodies have more fast twitch than slow twitch muscle fibers. While others, throughout their entire bodies, have a higher ratio of slow twitch to fast twitch muscle fibers. Interestingly, the type of muscle fiber that is dominant in your body is not (according to most recent studies) based on your sex. Fairly equal numbers of men and women fall into both categories.
So what this really means is that some women can, and do bulk—whether all over, or in specific locations is based on the physiology of that woman, but it does happen.
Basically, people, whenever anyone tells you that something can never happen, or will always happen, you should look at them skeptically—because what they really mean is: X, y, z has never happened to me.
