A New Era

Yesterday, while working with a freshmen soccer player, Rebecca, trying to get back into playing shape for her fall season, I had to chuckle while watching her do a part of her strength chart.

She was performing single arm push presses with a relatively heavy kettle bell for a 14 year old female; 30 lbs I believe. She was giving great effort and using great form. The part that I laughed at was when I noticed she had freshly-painted, pink fingernails.

Rebecca has had a rough stretch since having ACL surgery in February, but has made great progress with her overall strength. She takes pride in her workouts by being competitive with herself with how much weight she uses or how many reps she can complete (with assisted pull-ups, push-ups and the like).

I realized that she epitomized the point I try to make to all the girls I work with (adults as well as athletes), that they won't get all jacked-up and manly if they accidentally touch a weight that is more than 10 lbs. This myth has been around for a long time, and hopefully that is starting to change, however slowly. The truth is, girls need to lift weights almost more than the guys. Injury rates are much higher with girls due to increased exposure to competitive sports (which is awesome) combined with a lack of proper training, nutrition, and education about how to prepare for athletics.

I promise that you WON'T look like this

Women, in general, Do not have the necessary levels of hormones to gain the bulk you see with the competitive bodybuilders. With a good strength training program, strength and muscle cross-sectional area will increase, but only in combination with a leaner frame. And the best part is, increased muscle mass does not result in "looking all jacked up." That pumped-up frame that bodybuilders work so hard to get is actually a result of higher muscle glycogen levels (which actually leads to higher water content in the cells). This gives them the puffed-up look of huge muscles, while some people who may look smaller actually have more contractile proteins in the muscle and are stronger than many bodybuilders.

To simplify, getting stronger is not a death sentence for your womanly frame. Unless you eat about 5,000 calories a day, take a few "supplements" you might find in almost any baseball clubhouse, and workout for 3-4 hours a day, you don't have anything to worry about!

Go move some weights!
Jon