Every woman worries about bulking up when they work out.
If you workout the wrong way, you have a good chance of gaining size where you don’t want it.
The real shame is that you haven’t been taught how to workout to tone muscles and how to workout to gain size!
If you want to gain muscle size, then you should workout like a bodybuilder. If you don’t, then you shouldn’t. Unfortunately this isn’t as simple as it sounds.
Chances are you don’t want to be the next WWE female wrestler, but chances are also good that nobody has been able to tell you how to create different changes other than to say workout at a lower intensity’.
Are you working out like a bodybuilder? Do you know the difference?
Here’s what to look for - Bodybuilders usually work out in the following manner:
Isolated muscle groups (using machines that work just one muscle at a time - e.g. leg extension for the quadriceps muscle at the front of the upper leg or the bicep curl for just the bicep).
Split Routines (workouts that specialize the workouts to upper or lower body - e.g. chest and triceps, back and biceps).
High Intensity workouts such that they have trouble walking/opening doors/feeding themselves the next day
Either of the first two look familiar to your regular workouts?
If you are interested in gaining muscle, then you would be best served to avoid all of the above. However, that leaves you with a dilemma.
Isolated muscle groups are used in almost every exercise in your average gym workout or aerobics class!
If you do a dumbbell bicep curl with proper form’, you have effectively isolated the bicep and have therefore given it the signal to grow.
You are essentially sending the signal to your body to give you bigger arms.
If you do it with improper form then you have an increased risk of injury! Surely there must be a solution that gets us where we want to be without turning us into the next Chyna along the way!
Notice how two of the above pictures are doing the same exercise? Wouldn’t it make sense to add extra muscle groups such as in the squat with bicep curl example on the left?
If you were looking for completely different (in fact OPPOSITE) results, wouldn’t it make sense to do a completely different exercise?
If you do side shoulder raises then you are asking your body to build you some natural shoulder pads.
If you split your program up by body parts then you are again stepping into the bodybuilding world.
Is there a solution that allows women to get the toned athletic body they are after?
The solution can be found through functional exercises’. These are exercises that are based on using muscles together to help you with your daily functional activities. The good news is that functional exercises also burn more fat than traditional isolating exercises.
How to tone muscles without expanding them:
Rule #1: Always combine muscles together.
Do a bicep curl with a squat. Do a tricep press into a lunge. Discover exercises such as the woodchop, the bent leg dumbbell deadlift, the standing chest fly and these three exercises:
The following video shows three exercises for runners, but they are also my three favorite that I have every client do that walks into my studio. Just these three exercises work almost every muscle in the body
Rule #2: Mix up the combos, not the body parts.
If you do a new exercise then you are working the muscle in a different way. If you want to workout 5 times a week then compile a list of 30 functional full body exercises and do 6 exercises each day. If you want to hire a trainer at your local gym for a session then do that and ask them for a list and have them show you how to do it.
if you don’t know where to start or what to do then you could set up an in-home session - click here to understand how an innovative personal training company can help you workout from home on your own schedule
Rule #3: A little soreness and a little grit is good.
Some soreness the next day is good - the intensity of your workout doesn’t have to be such that you crack a filling, but does have to be enough that you give a slight grimace at the end of the set (think tight jeans’ grimace but not compressive evil high heels’ grimace) .
Because we are no longer isolating muscle groups your capacity to grow muscle is significantly reduced. Because we are also working multiple muscles every time, the toning of these multiple muscle groups also becomes the primary focus of your body. So once you feel confident with the technique, fire up the Gloria Gaynor on your ipod and get into the workout.
Rule #4: Remember that you are working more muscles, which means burning more calories
If you do a isolating bicep curl, you burn one muscle group. If you do a ’squat with a bicep curl to overhead press’ then you just worked about 15 more muscles in the same time period. Which one worked more muscles? Which one burned more calories? Which workout style is going to get your body leaner and meaner in a shorter period of time?
Do I ever use these muscle-isolating machines? No, I don’t.
Do I ever have any of my clients use there machines? No, I don’t.
Every workout I ever do has a functional training focus to it. But I dont do it because I want to stay lean. Nor do I work in a functional movement system to have toned muscles.
I do functional workouts because they are fun.
At the end of the workout I have a sweat on my brow and a smile on my face - what more could I ask for than that?
Yours in health,
Jamie Atlas
http://jamieatlas.wordpress.com
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