Long after the newbie gains had faded, Tracy realized that her low calorie, high cardio lifestyle would never give her the look she wanted. So she took action, moved on, and got the results she was after.
Your go-to “this always works” workout isn’t working anymore? uh-oh. Say goodbye to newbie gains…
Newbie gains are what I like to call the “Teenager Phase” of Fat Loss. This is a period of time, that you can pretty much “rebel” against the basic rules of fat loss, and quite possible still see results. Put simply, in the beginning of your journey, you can literally do ANYTHING (even if it’s the wrong thing) and still get “results.” Because of this brief period, we can often be led astray and down a longggg path of rebellion. We tend to shrug off recommendations of not making drastic changes that are unsustainable, or that certain styles of workouts are not the best choice for our goals. We think “Hey, I’m getting results…I don’t know what they’re talking about!”
During the newbie phase, even the impossible…is possible. Muscles grow super fast, fat melts off, everyone notices all your hard work and praises you for it. You’re pretty much floating on cloud nine, feeling invincible, and telling everyone that you know that you’ve found “the secret” to weight loss (pretty much associating that secret to whatever the random thing is that you’re doing.)
Side note…Buyers Beware: I can’t even begin to tell you how many weight loss books would remain on the shelves if we removed all those that were written strictly on the basis of one person’s newbie gains results. It’s really not the author’s fault though…the results are so addicting that they truly believe they’ve found the cure.
Back to the newbie gains process. The first six months can be ridiculously blissful, the results are insane and you think that you will FINALLY have the body you’ve always wanted with just a bit more work. Right around the six month mark, muscle gains/fat loss progress begins to slow down (though most of us are in the early stages of denial, and push harder). By month 12, many find that they are actually regaining the fat that they lost in the first six months and any semblance of muscle begins to fade. What do you do when you realize that your “free pass” has expired? What are the next steps?
If you’ve been getting phenomenal results for months, then suddenly notice your go-to workout isn’t working like it used to…it may be time to follow the “rules” now.
Main points covered in today’s broadcast:
~Newbie Gains: The Teenager Phase of Fat Loss
~How to identify when your newbie gains phase is over
~What works now will not work forever. Accept this, don’t ignore it.
~Plateaus WILL come, don’t get too comfortable/cocky and think that because you’re seeing amazing results quickly, that the rules don’t apply to you.
~Have a plan (even if tentative/flexible) for what to do at each plateau (again…they WILL come).
~There is no perfect plan. Once newbie gains fade, your plan must include a variety of phases (discussed in the broadcast)
~True newbie gains may last 1-2 years for some, with the best progress happening after the first few months of acclimation/neural adaptation. When “results” seem to come for this long, many can become easily deceived/convinced that a certain style of working out is the only thing that “works” for them. Avoid this extreme thinking, and move on when the time calls for it.
BOTTOM LINE: Newbie gains will stop. Enjoy it while it lasts, but be prepared to execute plan B.
Hope you enjoy the replay, Fam!
~Kiki
PS. Got questions? I’m on Periscope and Facebook M-F, to answer your FAQs. So make sure you’re following @EM2WL and click “live subscribe” to get notifications the second I start the next broadcast!
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Apple Pie Quest Bar (baked) with Oikos Frozen Greek Yogurt
Whatever reason YOU started lifting (get stronger, build muscle, lose fat, etc), by now you’re likely seeing supplements promoted left and right as “must-haves.” While it may not be that serious, there’s a time and place for everything, including supplementation. Supps can complete a diet that is perhaps lacking in some departments (vitamins, minerals, etc.), give you more energy, recover faster, or simply give you an edge in your training. Whether you take preworkout faithfully or are completely new to the world of supplements, there are general supps that can help anyone. Let’s review the top 10 supplements for building muscle, and make sure you get your money’s worth at the local vitamin store.
Whey Protein– Great for recovery and repair of muscle tissue. You can get whey protein in the form of a powder or a bar, but it’s best to consume in shake form to hit the blood stream fast. Chug a post-workout whey protein shake as soon as possible (30-60 min) after a workout.
Branched Chain Amino Acids – Also referred to as BCAA’s, this supplement allows your body to workout longer, as it delays the time it takes to reach exhaustion. It also helps reduce the amount of damage done to the muscles, as well as increasing speed of recovery. Sip BCAA’s throughout your workout for best results.
Creatine – Our bodies naturally produce creatine, but supplementation can help further increase the effect and function. Use of creatine increases shorter bursts of energy and helps boost recovery between back-to-back exercises. Take creatine as part of a pre-workout drink.
Caffeine – Hands down the most common stimulant, caffeine helps delay the onset of fatigue, improves endurance and makes you feel more alert. Because of this, you may work very hard but don’t realize how much you’re exerting yourself, allowing you to work extra hard. Caffeine is best taken 1/2-1 hour before a workout.
Green Energy – Green energy, or green tea, can help enhance the muscle’s ability to recover. Green energy also contains antioxidants, which help reduce inflammation and destroy free-radicals that cause harm to the body. If you are stimulant-sensitive, take green tea earlier in the day.
Nitrates– If you’ve ever experience a workout pump, that’s largely due to your blood filling out your muscles as a result of them being worked. This is referred to as vascular response. Taking nitrates such as arginine, beet root extract and citrulline will help vasodilation and secretion of growth hormone. These ingredients are often found in pre-workout drinks.
Omega-3 Fatty Acids – If you’re looking to reduce the amount of damage the muscle tissue undergoes as a result of exercise, Omega-3’s can help. DOMS, delayed-onset muscle soreness, has been shown to reduce when Omega-3’s are regularly taken. Take some Omega-3’s with your morning vitamins.
Carnitine – Much like Omega-3’s, carnitine also helps reduce DOMS. Additionally, carnitine helps reduce inflammation and the amount and severity of muscle damage. Take carnitine before or after your workout to enhance muscle growth, performance and recovery.
Beta-Alanine – If you’re wanting something to reduce the amount of fatigue you’re feeling throughout your workouts, this may be the supplement for you. Beta-alanine also reduces muscle fatigue. This ingredient is often found in pre-workouts or can be added to one that doesn’t contain it.
Ginger Root – Experiencing some level of pain after a workout kinda comes with the territory. By taking ginger root, you can help reduce the amount of pain you experience in the 24-hour window after exercising. Inflammation reduction is a large part of how ginger root keeps muscle soreness at a minimum. It is best taken at interspersed intervals throughout the day.
In addition to following a structured, progressive workout routine, the use of supplements can help improve your performance and perhaps even help take it to the next level. While there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of supplements out there, it can make it very confusing to figure out which ones are best for you and worth the investment. If you’re an advanced lifter, looking to enhance performance in the gym, feed your muscles properly, and reduce the amount of damage/soreness you feel — you may want to give a few of these top ten supplements a try.
As with anything in life, some things work for some people but not for others. Never feel obligated to take EVERY supplement listed. Remember that supps are meant to supplement what you’re doing in the gym (and the kitchen!), not replace it. So make sure your eating and workouts are already on point before even concerning yourself with supplementation. Then, add a supplement to see how it helps.
In our last post, we discussed the the necessity and benefits of working your back muscles regularly, learning to do pull-ups, and why I’m just so in loveee with them as both a trainER and trainEE.
I hope I’ve convinced you to give this beloved exercise a shot. If nothing else for the confidence boost both inside (from knowing how dang strong you are!) and out (the upright “confident” posture courtesy of the lat muscles balancing out the over-worked anterior muscles). The super sexy back, and über cool points that it will get you with friends, family (especially the kids!) is just an awesome bonus. ;)
It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been able to do a pull-up in your life, it’s never too late to start training for it. I was the wimpy (and proud) girl in gym class that participated in ZERO fit tests for fear of looking silly to my classmates (mainly one particular, future-hubs-classmate, if we’re being honest). I didn’t learn to crank out pull-ups until well into my adult years.
Side note: because of my shame over my past pull-up transgressions, my homeschooled son has never been able to escape my militant pull-up training. At 17, he can “jump and give me 10” no matter how long it’s been since he last officially “worked out.” (Just challenged him, pop-quiz style, yesterday because it had been about a year…”sooo how many pull-ups do you think you can do now?” He proceeded to crank out 15 with ease before tossing the smart aleck teenage smirk my way…whatevs).
Try hanging from the pull-up bar.
Jump up on a pull-up bar, or pull a step or dumbbell up to the pull-up bar and instead of jumping up, use a stool to boost you closer to the bar and release your feet to a hanging position once your arms are securely gripped. See how this feels. If this isn’t horrible, proceed to the next tip. If you struggle with this task, see part one of this series, and work on exercises listed there, as well as the following for at least a month and then try bar hangs again:
*Work on your back strength. Use various back exercises such as lat pull-downs, single arm cable rows, one arm dumbbell rows, bent over rows, etc. to test your strength gains.
*Work on your grip/forearm strength. Do open finger dumbbell holds, farmer carries and plate pinches.
Remember that the strength rep range is about 5-6 reps or less. If your strength phase proves nonproductive (your numbers are stagnant for 2-4 weeks), move to an endurance phase and then try again after a few weeks.
Try (a variety of) assisted variations.
*Vertical pulls – hold on to any vertical surface (bar, pole, door frame, etc,) and pull your body “chest to bar.” This may seem like a basic move, but building the endurance here will benefit later. Often we skip the exercises that seem “too basic” only to discover that we don’t have the base muscle strength/endurance to advance in the real move.
*Jackknife pulls or inverted rows – hold your feet out straight in front of you and lie under a bar, or chair. Pull your chest toward the bar, practicing both an over AND underhand grip position. Bend your knees as needed if you need to further modify this move.
*Move on to partner assisted pull-ups, not on a machine, but with the aid of a workout partner. Have your workout partner support your legs (bend legs at the knees) and help push your body weight up. You essentially need to take the majority of the weight yourself, but your partner can assist as needed and to the appropriate degree.
*No partner? Try band-assisted pull-ups. There is another variation of assisted pull-ups you can try that can be done without a workout partner and not on an assisted pull-up machine. This other variation involves using a thick resistance band. Hook the band around the top of pull-up bar/handles and let it hang. Hook your hands on the bar and bend your legs behind you, resting your knees in the band loop. It’s kind of strange to do these at first, as you feel like you have to really balance yourself, but you will catch on shortly.
The assisted pull-up machine is a great tool if you don’t have a partner. Just remember that the goal with this machine is to go *down* in weight over time — rather than up, like most machines. Using less of the machine weight means that you are pulling more of your bodyweight. ;)
Other assisted variations:
Chair Assist
Machine assisted
Go negative.
When you can do assisted variations with ease, start incorporating negative pull-ups. Negative pull-ups will develop your lat strength like no-other. They will teach you how to pull with your back (not your arms), and allow you to pull more of your own body weight each time. You can do either straight sets of negatives-only (3-4 sets of 1-6 negative reps), or incorporate them with your assisted pull-ups. Simply do as many assisted pull-ups as you can, then bang out another 2-3 negative reps. Or go up assisted, and come down negative with full body weight.
Tying it all together: Pull-up Progression Schedule
If you’ve done all of the above, and allowed yourself to patiently progress through various stages, you should be ready to crank it! But if you’ve gone to attempt a pull-up again and still feel ill-prepared, try the following pull-up progression from one of my fave bodyweight exercise books: Convict Conditioning. It breaks down pretty much every bodyweight move and gives you awesome guidelines on how to progress from beginner modifications to the “elite” version of each (one arm push/pull-up, one-leg squat, etc).
Incorporate the following into your regular back workouts over the next few months. Start at the beginning of each “level” – once you work your way up to the “progression” amount, move to the starting amount of the next level. Do NOT rush through the progressions, but rather allow your body to acclimate to each level, so that you have the strength and endurance of the muscles needed to pull your entire body weight, with zero assistance: (see the playlist below for demo of each “level”)
Vertical Pulls: Start with 1 set of 10, work your way up to 3 sets of 40
Horizontal Pulls: (inverted rows): Start with 1 set of 10, work your way up to 3 sets of 30
Jacknife Pullup: Start with 1 set of 10, work your way up to 3 sets of 20
Half Pullups: Start with 1 set of 8, work your way up to 2 sets of 15
Full Pullups: Start with 1 set of 5, work your way up to 2 sets of 10
Regardless of which level you’re at in the process, continue to test and retest. Even if it seems like a shot in the dark, jump up ever-so-often, and give it a shot. Can’t do a full pull up? Can you bend your arms a bit more than last time? Eyeballs almost over the bar? Great! That’s progress. Keep executing your steps and retesting. Take every new milestone as a sign that you’re that much closer!
It should go without saying, but I figure I may as well address the elephant in the room. FOOD. If you’re still afraid of getting your grub on, don’t expect too much from your lifts. Gaining strength requires sufficient fuel, and you will often notice the difference in your level of beastiness based on your intake (amount AND type). I won’t go into much more detail, but just an FYI so you know where to look if you are doing “everything right” and still seem to be plateauing in your lifts — you simply may not be eating enough.
As with any progress, patience is key. Gaining strength and perfecting a new exercise, especially a difficult one, takes time. Focus on increasing your upper body strength and you will notice that other lifts will subsequently increase as well. As you become stronger in your journey towards perfecting a body weight pull-up, you’ll notice your lifts in general will take off in an upward trend. Before you know it, you’ll be showing up that guy that’s flailing around under the pull-up bar! And THAT moment…priceless. ;)
What lift/exercise is the ultimate test of strength?
Depending on who you ask, you’ll likely hear different answers to the question. Most trainers (myself included) will agree on the basic beasty moves as gold standards of testing strength: bench, overhead press, barbell row, squat and deadlift. But when I see someone (man OR woman) squatting, benching, rowing or deadlifting massive amounts of weight, then flailing like a fish out of water trying to pull-up their own body weight, it makes me wonder if the pull-up is the ultimate strength test exercise. Not only do pull-ups require well-developed back strength, but they also require grip, forearm and core strength, too.
My clients know that I’m a stickler about tackling pull-ups, no matter how weak they feel they may be in their upper body. The guys may feel like it has nothing to do with the overall chest/abs/bicep physique they covet, while ladies tend to be afraid of getting a “wide” back (v-taper) for fear of looking too “manly.” Instead of bicep curling into oblivion, many men would be fairly impressed by the bicep development they would get from merely tossing a few sets of chin-ups into their arm routine. Ladies would do well to know that it’s VERY hard to develop a v-taper without properly periodized nutrition and training for that precise purpose. Not to mention that developing one would actually give more women (especially pear shapes), a MORE feminine, hourglass shape. Whatever the case for not wanting to do pull-ups, the benefits of developing this skill go far beyond the physique changes.
Most women are inherently weaker in the upper body when compared to the lower, and in the back side of their body when compared to the front. We ladies tend to spend most of our lives in anterior or “forward” motion: we push strollers and shopping carts, nurture children in our wombs, hold babies, pick our toddlers up and down, type, text, have boobs, etc. Essentially, we are always pushing, holding, handling weighted objects, or attending to general business on the front side of our bodies.
The repetitive motion of these movements causes the muscles at the front part of our bodies (pecs/anterior shoulders) to tighten (shoulder to shoulder across the boobs), and the muscles across the back (shoulder to shoulder across the upper back) to become lax from under-use. Going into the gym and regularly maxing out on your bench, with little attention to the back side of your body, can horribly exasperate the problem. This leads not only to increased shoulder pain, but also to a forward rounded shoulder (the dreaded “hunchback” look) as we age. Exercises such as deadlift, row, and yes – pull-ups, that challenge your back from all angles is essential to a well rounded routine and an upright body that screams confidence!.
Put in pull up practice…everywhere!
Pull-ups are NOT easy!
Back in the day (can’t believe I’m old enough to say that! LOL) pull-ups were part of our education. They weren’t necessarily mandatory, but we were tested on them at least once/year and it was generally accepted that it was something that most boys should be able to do with ease. Girls were often graded by how long they could “hang” on the bar. With the more relaxed Physical Education requirements in recent years, it’s not uncommon to see boys become men who can’t even do one pull-up (my husband cringes at the sight of my nephews’ attempts at pull ups). If men are struggling with pull-ups, it’s no wonder us women tend to be, too. Simply jumping up to a pull-up bar and hanging on for dear life can seem more taxing than it was in our youth, but learning to do body weight pull-ups isn’t impossible!
But it DOES take patience and persistence, which our generation seems to have lost…
The amount of time it takes to learn to do a pull-up will vary – depending on factors such as current fitness level, consistency, body weight, etc. Obviously, the more you weigh, the more you have to pull-up, and vice versa. But don’t get tempted to use your weight as an excuse (“I can’t do pull ups, I’m too heavy!” …”when I lose weight I’ll learn” or “but they’re so light, it’s easy for them!!”), start practicing NOW. Pulling your body weight is pulling your body weight… per capita, it’s tough for everyone. Take your time, be consistent, and build up your strength. You CAN eventually do a full pull-up.
Then 2…4…10 and so on!
Ready to dive in?
Let’s talk equipment.
Simply hanging from the bar is the first and hardest step!
If you have a membership at your local gym, they should have you covered (in which case, feel free to scan/speed read through this next bit).
If pullups aren’t currently a part of your routine, you may not have an actual pull-up bar, or even access to one. I highly recommend ultimately investing in a pullup bar like the iron gym or similar apparatus (they’re fairly cheap), if you plan on working out at home exclusively. I’m a home exerciser myself, and my bar is worth it’s weight in gold!
But until then, enjoy homemade versions, and the great outdoors… always keep your eye out for pullup “bars” hidden in plain sight to work on perfecting your craft ;)
Some places you can practice your pull up skillz:
monkey bars
stairs with no riser (like in outdoor apartment buildings)
under chairs/tables
Beginner Pull up Prep
The biggest mistake that most newbies make with pull ups is simply walking up to the bar, attempting a pull up, and walking away discouraged. No one can/should expect to dive right in to doing pull ups without first having a base strength/endurance levels. If you currently can’t even hang on the bar for an extended period of time, do NOT attempt pull ups just yet.
Here are a few exercises that you can start doing now to build up the lat strength to be able to do a pullup:
Dips (best if they are done on parallel bars or positioned between two chairs in this manner, to fully involve the lats)
Elbow Presses (on a wall, or on the floor with elbows in at your side for more challenge)
Vertical pulls (use any bar or wall alternating hands at different angles)
Once you have sufficient strength to perform those exercises, you should be able to move into a basic pullup progression.
Whatever your starting point, just start. Take on the challenge! If you’re completely lost for where to start, there are a few steps you can take and exercises you can add into your weightlifting routine to get one step closer to being a pull-up princess. In the next part of this series, we’ll go over a few tips on how to bang out that first pull-up.
Until then…
~Kiki :)
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If you’re stuck in a relationship with your scale — using it as the primary tool of measuring the success of your diet and workout program — then it’s time to break up! Using the scale to gauge your success may tell you if you are losing weight or not, but it will not tell you about the QUALITY of the weight that you are losing. You have no way of knowing if those losses that you may be seeing are fat, water, or even worse, muscle!
The diet industry has done very little to change this perception. Advertisements continually pound consumers with promises for quick and permanent weight loss, often through decreased caloric intake and increased exercise (“eat less, move more”). Although this may result in a significant (scale) weight loss, initially, what is not taken into account is that much of what these consumers will be losing is muscle, rather than fat. This muscle loss is a primary reason that weight gain will likely occur when they are no longer able to maintain this low calorie/high exercise regimen. Every dieter has experienced this “fall off the wagon” weight gain upon returning to their previous eating habits. Plain and simple: if your weight loss plan results in muscle loss rather than fat loss, your metabolism will soon be in trouble!
The Importance of Muscle
Muscle is so important because it is essential for maintaining one’s BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). Your BMR is responsible for approximately 2/3 of your daily caloric burn or TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). Without muscle mass and fuel (food), your metabolism will soon likely slow to a crawl. Indiscriminately dieting and exercising without the end goal being muscle gain (or at least maintenance) is a sure recipe for disaster: muscle LOSS.
Losing all of that valuable, metabolically active muscle mass, is setting yourself up for a rebound weight gain. You can’t maintain a very low caloric intake combined with excessive cardio workouts, so you’ll inevitably return to your old eating habits — or perhaps continue to restrict — but now with occasional all-out binges thrown in. With your muscle-deficient metabolism creeping along at an all-time low, this increased intake will inevitably result in weight (fat) gain. Following a low calorie diet combined with (often excessive) aerobic exercise will most likely result in an initial scale weight loss, but if the loss is muscle rather than fat, this scenario is setting you up to become a smaller, flabbier version of your current self (the dreaded “skinny fat”).
If weight loss is your goal, then you want to make sure that what you are losing is truly fat, and not metabolism-fueling muscle mass. The body naturally burns more calories each and every day to support a pound of muscle than it does to support a pound of fat (which is metabolically inactive), so the end goal should be to have as much muscle as possible in an effort to keep the metabolism running at a high rate.
What does this have to do with the scale?
Muscle is dense and, by volume (the amount of space it occupies on your body), weighs much more than the flabbier fat. The end result: if you build some *heavier* muscle, your body will appear smaller and tighter due to the dense nature of muscle, but the scale may not show much movement downwards. Hence the reason to not put a lot of emphasis on the number that you may see on the scale.
Other than the scale, there are many ways to monitor progress, from the most basic, right up to the most technologically advanced methods (BodPod testing, Bio-electrical Impedance, skin-fold caliper testing, measurements and simply taking progress photos all can be very useful). If nothing else, everyone should start with a set of progress photos and update them on a monthly basis. Once you begin strength training, you will be glad you did!
So what can you do to ensure long-term success? Invest some time in some strength training. Build some metabolically active muscle in an effort to keep your metabolism running at optimal levels. Just doing plain old cardio or aerobic exercise will do little if nothing to build muscle, and in fact, doing too much will actually begin to break down that hard-earned muscle tissue. The best thing you can do for yourself and your metabolism is to build some muscle tissue. Not only will you be physically stronger, but you will be less susceptible to injury, and your body composition will begin to change and improve over time. Soon you will notice that you can fit into clothes which were previously too tight, even though the scale is not really moving. Being strong is also empowering!
When considering a nutrition and exercise program, muscle growth and maintenance should be “front and center.” Seek out a good, periodized strength training program and start to challenge yourself. Confused as to where to start? Check out EM2WL’s Beginner Strength Training Manual for answers to the most frequently asked questions, as well as a complete 12-week workout plan, access to a *bonus* private area with video demonstrations of each exercise, & a place for any other questions you have along your journey. Combine strength training with fueling your body properly by eating at or slightly below your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) and you will be on the road to success!
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In the world of women’s sports, we’ve moved far beyond the days of basketball, softball, and tennis. Weight lifting sports have not only expanded to include women, but we now have a variety of iron-based sports to choose from. Because the concept of lifting is such new territory for some, it’s easy to want to mesh every sport that uses a barbell into the same category. But just as with football and futbol, figure skating and ice hockey, long distance running and sprinting – one sport may have commonalities with another (equipment/environment), yet be entirely different (execution/goal).
Let’s take a general overview at the difference between four popular women’s lifting sports:
Crossfit– This Reebok Sponsored event has catapulted in popularity over the last decade. The goal of Crossfit (CF) athletes is to be prepared for anything: “the unknown, and the unknowable.” It combines a variety of strength and conditioning exercises such as deadlifts, pistol squats, kipping pull ups, overhead squats and hand stand pushups with bouts of cardio (rowing, running, swimming, etc). WOD’s, or workouts of the day, are the “bible” of Crossfit and give athletes their game plan for their daily workout. Official WODs are done in a CF “box,” led by a CF accredited coach. Most workouts are done for time — not reps, like most typical strength training — though the occasional 1×1, 3×5, or 5×5-type WOD will make an appearance to enhance strength gains. This sport can be very fast-paced, requiring both speed and precision in execution/form of basic strength and Olympic lifts. Because of this, a strength base is typically well-established before entering Crossfit (top CF athletes often cross over from being a top athlete in another sport). CF athletes strive for a high anaerobic capacity, and train their bodies to hit their lactate threshold (you know…that pukey HIIT feeling? LOL) at any given time. Winners of the increasingly popular “Crossfit Games” are crowned with the title of “The fittest (woman) on earth.”
Strongwoman– If you’re familiar with the sport of Strongman, then you’re mostly familiar with Strongwoman (SW) – though you may not realize it. Since Crossfit seems to have put women’s lifting “on the map” – it can be easy to assume that the average Strongwoman is a CF woman. Though a SW can (and many do) perform a WOD with little difficulty, the competition training for this event and the equipment used varies from that of CF – mainly in it’s specializations. This sport also involves strength, muscle endurance and distance events. However, women compete with each other doing exercises such as sled (or truck ;)) push/drags, bag carries, tire deadlifts, atlas stones, farmer’s walks, log pressing, etc. These exercises all require excellent cardio condition and ability to handle large amounts of weight in often unbalanced situations. This sport is medium-paced, depending on the event taking place, and winners are deemed the “strongest” (woman) in the state/nation, etc.
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Powerlifting– Most forms of lifting borrow from the three main compound lifts that come together in the sport of Powerlifting (PL) – bench press, squat and deadlift. Though PL women will often dip in to all rep ranges and may participate in a variety of physical activities/lifts, the sole focus of this sports’ competitions is strength in the main lifts. So as comp season nears, the conditioning and endurance levels built in other phases are put to the test as they train for record breaking strength feats. PL ladies compete by weight class and get three attempts at each lift, ideally increasing the weight with each lift. Proper form is essential, and a competitor must get two white lights (signaling good form/a good lift) out of three lights total (red lights occur when form is improper or commands aren’t adhered to). This sport is definitely on the slower side, as you need adequate rest between each heavy attempt.
Bodybuilding– While CF may be getting all of the recent media coverage, women’s bodybuilding (BB) has been around for decades, and is often the term that comes to mind when someone first hears of a woman wanting to “lift weights.” Unfortunately, the image that usually pops into mind with this term is often negative, and based on only one division of this sport (bodybuilding). Women’s BB actually consists of four different divisions: bodybuilding, physique, figure and bikini — each having a separate set of aesthetic requirements for competition (which I will address in the next part of this series). BB athletes can and do participate in all types of lifting activities in their off-season, though most training utilizes some form of periodization that leads the desired look for their event. These women train with traditional forms of weight lifting — using both compound and isolation movements — to aesthetically enhance every muscle in the body. Preparing for this sport involves manipulating various training variables (food/rep ranges/types of cardio) to first maximize muscle mass gains, and ultimately to achieve abnormally lean results for a brief period of time (as per specific division requirement). These competitions are purely based off of appearance and stage presence, sort of like a beauty-pageant style event for women who lift. Though properly trained BBers are plenty strong, actual strength is irrelevant to the competition, as you are judged solely off things such as musculature, symmetry, tan, hair, makeup, suit, etc.
Society still presents some degree of hesitation when it comes to ladies being more than the stereotypical “weaker sex,” and many ladies still hesitate to join the movement. Nevertheless, with the popularity of programs like P90x, more sculpted bodies gracing women’s magazine covers, and the recent explosion of Crossfit, ladies are making a breakthrough in the lifting scene. Many women now take pride in developing higher levels of strength, and increasing levels of confidence to take on the competition scene. Though the various sports are often lumped into one category, the lifting revolution shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
In part 2 of this series, we’ll break down the different divisions of bodybuilding. Til then, go out and lift a barbell, dumbbell, your body, a truck…something heavy! ;)
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