In general, bodybuilding still isn’t something readily associated with women. The cultural stereotype still exists that women work out to get smaller and men work out to get bigger. While the stereotype does still have some basis in reality for the general public, there is certainly a large population of female bodybuilders.

One problematic result of this stereotype is the lack of readily available information. Disturbingly, the top three or four links after a Google search on “female bodybuilding” will take you to sites that have fitness information, supplement information, erotic chat and nude photographs. Many women who want to compete in bodybuilding end up nearly forced to sell risqué or nude products because they aren’t as supported financially as male bodybuilders.

Two questions are commonly asked by women looking into bodybuilding: should they exercise differently than men and are they genetically predisposed to building muscle in the same way men do?

Before delving into anything genetic, the first consideration relates to sociology and psychology. Aside from professional bodybuilding, which isn’t what we’re discussing, the goals of men and women are likely to be quite different when it comes to working out. The main reason for this is society and the ideals of attractiveness we’ve created.

I’m neither agreeing with nor condemning this; I’m simply stating it as a fact. While an argument can easily be made, and I fully support the argument, that everyone should improve their health and physique for themselves alone, the reality is that many people do it with the desire to be attractive to the opposite sex.

Thus, the goal of someone working out is going to be at least somewhat dependant on the culturally accepted stereotype of sexiness. In our current society, this means that many women are deeply concerned with becoming too muscular for fear of not being desirable any longer.

There is very little difference in the way men and women build and develop muscles. The main difference is due to women producing less testosterone than men. One effect of this is that women won’t naturally get as large and bulky as men, regardless of their training regimen.

This hormonal difference also has an impact on the level of intensity a woman should put her body through. Although the general public doesn’t seem to know this, we develop larger muscles because working out inflicts microscopic “tears” in the muscle tissue. The muscles grow in size and strength as the body rebuilds them, which is why proper recuperation after working out is so important.

Because testosterone is important to the rebuilding of muscles, and women naturally have less of it, it is estimated that women should only work out at eighty-five to ninety percent of the intensity of their male counterparts. Scientific examination and testing has repeatedly proven that women and men both burn fat equally well.

The concept of burning fat does present one potential downside for women working out. The act of increasing muscle mass and tone does not decrease the size of a woman’s breasts; in fact, increasing the size of the pectoral muscles can actually make them appear larger. However, greatly reducing overall body fat through either diet or exercise can reduce a woman’s breast size. In my opinion, your overall health should be more important than the size of your chest, but it’s a personal decision.

Pregnancy may be a concern for women who work out seriously, but then again it may not. Experts don’t seem able to reach a consensus. Most sport science and medical people believe that the individual can make her own determination regarding appropriate levels of working out while many obstetricians and gynecologists have a much more conservative attitude. As always when experts disagree, the final decision rests with the individual.

There is an ongoing controversial debate going on with regards to the proper way to train with weights. The aim of this article is to give you some information on both sides so that you can make a determination for yourself.

The concept of training to failure is a fairly simple one: you continue doing repetitions of a particular exercise until you cannot do another repetition properly. This doesn’t mean that you continue repetitions until you don’t think you can do another repetition; you continue until you don’t have adequate muscle strength to actually complete another repetition.

To effectively weight train, it’s understood that you must push yourself. If you want to see increased improvement, then you have to operate under increased opposition. If you never read anything but first-grade level books, you’ll never learn to read at a level beyond the first grade. This is obviously common sense and there is no argument against it.

It’s the implementation of this concept that causes controversy. For ongoing improvement in weight training, you’re going to increase the number of repetitions you do or increase the amount of weight you use at the same number of repetitions. Increased repetitions are advocated for developing a leaner, more toned physique while increased weight is advocated for developing increased muscle mass.

Some people advocate a schedule of increases of either the number of repetitions and/or the amount of weight used. Following this train of thought, for example, you plan to increase the amount of weight you use by five pounds every two weeks. Or you plan to add five repetitions of the same weight every two weeks.

The key to this plan is that you determine the number of repetitions in advance, knowing that you could go further but opting not to push yourself. The ongoing increase in either weight or reps ensures that you will continue to develop your strength and muscles.

On the other side of the camp, we have the folks who endorse training to failure. Following this method, you generally still have an incremental schedule for increasing the amount of weight used, but the number of reps varies. You do it until you can’t do it any longer.

The controversy ensues, obviously, because training to failure increases the chance of overtraining and injury. Various studies have been done, showing that training to failure does not substantially improve muscle development, but many thousands of hardcore weight trainers disagree based on their experience.

For many weight trainers, they compromise in some way. If they are doing three sets of a particular exercise during their workout, they only train to failure on the final set. In some ways, this compromise is a bit illogical. If training to failure is worth doing, why only do it once? If training to failure isn’t worth doing, why do it at all?

Ultimately it’s a personal decision that each weight trainer must decide for him or herself.

With that in mind, I offer only two suggestions, one for each camp:

If you’re training to failure, ensure that you are doing so as safely as possible. Failure should be defined as the time when you cannot do another rep properly. If you know you can squeeze out another few reps, but only by sacrificing proper stance, grip or movement…don’t do it!

If you’re not training to failure, ensure that you have set up a schedule that is sufficiently challenging. An increase of two pounds every three weeks certainly keeps you safe from overtraining, but you’re not going to see much of a benefit. You still need to push yourself and challenge yourself consistently.

The word vegetarian is one that has become somewhat vague among the general population because too many people have inappropriately adopted it as a label for their lifestyle. For instance, I have personally known 3 types of “vegetarians” in my life: those who don’t eat chicken, beef or pork (but will eat fish), those who don’t eat meat of any kind, and people who won’t eat anything that contains or is derived from animal sources (vegan).

Of these three definitions, the only one describing a true and sincere vegetarian is the last. This article is written for these people, so I am operating under the assumption that you are extremely sincere about not ingesting any and all animal products.

Adhering to a strict vegetarian diet takes work and conscious attention and building muscles takes work and conscious attention, so putting them together certainly doesn’t make either one easier.

The first challenge goes back to the way muscles build in our bodies. To increase the amount of muscle mass and improve the tone of muscles, the body needs protein. Our body uses protein for repairing and building new muscles. The challenge is because the most common source of protein is meat and other animal products.

According to one system for measuring the protein in food, the Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score, soy is equal to whey and superior to beef in protein content. Realistically, soy provides all 8 essential amino acids required for growing and repairing muscles. For the strict vegetarian, soy is an excellent option for getting the protein so desperately needed for building muscles.

In addition to protein, soy is also a fantastic source of glutamine which many bodybuilders already take in supplemental form, so soy is sort of a double-whammy for the bodybuilder.

Soy is available in many different forms and types, so you have many options. Low-fat tofu, tempeh, seitan, miso, textured soy protein, soy powder and soy milk. The soy milk is especially helpful because it can be utilized as a replacement for cow’s milk in any recipe you come across.

Aside from protein, the vegetarian bodybuilder needs to work at ensuring they get enough quality fat. Almonds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and pistachio nuts are all excellent sources of both protein and fat. You can also add a tablespoon or so of flaxseed oil, as flax seed is one of the very best sources for the essential fatty acid alpha linolenic acid.

With the protein and fat questions taken care of, we need to find suitable sources of vitamins. The meal-replacement shakes which are incredibly popular with bodybuilders tend to be bursting at the seams with many vitamins and minerals. You may have to hunt specifically for one containing B12, or find an additional B12 supplement, because vitamin B12 is only found in animal products.

With these three areas covered, you will have enough of the natural building blocks for creating and improving muscle mass and tone. Being a vegetarian bodybuilder isn’t nearly as unlikely as it may sound at first.

Weightlifting is becoming an increasingly common hobby for teenagers and this trend has left some parents concerned that their child may be putting themselves at risk by engaging in body building.

While there has been a concern that lifting extremely heavy weights can stunt bone growth by causing premature growth plate closure, there is no actual proof of this. At best, studies have suggested it as a possibility. A large number of very large professional athletes started lifting weights at a young age and if their growth was stunted, I shudder to think how big they would be if it hadn’t! Until there is scientific evidence proving this possibility, it should probably be dismissed as a myth.

With that out of the way, however; there are some realistic concerns that should be addressed about weightlifting done by teenagers. The good news is that they can nearly all be eliminated by the presence and guidance of an adult.

Truly, adhering to the same basic guidelines for safety that adults adhere to is enough to protect most teenagers from harm in the gym. That adult presence, however, is often necessary to ensure such adherence.

As most adults know (and most teenagers vehemently deny), teenagers can sometimes act impulsively, on minimal information, or with total disregard for established protocol and practices. This is due to a lack of experience and an understandably immature reasoning capacity.

One common result of this problem is the feeling of invulnerability; basically the (often subconscious) belief that bad things may happen to other people but nothing bad will happen to me. It leads teenagers to race cars on open highways, casually experiment with illicit drugs, practice unsafe sexual habits and, in the gym, attempt to lift weights beyond their physical capacity.

As with adult weightlifters, using weights which are too heavy exposes the teenage bodybuilder to risks of serious injury. The same is true of not following proper form standards, which is something that can occur too frequently when groups of teenage boys lift weights together without an adult present. Joking leads to messing around and goofing off which leads to a momentary lapse in focus and concentration while in the process of lifting. Again, the injuries sustained due to improper form can be extremely severe.

The other risky behavior seen among teen bodybuilders is a bit more difficult to prevent: supplement abuse. Many teenagers believe that they are too intelligent, savvy and hip to be persuaded by advertiser’s blatant attempts to sell them products or services. In many ways, this is true, as overt advertising directed at teenagers tends to be heavy-handed and transparent.

Within the bodybuilding community, however; the advertisements for many supplements are not nearly as obvious. Columns and articles frequently appear in bodybuilding magazines promoting the superiority of a particular supplement line. Given that these are portions of the magazine, not paid advertisements, they fly in under the radar of the advertising conscious teenager…and, for that matter, many adults as well.

The trick is in the fact that a large percentage of these magazines are produced by companies who also produce supplement lines. This fact is not particularly advertised, which allows the articles to appear completely unbiased when, in fact, there may be a company bias behind them.

Supplements, used properly, don’t tend to be dangerous. However, falling back on the invincibility complex, teenagers are more likely to use too much of the supplement and/or ignore the instructions and rely on the supplement instead of eating. The results of this behavior are risky, in theory, though the dangers haven’t yet been scientifically proven.

Overall, as with most activities engaged in by teenagers, their youth and inexperience makes the teenage bodybuilder more susceptible to problems than their adult counterparts. Proper form and safety procedures will make the hobby safe, however; so an adult should lend guidance to the young bodybuilder to make certain they are being safe.

Simply put, there is no real muscle building program that is going to be best for everyone. The nature of humanity is that everyone is a different person and, despite our similarities, we are all different. So, let’s examine the basic structure of a successful program for building up your muscles so that you’ll have a strong foundation to build your individual program from.

Develop a Plan

The old adage says that failing to plan is planning to fail and it’s very true. You need to know what goal you are pursuing, specifically. You need to know why you want to achieve this goal. You need to know what you need to do to achieve that goal, in terms of eating habits and specific exercises. Finally, you need to know when you are going to do each of these things.

Obviously, you can do these things however you want. The important thing is to ask and answer these questions. I have found that I have more success when my answers are extremely specific and when I write them down.

Use Your Brain As Much As Your Body

Working out consistently and intensely cannot be accomplished and sustained without mental focus. You’ve got to get your brain in the game! The first part of this is to keep your eye focused on why you’re doing this. This is why it’s so important that, as part of your planning, you figure out why you want to achieve your goal: that why will keep you going when you feel like you can’t.

The second part to this is to fix your self-talk. The way you talk to yourself, in your mind, has a profound impact on the way your body responds to and deals with life. If your brain is filled with negative self-talk, if you’re constantly putting yourself down and referring to yourself in negative ways, you’re not alone. Most people do. If you want your program to be as effective as possible, you need to eradicate this negative thinking as much as possible.

The third, and final, part of this is the use of creative visualization. The subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between an experience you are actually having and an experience that you are vividly imagining. Your body will respond to this as if you’re actually doing it as well. Many professional athletes attribute a lot of their success to imaginary practice. At least once a day, you should close your eyes and go through your workout as vividly as possible in your mind.

Focus on Nutrition With Equal Passion

So many people are incredibly passionate about working out and yet a surprisingly small percentage of them are as passionate about their diet. As I alluded to in the first step, you should plan the changes in your eating habits the same way you plan the changes in your exercise plan. If you want to build muscles, you need to take in more calories. You’re going to burn more of them and you’re going to need some leftover for your body to use in building your new muscles.

Incorporate Increasing Resistance Into Your Plan

While this seems obvious to many people, you’d be surprised how many folks stroll down to the gym every other day and do the exact same workout they did last time…last week…last month…last year. Obviously, if you workout with fifty pound weights every time you work out, and do the same number of reps every time you work out, you will see some benefit. However, that benefit will stall at a certain point and you won’t proceed past it.

You need to increase the amount of resistance in your workout, either by increasing the weight or by increasing the number of reps. Be realistic so that you don’t burn yourself out, but be certain you challenge yourself as well.

These are the first four principles that should form the foundation of your program. In the second part, I’ll round out your foundation with four more principles:

Utilize Free Weights and Focus on Compound Exercises;
Ensure That Your Workout Is Balanced;
Rotate Your Workout Regimen; and
Recuperate as Passionately as You Work Out.

Utilizing these principles, you can start with a foundation that will allow you to develop your own, personalized program for achieving your goals.

Part 2

There are eight principles upon which to build the foundation for your program to ensure you have the best chance of success. It part one we covered the first four:

Develop a Plan
Use Your Brain As Much As Your Body
Focus on Nutrition With Equal Passion; and
Incorporate Increasing Resistance Into Your Plan

Now, we’re going to cover the other four principles, so that you develop your program for building your muscular physique and have it optimized for success.

Utilize Free Weights and Focus on Compound Exercises

Since your intention is to build muscles, you should utilize free weights for either all or most of your workouts. While the exercise machines that have been created over the last 50 years have their use, building muscles is not their optimal use. One of the biggest reasons is most of them limit your ability to do compound exercises, or those exercises which utilize more than one muscle group at a time.

Focusing on compound exercises gives you the most “bang for your buck” and will help you get to your goals faster than doing machine based exercises that only utilize one muscle group at a time.

Ensure That Your Work Out Is Balanced

We all have some areas of our body we want to focus on more than others. We all have some exercises we enjoy more than others. However, for optimum health and the best overall physique, you should focus on your entire body. This means tackling your least favorite exercise with as much passion as you approach your favorite exercise.

Doing this goes back to step 2, utilizing your brain. Keep in mind that you are striving to be in the best shape possible, to be the healthiest person you can be. This will help you avoid injury and illness in your life as well as providing you with an optimal state of existence.

Rotate Your Workout Regimen

Because we all operate at a unique biorhythm, we are naturally inclined to workout in different ways on different days. Our maximum passion on Monday is not the same as our maximum passion on Wednesday. This is natural and sociological and, to a certain extent, beyond your control. Well, it’s not beyond your control, but it’s beyond the scope of this article.

So, let’s say you have exercise routines A, B and C – each with focuses on different muscle groups. You start by doing A on Monday, B on Wednesday and C on Friday. After four weeks, rotate so that you do C on Monday, A on Wednesday and B on Friday. Four weeks later, rotate so that you do B on Monday, C on Wednesday and A on Friday. Four weeks later, rotate back to the original schedule. Doing this will allow each group of muscles to benefit from your unique biorhythm.

Recuperate as Passionately as You Work Out

Your body needs time to recover from your workout. It’s during the recuperation period that your muscles actually increase in size and strength not during the actual work out. In step 7, my example included 3 days of working out, each day focused on a different muscle group. This means that out of 7 days, four days are total recuperation days and each muscle group has 6 days of recuperation between work outs.

In working out, as in so many other things, the law of diminishing returns applies at some point – more work start to actually equal less results. Don’t push yourself to that point by assuming that more is always better, because it’s not.

Take these eight guidelines and develop your muscle building program around them. You’ll find that by developing the program accordingly and sticking to it consistently, the body of your dreams isn’t as far away as you think it is.

There is only one way to gain weight, and that is by taking in more calories than you burn. When done with intelligence and attention to exercise, this process will make you more muscular; when done without intelligence and attention to exercise, this process will make you fat. If you’re reading this article, you’re obviously interested in gaining weight and I’m going to operate on the assumption that you aren’t looking to gain weight by getting fat. So, we’ll look at putting on some pounds by building and developing your muscles.

First, let’s do a little bit of math…and yes, you can use a calculator, but you need to write the numbers down! Take your current weight and multiply that by 18. The result will be the total number of calories you should aim for, on a daily basis, to enable your body to build new muscles. Now, take your current weight and multiply it by 1.5. This result will be the approximate amount of protein, in grams, that you need to put into you body daily for muscle growth.

You’ve got your two target numbers, so now you need to do some menu preparation. You don’t have to turn into a rapid calorie counter, but you do need to start paying a lot more attention to the calories and protein in the food you eat.

Now, depending on your point of view and awareness of nutrition, these numbers may be very intimidating to you. You’re probably looking at an intense increase in the amount of food you eat and it may seem impossible to do that.

In fact, it may actually be impossible to do that if you’re only eating three meals a day. The “three meals a day” lifestyle isn’t actually optimum for healthy living and it’s far from optimum for muscle building. As you go about your meal planning, you need to plan on eating five to seven smaller meals a day, instead of three bigger meals. It should also go without saying that you should be planning healthy meals.

All calories are not created equally. Just because the local junk-fast-food joint sells a greasy burger with 800 calories doesn’t mean you should eat three of them a day to reach your calorie goal. Empty and fattening calories, such as those in sweets, junk food, fast food, or soda aren’t going to help you gain healthy weight. Foods which are highly processed or high in sugar and saturated fat should be avoided as well.

Moving from food to exercise, there are some ways to exercise which help you lose weight and some ways which will help you gain weight. While you’re focused on gaining weight, it only makes sense to limit your exercises to those which help you gain weight by building muscles. So this isn’t the time to enroll in an aerobics class.

You should focus on a workout regimen of three or four weekly routines which are short and intense. Stay away from the plethora of machines available to you at the gym and workout using free weights.

Start with a weight that is heavy for you; ignore what everyone else is doing. If ten pounds is heavy for you, then it’s heavy for you and you should use it. To effectively gain weight in the shortest time period possible, you’re looking to stimulate the specific muscle fibers which promote the most muscle growth. This is best done by lifting heavy weights.

You’ll know that some weights are too light just by picking them up but, once you get closer to your limit you’ll need to do some testing. Start by adding five pounds to what you think is heavy enough and try to do a set of ten repetitions. If you get to ten, then on your next set add five more pounds. When you find a weight that you physically can’t get to ten repetitions with, you’ve found your starting weight.

Aim for six or eight repetitions in each set you do and increase either the amount of weight or the number of repetitions every week or two; you want to constantly challenge yourself so that you put on the muscle as fast as possible.

If you want to increase your muscle mass, you need to eat more and work out. Thanks for coming, have a safe drive home!

Alright, so there’s a bit more to it than that. Realistically, however, that is the simple truth. There is no miracle to be purchased at a health food store or off of an infomercial that will build your muscle mass without consistent and intelligent adherence to those two concepts: eat more and work out.

For people who need to lose weight but also want to gain muscle mass, you need to make a choice. The way you eat and the way you work out are very different for both of these objectives. While not impossible to do both at the same time, it is much more effective for most people to focus on one or the other.

We’re going to look at these two concepts individually so that you can actually put them into consistent and intelligent practice.

Working Out
The bad news is that, to achieve maximum gain in your muscle mass building, you’re going to need equipment. The good news, however, is that you don’t need the equipment you’re probably picturing right now.

You’re just not going to build significant amounts of muscle mass without equipment. You can lose weight or tone muscles without much equipment, but for actually and substantially increasing your muscle mass it’s just not going to happen.

We all know that over the last century a dizzying array of machines have been designed to “help” people build muscle mass and stay healthy. The problem most people have is in determining which pieces of equipment are correct for them.

I’ll make it very easy for you. Two simple words: free weights.

Workout machines have been designed to work muscles in a specific way, in a specific range of motion, period. And, for achieving that goal, they are very good at it. However, that’s exceptionally limiting. Most of this equipment has been designed for general use, meaning that it needs to help as many different people achieve as many different goals as possible, because that maximizes profit by appealing to a wider audience.

Free weights, however, allow you to do things machines can’t. With free weights, you can stimulate larger groupings of muscles at once, which is the most effective way to build muscles. Speaking of weight, use a lot of it. For maximum impact, you are going to be working yourself to muscle failure every time, in every set. Muscle failure is defined as the point at which you can no longer properly do another repetition. If you’re looking to build up your muscle mass, working with light weights isn’t going to do it. If you can do more than 15 repetitions before failing, the weight is too light. As you get stronger, you’ll naturally need to increase the amount of weight.

There are six exercises you should focus on at the beginning, all of which are most effectively done with free weights:

Bar Dips for working your shoulders, chest and arms;
Dead Lifts for working your legs, shoulders and back;
Overhead Presses for working your shoulders and triceps;
Bench Presses for working your chest, shoulders, and triceps;
Squats for working your legs and lower back; and
Pull Ups and/or Barbell Rows for working your back and biceps.

While you can certainly move on to more advanced workout regimens, you shouldn’t even begin considering it until you have a solid foundation of these six exercises. In reality, most people don’t need the advanced regimens and would do perfectly well if they did nothing but these six exercises consistently and with ever increasing amounts of weight.

Weight training is a very intense workout and you shouldn’t do it more than 3 or 4 times a week. Your muscles need time to recuperate because it’s during that recuperation that the actual growth takes place. Limit your workouts to 30 – 45 minutes, 3 or 4 times a week and stick to it religiously. You’ll be amazed with the results.

If you want to increase your muscle mass, you need to eat more and work out.

Thanks for coming, have a safe drive home!

Alright, so there’s a bit more to it than that. Realistically, however, that is the simple truth. There is no miracle to be purchased at a health food store or off of an infomercial that will build your muscle mass without consistent and intelligent adherence to those two concepts: eat more and work out.

For people who need to lose weight but also want to gain muscle mass, you need to make a choice. The way you eat and the way you work out are very different for both of these objectives. While not impossible to do both at the same time, it is much more effective for most people to focus on one or the other.

We’re going to look at these two concepts individually so that you can actually put them into that consistent and intelligent practice.

Eat More
You’re not going to get bigger unless you increase the number of calories you put into your body. When it comes to mass, your body works in a very simple manner: if you take in more calories than you burn you will gain weight and if you take in fewer calories than you burn you will lose weight. Ninety percent of the other people in gym are there because of this fact; they’ve just allowed it to run rampant in their life unchecked. You’re not going to do that, you’re going to be intelligent.

Being intelligent about it means that you’re not going to stuff your face with anything and everything you want whenever you want it. Doing that leads to being one of that 90%. You’re going to be taking in greater quantities of proteins, carbohydrates and fats so that your body can utilize them for muscle building. You’re not going to get the proper forms of those nutrients from junk food or fast food (oh, wait, is there a difference?)

One method of determining the number of calories you need to bring into your body for building muscle mass is to multiply your current weight by 18. The number you get on your calculator will probably shock you. It’s going to be a big number. When you’re paying attention to the number of calories you take in every day, this number may seem overwhelming, in fact.

The secret is almost paradoxical: you’ll get to that number by eating less food…but you’re going to be eating it more often. We’ve all been raised with the concept of “three square meals a day,” which isn’t actually the optimum eating schedule for human beings. If you’re trying to lose weight, eating that much food at once is a serious impediment but, if you’re trying to intelligently gain weight, it’s nearly impossible to do it in three sittings a day.

So, you’re going to be eating five to seven smaller meals a day. Work to make certain that each of those meals contains a good mix of nutrients and plenty of protein. Protein is incredibly critical to building muscle mass, as this nutrient is used by your body in the actual act of building new muscles. Fish, chicken, eggs and red meat are excellent protein sources. If you can afford it, you should try to get these from an organic producer because it’s simply better for your overall health.

Finally, in addition to increasing the total amount of calories you take into your body, make sure you drink enough water. In fact, strive to drink more than enough water because your body actually needs more water than you think it does. Water is another critical component to muscle building and you won’t experience maximum gain if you’re not taking in enough water.