Sports Mastery

The #1 lie you've been told... Lifting weights will make women bulky. One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding females and strength training involves the notion that lifting weights will make them appear bulky. Unless females take anabolic steroids or double their clean food intake, that simply won’t happen. Hormones factor heavily in determining an individual’s size. According to Medline Plus, women naturally produce about only 5-7% as much testosterone as men. That means men produce 14 to 20 times as much testosterone as women, so women won’t increase muscle mass at nearly the same rate unless they supplement with steroids or other performance enhancing drugs. They can work at the same intensities as men and build lean, slender physiques like fitness models instead of massive bodybuilders. This is absolutely possible, but the bulk thing? Not so much. According to a 2004 study by Dr. Andrew Fry, “In general, females do not exhibit as great an absolute hypertrophic response when compared with males, al