Women’s Muscle Building – What’s Different?

One thing that many women are unsure of is how women’s muscle building differs from muscle building for males. Most women are incredibly scared of getting ‘big and bulky’ and want to make sure they are not following a program that leads to this type of results.

In fact, this fear is often so intense that they sway from using any type of women’s muscle building program at all. This, however, is a huge mistake because building muscle is one of the best ways to maintain a slimmer figure and be able to take in more calories each day without gaining weight (and what woman wouldn’t like to eat more food?).

Here are the three things you need to know about adjustments that need to be made to create a women’s muscle building workout.

Decreased Volume

The first change that women most likely will want to make is using a slightly lower volume program. While a male may do fine going into the gym and performing 30-40 sets per workout, a female has less testosterone running through her body hence her recovery rate may not be as high.

For this reason, it’d be a smart idea to keep the total volume of your workout lower – somewhere between 10-20 sets total (using the higher range if you’re advanced or are doing more isolation work which is less fatiguing).

Decreased Weight

Now, don’t read this the wrong way. Decreased weight simply comes from the fact that females typically are not as strong as males (although this is not the case 100% of the time).

Possibly the biggest mistake females make on their women’s muscle building program is not lifting heavy enough weights. Ideally you want to be pushing a high enough weight that you can fatigue within 6-10 reps. If you’re going much higher than that and are not all that tired, that’s one of the best signs that you’re not pushing yourself hard enough.

Scared to lift heavy because you’ll grow too much muscle? Don’t be. Women do not have the testosterone levels to naturally get jacked. Unless you’re using a ’secret supplement – aka steroids’, the chances of getting very large in a short period of time are incredibly low. Those women who you see competing in figure or bodybuilding competitions have either worked for years to obtain those physiques or they are using that special supplement.

Decreased Calorie Intake

Finally, no women’s muscle building program would be complete without a proper diet designed for reaching this goal. While you will still need to take in more calories than required to maintain your body weight (as this is necessary to see muscle being built), you won’t need as many calories as men do.

Further, if you’re at all scared of that ‘muscle building’ phenomen where you get ‘huge’, limit your calorie intake. A body can’t develop new tissue without enough calories to support that growth, therefore by watching your calorie intake, you make it virtually impossible to get really big.

So keep these factors in mind as you create a women’s muscle building program. Far too many women shy away from this because of their incorrect fears of what weight training will do to them.

What weight training will actually do is completely reshape your body, helping to remove body fat while tone and define the muscles you already have.

If you’re looking for a program to get started with, I created the following program with Vince DelMonte which is designed to be a women’s muscle building program for optimal results.

———–> No-Nonsense Female BodyShaping Workouts