The B word, Linda Hamilton and why you might want to get cold.

When you’re A PT talking to female clients for the first time there's a word we all fight not to roll our eyes at, the “B” word, “I just don't want to get BULKYYYYYYYYY”

But why do we shudder when having these chats? The fact is female bodybuilding is a million dollar industry, Linda Hamilton doing those bad ass pullups in Terminator 2 was bulky as hell and no one is winning a CrossFit without shoulders like boulders whether you're male or female! The reason is that as much as these outliers exist, the female body is hormonally designed in a way that creating muscle is much more difficult, so the work rate you will have to reach is far higher than males.

Firstly let's address the question behind why you may want to avoid gaining muscle from weight lifting when it's such a big part of the activity? The fact is that there are a million reasons people get into weight lifting, if your here to pick up the bar for your mental health you are valid, if your here because its an extra way to burn calories you are valid and if you're here just to try something new with friends you better bet your ass you are valid.

Let's take a look at the word bulky because to avoid it we need to understand what it means and since the word is so subjective, what it really means is up to you, if we are to look at women in bodybuilding and you step back terrified of looking like this, fear not. The work involved in creating this type of body is so specific, niche and constant there is literally zero chance of accidentally creating this body type. If your scrolling through IG and see a sponsored post from your local CrossFit gym you will probably see some girls in their 20s and 30’s with broad shoulders and tree trunks for legs, again these bodies are created from hard work but very wide ranging lifts that you are likely to have in your programming when beginning your journey into weightlifting. So what can we do to prevent the muscle gain effect? To do this let's take a look at the 3 main stimuli for muscle growth.

Metabolic stress, is just fancy talk for what is more commonly known as “the pump”. As you progress through your workout rep by rep, you are pumping more blood into the muscle cells forcing them to expand. This then begins a signal cascade to the brain where it logs the info that those muscle cells will need to grow in order to store more blood.

Muscle damage, this is lifting in a manner that is increasing the time and tension in the lengthened position of a muscle to incur damage and force the muscle to repair itself.

Mechanical tension, this is the force generated by the muscle against the weight you pick up, essentially going along with progressive overload adding to that cascading signal chain telling the brain it needs to get stronger and therefore grow bigger.

So let's take these 3 methods of growing your muscles and flip them on their head, the biggest take away is the recurring theme that all of these methods rely on a signal being sent from the brain to tell the muscles to grow so let's look at one way to try and dull that signal to kill 3 birds with one chunk of ice!

Yep, you're gonna have to get cold. As soon as possible after your workout you'll want to jump into an ice bath for 15 minutes, this dulls the signal being sent to the brain and will also prevent muscle inflammation shutting down the metabolic stress signal from 2 different angles. There are a plethora of reasons we should all be jumping into some icy water every now and then so jump in and do your best to last! (1)

Next is the concentric focused lifting (2), in any lift there are 2 parts, concentric - where the muscle shortens and with the potential to be explosive, and eccentric - where the muscle lengthens and you are required to control the weight. In CFL we want to focus on generating as much explosive force as possible while spending as little time in the eccentric (returning, controllable) portion. If we focus this way for the lift we can gain strength while limiting time under tension, a huge driver of hypertrophy.

Some examples of what this would look like may be a deadlift where after exploding from the ground we could let go of the weight at the top of the rep rather than controlling the bar on its way back down. This will not be applicable for all lifts, work with your trainer to implement properly.

Programming, the way your workout program is structured is huge in regards to putting on muscle. Speak to your PT about making a program that works for you. In my experience the less specific and more broad a program is, the less likely muscle gain will be triggered. If you are trying to lift 3 times per week focus on widely different muscle groups to reduce the amount of sets performed by each muscle group (3), for example

1 - Upper body pushing movement and a quad focused lower body movement

2 - A hamstring focused lower body movement and an upper body pulling movement

3 - A supplemental lift from each

I'm sure this blog will raise some eyebrows from tough guy gym bro’s everywhere and to some extent they may have a point, it's definitely not a bad thing to have increased muscle it will help the way your body functions in many different ways, but that's just it its YOUR body and if you want it to look or feel a certain way that is up to you!

So there you have it even though your chances of accidentally getting jacked are tiny feel free to use one or all of these advanced techniques to prevent it even further.

References

1.Fyfe, Jackson J et al. “Cold water immersion attenuates anabolic signaling and skeletal muscle fiber hypertrophy, but not strength gain, following whole-body resistance training.” Journal of applied physiology (Bethesda, Md. : 1985) vol. 127,5 (2019): 1403-1418. doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00127.2019

2.Roig M, O'Brien K, Kirk G, Murray R, McKinnon P, Shadgan B, Reid WD. The effects of eccentric versus concentric resistance training on muscle strength and mass in healthy adults: a systematic review with meta-analysis. Br J Sports Med. 2009 Aug;43(8):556-68. doi: 10.1136/bjsm.2008.051417. Epub 2008 Nov 3. PMID: 18981046.

3. Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Sports Sci. 2017 Jun;35(11):1073-1082. doi: 10.1080/02640414.2016.1210197. Epub 2016 Jul 19. PMID: 27433992.