New Rules of Lifting for Women: Lift Like a Man, Look Like a Goddess

NEW RULE #2 · Muscle is hard to build

When I started lifting weights, back when I was a ridiculously weak and scrawny thirteen-year-old boy who dreaded the humiliation of removing his shirt at the local swimming pool, I dreamed of having muscles roughly the size of the muscles I have now. If you had told me I’d someday be a fairly solid 185-pounder, thanks to the weights, I would’ve said, “I’m in!”

But if you’d added the caveat that it would take more than three decades to reach that size, I might’ve had some reservations.

I’ve never once walked into the gym thinking, “Today I’m going to try to not get too big.” For most guys, when we’re talking about muscles, there’s no such thing as “too big.” Those of us who train drug-free celebrate each pound of muscle we add, and every millimeter of upper-arm girth. Some guys even obsess over the circumference of their necks. Why? Because we know that it’s really hard to put on muscle size, it never happens by accident, and every bit of it is a sign of success against all odds. And that’s with all the hormonal advantages that nature gives to men.

Meanwhile, women, naturally deprived of the amounts of testosterone that would make muscle-building a more straightforward pursuit, worry endlessly about adding so much muscle that they’ll turn into the type of shemale you rarely encounter outside The Howard Stern Show.

So this brings me to the fourth dirty word: “bulky.” As in, “I don’t want to get too bulky.”

I’ll say this as simply as I can:

Unless you’re an extreme genetic outlier, you can’t get too bulky.

Your body won’t allow it. If you put on 10 pounds of muscle in Alwyn’s six month program, you’ll be at the top of the class. And if you don’t take off at least 10 pounds of fat with the combination of Alwyn’s workouts and Cassandra’s nutrition plans, I’ll be surprised. The most likely outcome, assuming you’re willing to work hard, is that you’ll come away with a small net loss in body weight, but a dramatic difference in the way your body looks in the mirror and the way your clothes fit. Your tops should be a little tighter, especially in the shoulders, and your trousers a bit roomier, particularly around the waist.

What you don’t have to worry about is getting too big. I’ve been lifting weights longer than many of you have been alive, and I’m still waiting for that moment when I look in the mirror and say, “Damn it, I’m just too big!”

NEW RULE #3 · Results come from hard work

This is a somewhat redundant rule, given that I mentioned hard work in the previous one. But here’s something I’ve observed over my many years of hanging around in gyms: A woman who’s willing to work like a galley slave in Spinning class, twist herself into Gordian knots in the yoga studio, and build enough core strength with Pilates to prop up a skyscraper will walk into the weight room, pick up the pastelcolored Barbie weights, and do the exact opposite of what will give her the results she wants.

I’ll tell a story that illustrates what I mean:

As I was writing this chapter, I observed a woman at my gym doing two exercises in combination. The first was triceps kickbacks, a simple and useless exercise in which you lean over a bench, hold your upper arm parallel to the floor, and straighten your elbow while holding a very light weight. The second was one-arm rows, in which you lean over a bench with your upper arm perpendicular to the floor, and row the weight up to the side of your abdomen.

A rowing exercise involves far more muscles, including the lats and trapezius, the big, strong muscles of the upper back. Plus, since it’s a multijoint exercise, the muscles that bend the elbow, such as the biceps, are also involved. And in addition to all that, the leverage on a one-arm row is perfect for lifting relatively heavy weights—you have one foot on the floor, and the opposite knee and hand braced on the bench. There’s no stress on your lower back, and it’s not unusual to see serious bodybuilders doing this exercise with a dumbbell weighing 100 pounds or more.

The kickback, meanwhile, is an awkward exercise, with relatively poor leverage. The only movement is at the elbow joint, which is not designed to move heavy weights at that angle. Even a beginner would probably be able to use three or four times as much weight on a row versus a kickback.

This woman was using 6-pound dumbbells for the kickbacks . . . and 7-pound weights for the rows.

I asked a trainer at the gym if he’d seen what I’d just seen. He shook his head sadly, and said that the toughest part of his job was getting women to use weights heavy enough to make their time in the gym worthwhile.

So even if a woman understands the first two rules in this chapter—that the object of lifting is to build muscle, and that muscle is hard to build—the idea that she truly needs to challenge herself in the weight room may not get through.

NEW RULE #4 · Hard work includes lifting heavier weights

It’s not enough to progress from lifting the Barbie ’bells fifteen times to lifting them twenty times. It may be an accomplishment—that is, the result of purposeful and exhausting work—but it’s not going to make muscles bigger.Muscles grow for a variety of reasons, but the main one is strength. If you force them to get stronger, they will get bigger. If you start lifting 100 pounds five times, but train your body to lift 150 pounds five times, you’re going to end up with bigger muscles. But if you start off lifting 50 pounds ten times, and progress to lifting the same 50 pounds fifteen times, all you’ve done is increase the endurance of the muscles, which by itself will not make them bigger.