3 Reasons Why Lifting Weights won’t make you Bulky!

It's a common misconception that weight lifting will make you bulky and beefy. This is unfortunate as resistance training has such a wide array of health benefits including increased bone density, calorie burning, hormonal balance, stress relief, injury prevention, functional capacity and much more.  

Here are my top 3 reasons you shouldn’t be afraid to meet me at the bar.

1. You’re not going to get ‘big’ from lifting weights unless you try too. Bulking or “bodybuilding” is a very specific type of training. The goal is to isolate specific muscles, stress them with exercises, sets and reps that force a muscle building response. This is also done over long periods of time and phases of training. The effort required to build substantial muscle mass is commendable, purposeful, planned and hard to accomplish. Training tradition functional strength exercises like lunges, squats, deadlifts, pulling, presses etc. at moderate amount of quantity will only serve to strengthen and tone. 
2. Your diet plays a huge role in your overall body composition. The diet required to put on significant muscle mass is insane and requires a ton of time and pre-planning. Making sure you are getting enough calories, macronutrients and supplements to support muscle growth can be practically a full time career. Athletes who want to bulk up spend countless hours and cash dialing in the supplement and nutrition side of their game. For the average person just looking to feel sexy in their birthday suit, eating three clean meals a day is all you need to get started. Most fitness enthusiasts looking to lose body fat are never going to gain excess muscle especially on a calorie balanced diet. 
3. Weight lifting is actually one of the best ways to lose weight. Every one gives cardio the fat burning medal. But to be honest, if we looked at the hierarchy of fat loss, resistance training should be on the top of the podium. Gaining lean muscle mass will drive up your daily metabolic output (calorie burning). The effect of challenging resistance training also has a highly positive effect on both men and women when it comes to regulating hormones, and this in itself can lead to huge improvements in body composition.

There really isn’t anything to be afraid of when it comes to lifting weights and becoming bulky. The nutrition, supplementation, time and programming related to ‘getting bulky’ is so specific and challenging that you would never do it by lifting weights a few times a week. In reality, a properly designed and implemented weightlifting program may be exactly what you need to shed those extra pounds!

Looking for some advice on how to start a weightlifting program? Book a free consult below.

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