I have covered this before on social media but still, there is a huge stigma around lifting weights. Many people still believe that it will make you bigger and far more muscly. Well I am here to say that is soooo wrong!!
Yes, lifting weights CAN make you bigger and give you a more muscly stature. How else do you think some of the biggest monsters in the world got to be the way they are? It wasn’t sitting around with their thumb up their behind watching Teletubbies. They lift, they eat, they eat, then lift bigger and eat more and then eat even more, followed by a huge tea. Its not that you lift but its the environment in your body in which your muscles are permitted to grow that makes people enormously muscly.
If you think back to our primitive selves. Those that adapted best to their surroundings were more likely to survive, fact! If all you did was hunt and weren’t doing press ups and pull ups back at the cave and your body wasn’t consistently in a calorie surplus, it would use any energy it had stored on its body in the form of fat and eventually MUSCLE to keep you running. Your body would eventually waste the muscles it wasn’t using as it sees it as an inefficiency (largely in the upper body as you were still running so still needed your leg muscles). The muscles in your legs would become more efficient but not necessarily larger due to not being in a calorie surplus year round. All the above would mean that you would be skinny with little muscle mass of any sort to speak of except in your legs and even these would be small just incredibly efficient. Much like the physique of any successful, long distance runner you may be able to think of.
Now, if we add weights to the equation and formulate a program that best suits the physique of a typical, toned (not skinny but toned – with a lower fat percentage) person that seems to be most popular these days then we can achieve a healthy look without just being skinny (which in itself can be as unhealthy as being overweight when in the extreme). When training with a more than adequate program we must also watch our calorie intake. If you are regularly in a calorie surplus then you are more likely to put on a little bit more muscle than potentially you would wish however THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN OVER NIGHT! Some people spend their entire lives trying to put on muscle mass. You will not lift weights and the following day, week or even month wake up and wonder where your muscles have come from. You shouldn’t be afraid of lifting weights anymore than one glass of wine a week giving you liver failure.
A large part of this muscle building belief, I believe, is down to the enormous use of steroids in the world of lifting weights of any capacity. This applies to both men and women!! If you look at someone online or in the gym and they stand out as being in particularly amazing shape with muscles in abundance and shredded with abs bulging then the odds are that they are on steroids. Performance enhancing drugs really are that prevalent in the world of ‘health and fitness’. If you look at the front cover of many magazines or the latest ‘influencer’ (and I use that term loosely) the chances are they have used steroids at some point in their career to get where they are. Steroids promote the unnaturally large growth of muscle fibres, particularly in the upper body. They can however also be used to help maintain muscle mass while cutting body fat which can leave an incredibly lean appearance with relative ease when compared to a natural lifter. I must stress again that this is relevant to both men and women.
Now, I don’t have an issue with anybody using steroids. The world of steroids is not what it used to be and it is now far more understood. What I do however have an issue with is when these people are not transparent with what they are doing and knowingly deceive others. This then makes others disheartened as they train so hard and make minute gains in comparison. Bringing me back to my original point, the people on the other end of the spectrum not wanting to start lifting weights as they see these big men and women and are fearful that picking up and curling some modest weight will instantly make them balloon to the size of what they fear, not knowing the size they fear is sometimes (most of the time when we look at magazine posers) achieved through years of meticulously planned training and steroid use.
The moral of this story is to try to train evenly across many principles if you are going for the lean, healthy look and don’t just want to be skinny. Do your running but lift weights too. Who knows, you may even enjoy it!!
