My girlfriend is getting into it....

[The_Grinder]

So now that she's done with her cross country running, she is gettin into lifting. She wants to go every time I go, which I love. Anyhow. What kind of split should she be doing? She is 5'8", 120 lbs, thin, built like a runner but now she wants to build up a little and get more defined. (She says she is kinda scared of getting too big and bulky, even though I tell her it wont happen as long as she stays natural since she doesnt have the hormones) She wants to work out as many days of the week as she can. Right now I have her doing push/pull/legs, keeping everything around the 10 rep range. I've never really known anything about women's training so I just wanted to get some advice that I could pass on to her. Thanks!

[The_Grinder]

Nah she is done with running thank god. just got done with her senior year in college after running for 9 years.

[Bouncer]

i sent red a pm, she should be able to give you exactly the info you are looking for.

[The_Grinder]

i sent red a pm, she should be able to give you exactly the info you are looking for.

Good deal thanks.

[OhHannah]

She is 5'8", 120 lbs, thin, built like a runner but now she wants to build up a little and get more defined.

Drop the cardio, that's a great way to lose mass. Some cardio for warmup and basic cardiovascular fitness is good; too much is not your friend when you want to build up. Women usually make the mistake of doing way too much cardio and not nearly enough resistance work, and they wonder why they aren't looking any more "toned". Hint: it's because that crap doesn't build muscle, it eats it.

Muscles are muscles; they're just in a different hormonal environment when they're on a woman - which means she isn't going to get bulky unless she changes that hormonal environment by sticking needles in her butt. She needs to be doing the same thing the boys to do build muscle. Squat and deadlift till she pukes, then lift some more. Wreck those muscles and wreck them hard. Move some iron. Screw the low weight high reps girly crap, that's just thinly disguised cardio. Rest a day and then repeat. Eat big and clean, 15-18 calories per pound of her current bodyweight in small frequent meals.

Most women are not going to take this advice because they think if they train like a man who wants to increase his lean body mass, they'll start looking like a man. The thing is, there is no gender to the methods of training that work for increasing lean body mass. Men and women respond differently to the same training because of their biochemical and hormonal environment. But there simply is no 'male way' or 'female way' to increase LBM. There's just training to increase lean body mass, period. You can make all kinds of tweaks and adjustments in that training based on the individual and their goals, but fundamentally men and women who want to increase LBM have to do the same damn thing. Eg, resistance training. Weight lifting. Pumping iron. If it makes her feel more girly, she can use machines. Doesn't matter as long as you're pushing and pulling.

Most women's goals are primarily to decrease body fat. Cardio works just fine for that, though you need to remain aware of catabolism which can eat away at your lean body mass, make you weaker and ultimately slow down your metabolism and interfere with your fat loss goals. They also seem to want something mythical that they refer to as "tone". Guess what girls - "tone" is lean body mass, otherwise known as muscle. So is definition.

Want some of that? Go move some heavy iron around, rest in between, and eat big but clean to gain mass. You are not going to look freaky like your boyfriend or have to shave like your boyfriend if you train like your boyfriend. You will get "toned". Nuff said.

[Bouncer]

Drop the cardio, that's a great way to lose mass. Some cardio for warmup and basic cardiovascular fitness is good; too much is not your friend when you want to build up. Women usually make the mistake of doing way too much cardio and not nearly enough resistance work, and they wonder why they aren't looking any more "toned". Hint: it's because that crap doesn't build muscle, it eats it.

Muscles are muscles; they're just in a different hormonal environment when they're on a woman - which means she isn't going to get bulky unless she changes that hormonal environment by sticking needles in her butt. She needs to be doing the same thing the boys to do build muscle. Squat and deadlift till she pukes, then lift some more. Wreck those muscles and wreck them hard. Move some iron. Screw the low weight high reps girly crap, that's just thinly disguised cardio. Rest a day and then repeat. Eat big and clean, 15-18 calories per pound of her current bodyweight in small frequent meals.

Most women are not going to take this advice because they think if they train like a man who wants to increase his lean body mass, they'll start looking like a man. The thing is, there is no gender to the methods of training that work for increasing lean body mass. Men and women respond differently to the same training because of their biochemical and hormonal environment. But there simply is no 'male way' or 'female way' to increase LBM. There's just training to increase lean body mass, period. You can make all kinds of tweaks and adjustments in that training based on the individual and their goals, but fundamentally men and women who want to increase LBM have to do the same damn thing. Eg, resistance training. Weight lifting. Pumping iron. If it makes her feel more girly, she can use machines. Doesn't matter as long as you're pushing and pulling.

Most women's goals are primarily to decrease body fat. Cardio works just fine for that, though you need to remain aware of catabolism which can eat away at your lean body mass, make you weaker and ultimately slow down your metabolism and interfere with your fat loss goals. They also seem to want something mythical that they refer to as "tone". Guess what girls - "tone" is lean body mass, otherwise known as muscle. So is definition.

Want some of that? Go move some heavy iron around, rest in between, and eat big but clean to gain mass. You are not going to look freaky like your boyfriend or have to shave like your boyfriend if you train like your boyfriend. You will get "toned". Nuff said.

great post and great info. like you said though, most women wont do that. how can he convince his girlfriend to do that? anything he can say or do to convince her?

[FitnessBrat]

First time seeing this - nice post OhHannah, lol..

Grinder - why doesn't she work out WITH you? She doesn't need to do her own workout if ya'll are there together. I don't like working out with women, I prefer working out with men. Too many women are afraid they're going to "get too big" and it just does NOT happen that way.

[OhHannah]

great post and great info. like you said though, most women wont do that. how can he convince his girlfriend to do that? anything he can say or do to convince her?

Show her the science, if she's at all science minded. The facts are pretty cut and dried.

Explain that there is only one way to build muscle (or "tone" for people who feel they need to use a girly word) whether you are male or female. Muscles look different on women than they do on men, and take much longer to build. If you work out hard, you will look good whether you are a man or a woman. That's something that takes care of itself naturally. Women who work out hard will be strong, fit, lean and "toned" - which is exactly what she wants to be, neh?

Women who do nothing but cardio and fake-weightlifting-cardio (eg, really low weights for really high reps) can lose weight, but they also tend to lose lean body mass and end up skinny and stringy, not really healthy looking or "toned". Ghod I actually think I hate that word, but it's what muscle-phobic women want to hear. To look good and get "tone" and definition, you must increase lean body mass - eg, possibly GAIN some weight - while keeping body fat relatively low.

Here's something else she may not want to hear. If you're training and eating to gain lean body mass, you're going to gain total weight and you will also gain some body fat. If you're careful with the diet the gains can be held to a minimum, but it's pretty axiomatic that you can't cut and bulk at the same time. Girly translation: you can't "tone" and increase definition and also lose weight at the same time. But the process of getting better muscle "tone" and definition isn't going to work at all if you don't do it right, which means if you're training hard but not eating enough because you're phobic of gaining weight, you're wasting your time.

[OhHannah]

Too many women are afraid they're going to "get too big" and it just does NOT happen that way.

I am BUSTING MY F'ING ASS to get big. I squat till I puke, then I lift some more from a seated position if I can't stand up. I eat a metric fuckton of raw oats, sweet potatoes, brown rice, tuna from the can, salmon, lean beef and game meats, five or six times daily. It's an incredibly tough uphill struggle for every tiny gain, just because I'm female. Even working as hard as I can to get big and muscular, I know I'm not going to get there no matter how hard I work unless I take drugs.

What you want doesn't matter. Your biochemical and hormonal environment does, and women generally don't have what it takes to get freaky big unless their full time job is to work out, rest and eat, and generally not even then unless they enhance with AAS.

Also, huge muscles don't just pop out of your arms the moment you lay a ladylike finger on your first 45 pound plate. Really they don't. They creep up a few millimeters at a time, with exasperating slowness. If you get 1/16" bigger than you want in some dimension, back off on the workouts. I promise that nasty, unwanted, unappreciated muscle will shrivel up very quickly. Mine sure do whenever I get laid off due to injury. And boy does that ever piss me off, but if it makes you happy, that's good because it's a fact of life. :mad: :mad:

[Bouncer]

haha, you remind me of red. she speaks with knowledge and yet a tone of anger about her. maybe sisters? lol. great posts.

[ROCKILLER]

They also seem to want something mythical that they refer to as "tone". Guess what girls - "tone" is lean body mass, otherwise known as muscle. So is definition.

I can't ever seem to get people to understand this. I have guys say to me all the time, "I do high reps with less weight to get toned." I usually don't even try to explain anything anymore, I just kinda laugh to myself

[OhHannah]

haha, you remind me of red. she speaks with knowledge and yet a tone of anger about her. maybe sisters? lol. great posts.

Thanks!

And yaknow, you'd probably have a chip on your shoulder too if you worked as hard as any of the guys, but consistently got crap for results compared to young men who can eat endless junk food and grow huge muscles. I take some of that mad out on the weights, and it helps fuel my workouts.

[The_Grinder]

Oh well she is ready and willing to listen and try and make gains. And as far as cardio, the only reason she had to do it was because she was on the XC team and it paid for college. But now that she's done with that she has been going with me to the gym pretty much everytime I go. I just didnt know if you had to train women differently as far as their split, sets, reps, etc. I do a different muscle group every day and go 6 days a week. Would this be ok for her too?

[FitnessBrat]

She can train the same way you do - hard and heavy.

[redsquirrel]

Drop the cardio, that's a great way to lose mass. Some cardio for warmup and basic cardiovascular fitness is good; too much is not your friend when you want to build up. Women usually make the mistake of doing way too much cardio and not nearly enough resistance work, and they wonder why they aren't looking any more "toned". Hint: it's because that crap doesn't build muscle, it eats it.

While I can understand why OhHannah would say this based on her current goals, this isn't entirely true. For women, it is extremely difficult for them to get big and bulky. EVEN WITH the assistance of AAS. When women say they want to be toned, many times they are in fact referring to just wanting to lose BF; not build muscle.

But, if you really kick up her calories, and she's eating clean muscle building foods, that's where the need for cardio actually does come in. Too much cardio can eat lean body mass, but that normally only happens when women are doing extensive amounts of cardio, and eating an extremely low calorie diet....like when training for a competition. So, if she's increasing calories, and wants to stay lean, doing cardio for 20-30 min 3-4 times a week.

As for what split she should do...I would say she should do 1 major body part per day. Do 3 sets per movement, and 3-4 different movements for each body part, for a max rep range of 6-8. This means she needs to lift heavy, or to failure.

Mon- Arms, Tues- Quads, Wed-OFF, Thurs-Back, Fri- Chest, Sat- Hams/Glutes