Hello, I was wondering how to implement you’re newest HIT 30-10-30 more geared towards woman with the goal of glute growth (just like the specialization training you did an article about for the arms), cause exercise like leg extension, curl and leg press seems like it’s not really gonna cut it for my goal…? and chest is not really needed for me, could I do like 2 dedicated leg days for example instead and 1 or 2 upper body per week or is that too much?
I’ve read you’re book tighter Tummy , and bodyfat breakthrough too. Would you recommeand thé 15-15-15 protocol of that book or is 30-10-30 more supreme? Plus do you recommand calories that low also for someone who’se been training for years? I don’t necessarily want to put on fat of course but saw you recommending 20calories/lbs in you’re latest article of HIT and wondered if this applied to women too, surplus needed ? Thank you!!
Any feedback of others here is welcome too :), I’m trying to figure out this program for an advanced female lifter with hourglass/glute goals ofc and with least amount of fat accumulation possible :).
May I ask you a stupid question? Do you really believe in the possibility of a growth in a selected muscle group only (glutes) for a woman (i.e. human species who do not have enough testosterone comparing to men, no offence here, just pure biology) who is presumably past puberty age? No doubt that women can easily become stronger and lose weight making their muscles look firmer and slimmer. It can lead to “visual” changes in how the body looks: slimmer waist, contoured hips and glutes, shaped legs, different waist to shoulder ratio, etc. Dr. Darden wrote many books on this subject. What we currently can see in the gyms and on the internet with women supposedly getting larger glutes doing all kind of exercises (some of them are weird ones) with sub-par intensity and poor form has nothing to do with training, especially if those women have 3D bodybuilding look and razor-sharp abs. A buttock lift (surgery), lipofilling, implants, gluteoplasty (injections with hyaluronic acid) are the answers, just to name a few.
There is a trainer, Bret Contreras, who is known as The Glute Guy. He trains a lot of women bodybuilders. His web site has a Testimonials page, with lots of before and after pictures. I’d say that most of the “transformations” do not appear that dramatic. Genetics counts for a lot.
Women don’t have enough testosterone to support natural male musculature, but they do produce all the necessary hormones to build muscle. As for training one specific muscle, i believe OP is interested in training everything, but specializing her glutes… a common practice for most women. This does, in fact, work as advertised.
Genetics are always important, but not something that should deter anyone from chasing their goals.
Sounds like you have a good understanding of how to specialize on the glutes. Do a write up of what you’d like to try and I’ll give you my view on it. Plus, I like 30-10-30 for you rather than 15-15-15.
Quoting from “The Complete Book of Nautilus Training” by Michael D. Wolf, Ph.D., page 16: “Since women tend to have about 30 times less testosterone than men (the male sex hormone that enables hypertrophy), they also tend to show less hypertrophy. They do show equal percentage strength gains, though, which can be explained by greater neurological efficiency and a phenomenon known as contractile element packing. This 25-cent phrase simply means that more actin and myosin proteins can be packed into the same amount of space as before, increasing strength without increasing size”. See the pic.
I think Simone Biles would disagree with the sentiment that women cannot gain muscle.
There is a litany of women who have made quite noticeable physique changes via building muscle… a few of which are present on these very forums. @Dani_Shugart@Bronwen_Blunt
Shoutout to @Ellington_Darden for working to debunk the claims of “lifting weights makes women bulky” back in 1983!
For more examples of women who have gained a significant amount of muscle via weight training, I would look into female CrossFit competitors (be warned, many are stronger than you or I).
^I think there’s a good argument ot be made that CrossFit style workouts have a noticeably more apparent affect on a woman’s physique than traditional bodybuilding style stuff that men do. I don’t believe women get the same quality of muscle contraction that men do (super subjective statement), but I do think women benefit from the concentric portion of a movement far more than men do.
Sorry @Livtlife_Kim, I didn’t mean to derail your thread. Please do keep us posted on what it is you intend/wish to do… Always looking for training inspiration for the wife.
Are you really so naive to think that muscular physiques of professional athletes we see in any sport nowadays is due to special type of training, protein powders, cereals they endorse, etc. but not due to PEDs they take?
The human physiology and biology has not changed. Find pics of professional athletes from 1960-1970s and compare with modern ones. You will see the difference and find a single root cause: PEDs.
I’m not a professional athlete, but to address something that was said above which indicated that women must take PEDs to be muscular: I have never taken a PED (wait, does caffeine count?) and don’t even know how they work.
But yes, women like me have been able to use hypertrophy training to build muscle in specific areas before.
The most obvious targeted muscle growth for me was in the back.
When I competed in figure about 8 years ago, my coach said that my back was a weak point. Side note: She was catty as hell. But now my back is so obviously muscular that some women think it’s gross. (I take that as a compliment.)
But I’ve also lifted for the specific purpose of building other body parts before, glutes included, and their appearance did change.
Was it significant? You’d need to ask my husband. Much of the time it just depended on diet. If I was eating more low carb, the musculature held less glycogen, and was therefore flatter. Opposite was true when eating a higher daily intake of carbs.
I think the OP has a great idea here and she’ll probably see some killer results. She’s piqued my curiosity, and now I’m thinking about trying it too!
I appreciate the respectful dialogue. It’s a good conversation to have!
Oh and if you’re curious, here’s what my back looks like now:
Would love to see professional athletes finally confessing about their use of PEDs. Still waiting. I know what I see when I see it. I have been around professional athletes of any sorts on both side of Atlantic for 35+ years. Don’t fool me.
Of course. I don’t think @Andrewgen_Receptors is saying that women can build as much muscle as men. He’s saying that women can use hypertrophy training and see a noticeable difference in certain body parts. Isn’t this what you’d asked about?
It was a very good question you had asked, by the way.
But there is a lot more nuance here, and we all likely agree (for the most part) with each other more than we disagree.
Do professional athletes use PEDs? It would be naive to think none of them do, but it would also be silly to think ALL of them do.
But I’m not sure why we’re talking about pro athletes when the original question was about whether a woman could target specific musculature with the 30-10-30 program.
Sure she can. Will it work? Well… why wouldn’t it? A muscle is a muscle. If men can build body parts with a particular style of training, women most certainly can too. Results will depend on a bunch of different things including genetics and diet.
Quite the quantitative metric you have there. Those eyeballs calibrated?
Not talking about PEDs here, at all. Merely saying that women training with hypertrophy methods CAN BUILD MUSCLE.
Didn’t think this was such a divisive claim, but this is the Darden forum - which is infamously plagued with dogma.
