[quote]Christine wrote:
I know I used that as an excuse before I ever started lifting.
But it was the fear of looking like some sort of freak.
[/quote]
And yet somehow you veered into the opposite direction of freak.
You failed.
Non-freak.
I dealt with this issue when my mother asked me to help her lose weight. The whole fear of bulking nonsense. I told her not to worry and let me take care of it. She started with presses, lunges, curls, along with squat and deadlift variations.
Now she has clothing she could not first get into, now hang off her. She is hooked, and at the age of 62 is an inspiration. I think the key rests in seeing a difference, even if it takes some time. Once a woman sees how weight training works, its an easy sell.
On the other hand, I was talking to the girl who cuts my hair yesterday, and she claims how her muscles look so much longer now that she does Pilates and dropped the weights.
She continues to tell me how it stretches and elongates muscles and does not bulk them. News flash, muscles dont change their length without surgerical intervention. I shake my head at this nonsense.
I just think it’s sad that we live in a society that promotes women to be thin. To me, there’s nothing sexier than a strong athletic physic on a woman.
I think girls look damn good toned and a little muscular. I use to work at a tile and stone factory up in Portland, OR there was a female bodybuilder who was obviously chemically enhanced.
Nice lady but she looked like a dude and even sounded like a dude. I do have some respect for the ladys who do wanna look like that. Hell that takes alot of overiocial fortitude. For a halloween party she dressed up as a dude. She really pulled it off too lol.
There is acouple of nice looking ladys who do lift at my gym and let me tell you hot. One of them lift heavy too and most the time I cant help but get distracted from what Im doing.
Oh man there’s this one girl that lifts at my gym…and she is sooo fucking sexy. The other day I saw her doing seated cable rows with perfect form supersetted with sets of real pushups, probably knocking out sets of 25-30.
I thought it was sooo sexy! Long as it doesn’t get to the point of looking manly I’m down - I do agree with the they look better slightly less lean, lots of veins aren’t so hot on women.
[quote]josh86 wrote:
Oh man there’s this one girl that lifts at my gym…and she is sooo fucking sexy. The other day I saw her doing seated cable rows with perfect form …[/quote]
A rarity in any gym, guys and girls. Usually people take th rowing to mean they perform it as if they were rowing a boat instead of no body english. I saw a guy training his girlfriend that were both doing a starting at just under 135 degrees thigh to upper body angle with a spastic lurch back to about 160 degrees and a quick dive to the bar to make the upper body touch the static bar instead of moving the bar to the body. Both were devoid of any muscle whatsoever. She and he have no worries about becoming freakishly huge.
I respectfully disagree with Tiribulus. Figure competitors (I’m assuming are natural- sponsored by supp companies, but not taking any steroids) and models specifically limit the amount of muscle they gain to continue to appear feminine.
Or so I’m assuming. I remember reading an article with Gina Alotti on this site where she mentioned specifically training to NOT add more muscle, and instead just refine what she had (physical appearance of muscles, I’m assuming). Also, I remember being linked from here to an article on Jessica Biel’s training, where she talked about specifically overtraining to prevent muscle growth before a photoshoot.
I’ll admit these are outliers- both have been training for several years, and have heaven-blessed genetics. But it does show that, if you want to, you CAN take squatting and deadlifting beyond the aesthetic stage.
However, women look best with some muscle on them. Not too much, but definitely some. And it’s highly unlikely they’ll reach the stage of ‘too much’ accidentally. And even then, it’s not like it’s hard to drop muscle.
[quote]Christine wrote:
I know I used that as an excuse before I ever started lifting.
But it was the fear of looking like some sort of freak.
[/quote]
That thought crossed my mind in the beginning, too. But since I’m built like Janet Reno to begin with, I figured I couldn’t get much worse, so might as well be strong.
[quote]Yo Momma wrote:
Christine wrote:
I know I used that as an excuse before I ever started lifting.
But it was the fear of looking like some sort of freak.
That thought crossed my mind in the beginning, too. But since I’m built like Janet Reno to begin with, I figured I couldn’t get much worse, so might as well be strong. [/quote]
Ultimately I figured that I would rather be strong and freaky than weak and wimpy.
Turns out though that it’s really difficult to get freaky. Who woulda thunk?
I like women who are just cool with being women. Enhanced or not, muscles or not . . . . whatever.
Nothing sexier than a strong, confident woman. So few of them nowadays.
[quote]DeannaV wrote:
I just think it’s sad that we live in a society that promotes women to be thin. To me, there’s nothing sexier than a strong athletic physic on a woman.[/quote]
I agree with everything.
Its not all that peachy for men who want to get bigger either.
Anyway,
here’s a good example of a woman who bodybuilds without looking bulky. She’s 86 years old btw.
[quote]:
I just think it’s sad that we live in a society that promotes women to be thin. To me, there’s nothing sexier than a strong athletic physic on a woman.
[/quote]
[quote]tribunaldude wrote:
Its not all that peachy for men who want to get bigger either.
Anyway,
here’s a good example of a woman who bodybuilds without looking bulky. She’s 86 years old btw.
:
I just think it’s sad that we live in a society that promotes men to be thin. To me, there’s nothing sexier than a strong athletic physic on a woman.
[/quote]
Good video!
“This isn’t so bad”
“That’s because you only have, what, 5 pounds?”
[quote]Christine wrote:
I know I used that as an excuse before I ever started lifting.
But it was the fear of looking like some sort of freak.
[/quote]
You have to lift to look like a freak? I come by it naturally. Not muscular, mind you, just a freak.
[quote]mavis13 wrote:
I think girls look damn good toned and a little muscular. [/quote]
Every time I hear someone say ‘toned’ my spirit dies a little.
My friends and family don’t ask the ‘toned’ question because they know exactly what I do. I do get it from strangers though. When I talk about PL I get odd looks because I’m not very big. Invariably, people will say I don’t look big enough for it; I don’t meet their stereotype of what that is.
I haven’t really gotten a whole lot bigger, just a lot harder.
There are a fair number of both fitness and figure competitors that are very lean at my gym. Both work hard and bust ass, but aren’t lacking from male attention. When you add up the gawking, staring, and admiring the men provide for these women, no one seems to be complaining about too much muscularity.
[quote]ouroboro_s wrote:
mavis13 wrote:
I think girls look damn good toned and a little muscular.
Every time I hear someone say ‘toned’ my spirit dies a little.
My friends and family don’t ask the ‘toned’ question because they know exactly what I do. I do get it from strangers though. When I talk about PL I get odd looks because I’m not very big. Invariably, people will say I don’t look big enough for it; I don’t meet their stereotype of what that is.
I haven’t really gotten a whole lot bigger, just a lot harder.[/quote]
I, too, hate that word.
I also get the “but you don’t look like a powerlifter” line all the time. Makes me a little sad. I wouldn’t mind looking strong.
[quote]Christine wrote:
Turns out though that it’s really difficult to get freaky. Who woulda thunk?[/quote]
[Shakes head and wonders why no one has offered to show Christine how to get freaky]
[quote]Christine wrote:
Yo Momma wrote:
Christine wrote:
I know I used that as an excuse before I ever started lifting.
But it was the fear of looking like some sort of freak.
That thought crossed my mind in the beginning, too. But since I’m built like Janet Reno to begin with, I figured I couldn’t get much worse, so might as well be strong.
Ultimately I figured that I would rather be strong and freaky than weak and wimpy.
Turns out though that it’s really difficult to get freaky. Who woulda thunk?[/quote]
Seriously though, there is a lady in out dojo that was always in great shape and decided to compete (IFBB?). Seeing her go through the changes necessary to get up on stage was interesting…not attractive to me, but interesting.
Now that her season is over she is able to take the classes again and her vascularity has been mostly replaced by smoothness which is more attractive to me. Another thing is a lot of the general populace don’t realize is that the competition look is only for a short period of time.
I think women look great at all levels of natural fitness. Just as long as their BF% is not too low. I think that the vascularity is really the “unattractive” look people seem to not like. Chemically enhanced women are a different story, but then again so are chem. enhanced men.
Women’s muscles are made of the same stuff as men’s and I don’t see any reason why a woman shouldn’t train them the same way unless she is prego or something.
I believe that most women don’t have it in the cards to achieve the “freaky big” look naturally because of the hormones issue. It still takes grown men many, many years to achieve this look the natural way and I believe that look represents the upper limit of genetic potential.