Womens Bodybuilding Blog

This is the weekly summary on female bodybuilding for the week of July 31. This is where I basically give you a summary of the posts through the week, so you can easily read through them and understand them. It’ll save you a lot of time if your only chance to read up on posts is the weekend. This post is brought to you by Iron Dolls: Female Bodybuilding Guide.

Do you need an Amazing Gym Membership? – A lot of people think they need to get a great membership to an awesome gym if they want to get decent results. I’m not saying that having certain pieces of equipment isn’t important, but you really don’t need anything state of the art. As long as you can do bench presses and squats, you should be able to do everything.

Mistakes Female Bodybuilders Make – There are a lot of mistakes that you’re probably making right now. Understanding exactly what those mistakes are will help you prevent doing them.

Jim Carrey as a Female Bodybuilder – I thought this would be a little humor for you, since we always talk so serious on here. This is a video of Jim Carrey pretending to be a female bodybuilder.

Understanding Resting Times for Muscles – Resting times are very important for the building of muscle. All muscle building will occur while you’re asleep, so making sure that you do it right is important.

I think everyone recognizes that the resting times that you apply to your muscles are just as important as the workout itself and the foods you eat. The resting time is an important part of the rebuilding tissue part. It takes upwards of 48hours for actual muscle tissue to repair itself after a workout. Essentially it is this scientific fact that dictates you shouldn’t be working a particular muscle until that 48 hours is over. That means if you do a bench press, you have to wait another 48 hours before you can do bench presses again.

I wish rest times were this simple, but they’re not. There is a lot more too this. Even though the 48 hour rule will always apply, there is also a need to rest the body from load. Load or volume, is the amount of weight you life multiplied repetition over a period of time. Obviously weight lifting is a form of beating up your body. You beat it up, so you rebuild stronger muscle tissue, but this process is hard. Your body needs an obvious rest from the volume of beatings it receives.

I try to work in a very light (low volume) week every 6 weeks. This typically lets the muscles and central nervous system time for a well needed rest from the 5 previous weeks of getting beat up. This is all important and will help your body be much more efficient at repairing tissue.

I thought that this was pretty funny. I suppose that it holds some of the stereotypes that we all face as female bodybuilders. That doesn’t mean we can’t have a sense of humor about it because we at least know this stuff isn’t true.

There are a lot of mistakes that you’ll probably go through as a bodybuilder. I had to learn most of these on my own and I have a feeling that you may have a learned a few of these on your own as well. You just need to learn to avoid these mistakes and focus on the right actions that lead to success.

Being Impatient

We live in a culture of instant gratifications. We can talk with people on the other side of the world in real time. We can pick up our cell phone and call someone, no matter where we are. Instant gratification is our culture, but in bodybuilding there is no instant gratification. There are no fast results. There are no results you can see after one workout.

This is a sport where slow and steady wins the race and that’s because results are slow and steady. The lat thing you want to do is get impatient because you’re not seeing results fast enough.

Using a Weight Scale too often or not properly

I’m sure you’re one of these people or no someone that does this, but they’ll hop on the scale every time they go to the gym. That is the equivalent of getting on the scale every day. That’s a waste of time because your weight will fluctuate throughout the week no matter what. Some days you’ll be up and some days you’ll be down. Doing this turns you into an emotional roller coaster.

It’s also important to note that when you make it to a certain weight that you won’t be able to properly measure results from a weight scale.

I often hear people whining about their gym or where they workout. They tend to think that it is a horrible place that isn’t of a great quality or can’t produce the results you need. I can admit that I’ve been in this mental state and it is a poor state to be in.

FACT: You don’t need an amazing gym to workout.

I know it seems like having a big huge gym that has all this amazing equipment will get you real results. It seems like an appropriate thing, but it’s not true. I’m not saying you can’t have amazing results at a great gym, but you can have great results at a poor gym.

Essentially, you just need a few important pieces of equipment to be able to get all the results you need. For me, all I need is something to do bench presses and squats. Everything else can be derived from those two things. You’re going to have a bar for these exercises, so you can do things like military presses, bent over rows, deadlifts, skull crushers, bicep curls, etc. You can do anything you need to get done and in a gym that isn’t that big or amazing.

This is another installation of the weekly summary. This is where I give a basic description of all the female bodybuilding blog posts over the last week. This way you can understand them before you jump right into read them. Remember, if you want to be a better bodybuilding you need to take a look at Iron Dolls.

Sugar For the Female Bodybuilder – Sugar is something that is definitely frowned upon by people in the bodybuilding industry, but I’m arguing that there is a specific place for this in your diet. There is actually a lot of benefit too.

Preparing for a Bodybuilding Contest – All of this bodybuilding training often makes you forget about the actual contest you should be aiming for. Preparing for your bodybuilding contest is very important and reaching your goals in a very specific manner is important.

Muscle is Essential for Fat Loss – Essentially this comes down to whether you should be cutting fat or putting muscle on first. I think it is pretty apparent that you should go with muscle growth first than cut the fat later.

Understanding Why You Binge – Binging is something that we all sort of due, from time to time. There is a specific reason that we do it. You have to be able to identify why you will binge and how you can prevent it from happening.

The word binge should really have a negative view in your head, at least I hope it does. This is when you have a break down in will power and just eat a lot of things you shouldn’t have. It’s typically a detrimental act to your progress and something that should be avoided. I wanted to at least help you understand this beast because it can be controlled and you can give yourself odds at beating it. It’s tough to deal with binges, but I’m sure you can handle it.

There are two reasons why this happens. The first is an obvious regression to your old lifestyle. That old lifestyle where you could eat what you want. The only difference this time is that you want to get as much of a taste as possible before it’s too late. The second reason is that you’re not enjoying what you eat. You are used to eating for pleasure, but when you start bodybuilding you will eat in a very systematic fashion.

The problem here is that you’re not giving yourself enough gratification not to binge. There needs to be at least some joy that comes from eating. The key is finding something that you really love. Something that fulfills that need, but doesn’t compromise your diet.

For me, I would have a milk shake after each work out with whey protein. Having one of these after a workout is not really that big of a deal. And it was enough to prevent me from binging.

If you’re a person that has a lot of fat you want to lose, what should you be doing? Some would argue that you should shed the fat off your body first, than get to work on putting on muscle. This could actually be counter productive to the process. Putting on muscle and later shedding the fat will work much more efficiently.

The more muscle that you have on your body, the more efficient you become at burning fat. The reason for this is that your muscles require maintenance calories to keep them alive and working. A lot of people don’t realize this, but for every 1lb of muscle you put on your body will burn an additional 60 calories. That may not sound like many calories, but if you put on 10lbs of muscle, you’ll burn an additional 600 calories.

600 calories is a lot. That is practically an additional meal you can eat each day without putting on a pound of fat for it. That’s significant. OR if you want to look at it differently. Put on 10lbs and you’ll burn an additional 600 calories each day (assuming you eat the same amount). It’ll make you a much more efficient fat burner.

If you haven’t prepared for a bodybuilding contest, than you’re going to have trouble with this. I know it seems sort of easy. You just need to get to a great looking body by the time you have the competition. But you really need to achieve that body down to basically a day before the competitions. Typically you’ll start 8-12 weeks before the competition to achieve this state, so you can tell how difficult this can be to achieve.

The first thing you obviously need is to know exactly what you’re aiming for as a body (goal). In this case you wouldn’t say ripped. You have to come up with numbers. If you want to get down to 11% body fat than that is what you have to aim for. You need that number to keep you on track.

Secondly you’re going to need to have a complete understanding of your body and how it will work at this time. If you have 8 weeks to reach your goal, than you have some work to do. In the world of bodybuilding, you can’t arrive early because the body fat percentage will be too low to remain for long periods of time. You can’t arrive late because you won’t be as cut as you should be. You have to reach your goal the day before your competition, so that requires a very good understanding of your body and how it will work during this time.

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Sugar (refined) is definitely a no-no when it comes to female bodybuilding. This is one of the first rules I was told for my diet because sugar just isn’t a substance you want to take in. It causes your insulin to rapidly rise and later rapidly crash. This will bring you from a stimulating high to a crashing low, which obviously isn’t a good position to be in. But is it really that bad? Could sugar have a purpose that we aren’t fulfilling or using? Actually it does have a very specific purpose that could be very beneficial to bodybuilders.

Sugar will inevitably have its greatest effect on your insulin levels. In case you don’t already know, insulin is your hormone of storage. It gives your body the ability to store nutrients, fat, etc. The main reason that you should be eating sugar is that you’ll probably end up storing fat. Typically you won’t be eating sugar by itself, but some fatty item as well.

There is a place for sugar and bodybuilding. We recognize that storage is very important. Normally natural sugars is enough for this like a piece of fruit. But that causes a slower and more moderate rise of your insulin.

When do you need rapid nutrient absorption? Right after you workout. You want nutrients to get to your muscles very fast. Taking sugar after you workout is probably about the most appropriate and effective time to take it.