Hormones Affect Building Muscles in Females?

Lift Like a Lady!

Healthy muscles are imperative for normal functioning of the body. Men are hyper-excited about bodybuilding and six-pack abs while women mostly settle down for a well-toned body. Its rare to find a woman excited about increasing muscle strength or building muscles except for some of those specializing in that domain. Since time immemorial women have been raised to think, act and behave gently refraining from doing boy stuffs or acting rash like a guy. But women today are breaking such barriers, involving themselves in every domain possible, riding Harley Davidsons or taking care of a family single-handedly. They are dominating every stream of life with their talent and skill. Despite this, myths and fancies surrounding strength training continue to exist. While researchers are busy exploring and discovering reasons to explain why weights are good for the lady there are not many women who come forward to lift weights fearing the oversized development of muscles! Some women who’ve tried it are also not super-excited about the results and have often heard pacifying comments from people around them encouraging them with the standard dialogue that women cannot build muscles like men owing to their lack of testosterones. So, how much of this is true?
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Testosterone Tester
Every woman’s body responds differently to different situations. While women suffering from lack of muscle growth even after lifting weights do exist there are also cases of those women who have hit the gym with the strong notion that they wont build muscles and had gained muscle weight a couple of weeks after training hard. So, if testosterone was the culprit behind lack of muscle strength then why does this differentiation arise? This proves that testosterone is only partially responsible and the rest lies within our DNA. Our genes play a greater role in deciding what type of muscle fiber we have and where it is distributed in the body. Genetics even decides upon the way in which we respond to exercises, the ratio of testosterone versus estrogen and where fat is stored in the body. Above all, genetics determines our body type. If you are someone interested in knowing the role of genetics in determining our body weight as well, www.firsteatright.com is the right place to look for clear explanations and insights.

Exercising for the Body Type
Every woman falls under one of these three body types or is a combination of them.

• Mesomorphs are muscular
• Endomorphs are voluptuous and rounded
• Ectomorphs are slim

Mesomorphs show a greater response to strength training by building muscle mass compared to ectomorphs despite the fact that both of them follow a similar training regimen. Endomorphs must lose body fat to reap the fruits of their strength training. While strength training might not help the ectomorphs build muscles mass quickly, they do become stronger with resistance training exercises.
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Focus on the Heart Muscle
Strength training relies on the basic principle that overloading a muscle helps it increase in size. For instance, stair climbing or step training change the size and shape of the lower body muscles which increase further with increasing the height of the step or doubling powerful movements. Hence, if you wish to avoid muscle building it would be helpful to reduce step height or lower impact of the movements. This decreases the overall overload on the muscles decreasing the chances of building muscles.

Do it For Your Happiness & Interest

Stick to the Rules
Go by the tried and tested principles that to stay stronger one needs to work with heavier weights and do fewer repetitions. Contrarily, to increase endurance one has to do more repetitions and work with lighter weights. Doing this way, women too experience a 20-40% increase in muscular strength after several months of resistance training.
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Follow the nuances of exercise and enjoy the experience rather than looking forward to only witnessing changes in your body. It is crucial to understand the body type and realize how you might respond to exercises in order to set your goals. Also, make it a point to never compare with others as no two people are alike. Accept your body and realize it’s worth. This is a sure shot way to overcome the guilt and frustrations lurking inside. This doesn’t mean that you must overlook the weight gain part. All that I am trying to tell is that keep working and eating the right foods. Automatically you would see a sea change in your weight and activeness quotient.

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