Brunos Fitness

Archive for December, 2009

I know this girl. She used to go the gym 5 days a week. Alternating cardio machines for 90 mins. She wasn’t overweight. But neither was she “toned” as she desired. She was skinny & fat.

Yes that exists: skinny & fat. That’s how you become when you don’t give your body the nutrition it needs for recovery. Your body burns muscles & holds fat.

I told her once to get into strength training & eat more healthy. But I got the classic response: “I don’t want to end up bulky & muscular like a man”.

You Won’t Get Bulky. Remember: your bodyweight depends on the amount of calories you eat & expend. Strength training will make you gain muscle & lose fat. But you’ll stay at the same bodyweight unless you start eating more.

Women have lower testosterone levels than men. Muscle mass & strength depend on your testosterone levels. The only way women can get as muscular as man is by using steroids or pro-hormones.

CrossfitBenefits for Women. I wrote about the reasons to starts strength training in the past. They’re the same for women:

* Less Fat. More muscles, decreased body fat at the same bodyweight.
* Balanced Physique. Many women are skinny in the upperbody & bulky in their legs. Strength training will

balance your physique.
* Increased Bone Density. Lifting weights prevents osteoporosis.
* Blood Circulation. Helps combat cellulites on thighs & glutes.
* More strength. Pregnancy, holding baby, householdery,… gets easier.
* Fun. Women really like sports from my experience, especially when they have fun while getting results.
* Physical Activity. Whether it is strength training or something else: you need physical activity to stay “sane”.

How Women Should Train. Same as men. Same exercises. Same sets & reps. Same programs. If your goal is toning up & losing fat, strength is your tool.

Focus on getting stronger on the Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift, Overhead Press & Pull-up. Get on the beginner strength training program.

Women’s Results. The difference in testosterone levels will influence the results you’ll achieve as a woman. In general:

* Increased muscle mass. But less than a man.
* Decreased body fat. 16% for women is the same as 10% for men.
* Increased strength. But again less than a man.

In terms of physique, look at the woman above at CrossFit. She is Cankle free, slender legs, flat stomach,
she is athletic, in shape & not bulky. Women of crossfit are also much more attractive and desired by men, then your common party girl.
Their secret is simple: training hard, consistently, eating correctly & living a healthy lifestyle.

Scientists using hi-tech body scanners have discovered that people with more symmetrical bodies are more attractive to the opposite sex.

The research backs up previous findings that symmetrically proportioned faces are more attractive and suggests that our brains are hard-wired to find symmetry sexy in a potential partner. In our evolutionary past, symmetry may have been an honest signal of flawless development and health.

“It is widely believed that human beings are attracted to one another as a result of genotype and phenotype quality – in other words, their prospect as a mate who will yield higher quality offspring for the chooser,” said Dr William Brown, an evolutionary psychologist at Brunel University who led the study.

“Your body proportions, shape and stature are signals that conspicuously advertise your good development or health and therefore the degree to which you are a desirable reproductive partner. In many species fewer departures from perfect symmetry are associated with good development, health and reproductive success.”

The theory is that disturbances in the womb, infections, poor nutrition and genetic flaws all increase your degree of asymmetry and so good proportions are an honest indication of healthy development and hence a partner’s ability to produce healthy children.

Brown’s team asked 40 men and 37 women to strip down to their underwear and enter a 24-camera body scanner. The device rapidly takes hundreds of measurements of the subject’s body allowing the researchers to build up a 3D image. They also calculated a composite measure of symmetry from the hundreds of minute symmetry differences recorded by the cameras.

The team showed each of these images to 87 evaluators who rated them for attractiveness. The researchers were particularly interested in how body asymmetry would affect the ratings, so to avoid adding another factor to the evaluators’ decision, the team presented each image with the head of the subject removed.

The evaluators preferred more symmetrical body shapes in both men and women. “They are choosing individuals who would have evidence for good development which means that maybe their offspring would be more healthy and have good development as well,” said Brown.

The results are reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.