Since getting engaged myself and hearing from many others now that I'm part of the club, the hot topic is..... the bride getting in shape for that big day. I see it everywhere, all the women's magazines have a get fit for your wedding article, future brides are flooding their pinterest with anything they can find related to "bridal fitness" and working out. So this is to help them and you take the first steps...and hopefully several more!
Which although I am not a woman I am certainly putting my bride to be through the paces in her workouts. This will be an informative series in a practical sense, again those interested specifically in the science can comment or email me. Otherwise in my experience most of you don't care so much about the details, and if you haven't taken anatomy or biology at some point in your life it wouldn't mean anything anyway!
Lets get to the nitty-gritty that's on all your female minds right away
Can women train like men? Or should they follow a female specific workout plan?
- No need for female specific anything, as far as training goes women and men both should get some level of relative strength from body-weight work before using resistance like weights.
- Both men and women should also focus on developing strength through compound movements when possible as opposed to focusing on isolation. ( Think hitting squats and bench press THEN your favorite machines if you have energy, as opposed to just going to the gym hitting tricep pushdowns and leg extensions and expecting change!
Will women get big and bulky from even looking at heavy weights?
- No, simply put it is a matter of hormones and since men have more than 10x as much testosterone as women, unless you have a female on steroids it is impossible to develop muscle and weight gain like a man. Not to mention that in addition to this the female body is actually built differently from a mans (weird I know...kidding) meaning your muscles are actually distributed differently across the body than a mans.
- "Toning" is simply removing the fat that is covering a developed muscle, if you don't have muscle built from lifting heavy weights then there is nothing there to tone! Think about all the women you see doing excessive cardio and then they look "too skinny" and "flabby" and then they just do even MORE cardio thinking that what they are doing isn't working! It is working just fine but you don't have any muscle so you just look like a bag of bones with no fat on your bodies!
- By the way I do not like the words "toning" or "firming" up, these words have come to represent a made up category. There is no such thing as just doing toning or firming work, that "toned" appearance that all women crave is simply tension stored in a muscle that has been developed and is prepared to work! The stronger your muscles are, the firmer they are to the touch!
- …I compare gaining muscle & losing fat to cooking a hamburger on a George Foreman Griller… Let’s say you take a big handful of ground beef, mold it into a hamburger and then place it on the griller. After it’s done cooking, is it going to be bigger or smaller? Obviously, the hamburger shrinks after it’s fully cooked. Why did it shrink? It shrunk because it lost the fat and kept the “muscle”. Basically, the end result of having muscle without a lot of fat is a smaller, leaner burger! The same holds true for humans!! If we can gain or maintain muscle while losing fat, we are going to look leaner (and females will usually look smaller). To add to this concept, it’s important for females to know that muscle takes up less space than fat in your body. For example, 5 pounds of muscle takes up less space than 5 pounds of fat! So if you can get your females to lose fat and gain an equal amount of muscle, they really will be SMALLER (even though their scale weight will not change).
Mind blowing stuff huh?
So taking these principles our future brides looking to get in shape should:
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| This... |
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| And this... |
- Start some sort of training routine involving bodyweight to get their bodies used to training before hitting an external load of some kind -
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| Before this! It's all about progression! |
- Concentrate on using big movements that involve as much of the body as possible when they do start using weights, with the goal of always increasing in reps or poundage used or both
- Forget about using the scale as our main measure of progress, if you gain 5 pounds of muscle and lose 3 pounds of fat your "scale weight" barely changed AND in the "wrong direction" but there was a pretty decent change in body composition that you will like I guarantee you!
Many people want to jump right into weights or whatever the local fad of training is, but please don't. Get a base of body-weight work in for 2-6 weeks initially and keep including it even once you've advanced.
I mean when was the last time you saw a girl in the gym banging out pushups?
Yet you will always see a girl on some type of cable or machine working her chest or arms, and yet she never seems to look any different?
Now I'll use Amber as an example, do you think that her ability to do full range of motion push ups has anything to do with her ability to use over half her body weight on the bench press...?
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| Always energy left for curls |
Absolutely! But it does not work both ways. Her being able to crank out sets of pushups gave her the initial strength to even be able to use the bar by itself on a bench press.
Buuuuut obviously she could not just walk into a gym for the first time on her quest to be a fit bride and begin with being not even strong enough to press the bar... and just struggle to bang out horrible forced reps which would suddenly give her the ability to do pushups? No, she would not have had the strength to use even the bar alone, learning and performing the exercise with good technique is out the window!
Plus getting used to body-weight movements, most of them resemble pretty closely their weighted barbell or dumbbell versions.
Will learning to do pushups on your own and correctly help you keep the bar straight and balanced when you start benching or doing some form of weighted upper body work- Yes
Will learning to squat without weight transition you to weighted squats much easier - yes definitely this is like learning to ride a bike with training wheels, when they finally come off you don't have to think about pedaling and steering, just balance. Like wise with the squat you won't be trying to think about butt back and knees out and whatever other cues apply to you all while being crushed by the weight! (not that you should ever start with a weight that crushes you...)
Next time I'll detail an example bodyweight training program with some instructions on the movements and how to progress as well as touch on the next aspect of bridal fitness ------ Diet!
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Here's my training for the week
7/3 - Lower
1. Squats - bar x 20 , 95 x 15 , 135 x 10 , 185 x 5 , 205 x 5 , 225 x 5
2. Walking lunge - 10lb db's x 10 steps L/R, 5lb db's x 10 steps L/R , BW x 10 steps L/R
3. Romanian deadlifts - 95lb x 10 , 135 x 6 , 185 x 5 , 205 x 5
Neck harness - 4 x 25 @ 12.5lb
7/5 - Upper
Bench - 45lb x 20 , 95 x 12 , 135 x 5 , 185 x 5 , 205 x 3 , 215 x 6 , 185 x 4 , 155 x 6 , 135 x 7
(bold is work set/PRs and italics is dropset)
2A. Mixed pull ups - 8 pullups , 9 chinups, 8 wide pullups, 9 neutral chins
2B. Incline DB bench - 40s x 8 , 50s x 8 , 60s x 5 , 70s x 5
3A. Neutral pushups 2xmax - 32 , 18
3B. BB Reverse curls - 45lb x 15 , 10
Neck harness - 4 x 25 @ 15lbs /// Band PA's - 4 x 25
7/7 - Full body
1A. DB Snatch - 60lb x 5 , 70lb x 5
1B. DB Press - 40lb x 5 , 50 x 5
2. Zercher squats - 135lb x 10 , 155 x 10 , 10
3. DB Swings - 3 x 10 @ 70lb db
1/2 mile run - 4:30
7/9 - Lower
1. Squat - 45lb x 20 , 95lb x 15 , 135lb x 10 , 185lb x 10,8,12
2. Split squats - BW x 6 , +10lb dbs x 6 , +25s x 6 , +10s x 6
3. RDLs - 45 x 10 , 95 x 10 , 135 x 10 , 185 x 6 , 6
Neck harness - 2 x 25 @ 10lb , 50 PAs
Til next time!
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