Many women do not achieve their bodybuilding potential because they fear training and eating like men do. As long as women stay natural, their lower testosterone levels limit their ability to grow muscle. By focusing on these natural bodybuilding tips, women can improve their physiques and achieve their goals much faster.
Warming Up
According to "3-D Muscle Building," authors Jonathan Lawson and Steve Holman, warming up properly can significantly improve your performance on successive working sets. They recommend occlusion warm ups, which pump extra blood into the muscles before beginning your working sets. Do two occlusion warm ups with 50 percent and then 75 percent of your working weight. Lower the weight to a four-second cadence, doing four to five slow repetitions, then pump out six-to-10-inch partial lifts between the middle and top of the range of motion to occlude or force more blood into the working muscle.
Train Heavy
Do not worry about getting "bulky" from lifting heavily. Women do not produce enough testosterone naturally to gain a lot of muscle mass. Focus on training in the hypertrophy (muscle growth) repetition range, with six to 12 reps on every set. Do each set as heavy as you can under control for this prescribed number of repetitions.
Failure and Progression
Train progressively and to failure on every set. A fundamental pillar of strength training, progression means incrementally adding weight (five to 10 lbs at a time) as you get stronger in order to keep challenging your muscles. Training to failure means that you take each set to positive failure or the point at which you can no longer do a controlled repetition.
Growth Hormone's Role
Women produce more growth hormone than men, in response to resistance training, to repair muscles in the absence of high amounts of testosterone. You should embrace techniques that cause the body to naturally produce more growth hormone. For example, drop-sets do this quite well, according to "Xtreme Lean." To perform a drop-set, you do one set to exhaustion, then immediately "drop" or decrease the weight and do another set to exhaustion, with no rest between the two.
Post-workout Nutrition
You must get proper post-workout nutrition in order to recover from intense workouts. May women fear taking in carbohydrates because they readily store as body fat. However, after a workout you must take in some carbohydrates to stop muscle breakdown and begin the process of protein synthesis. Try 30 g of whey protein, 30 to 60 g of carbohydrates and 15 g of healthy fats, such as flaxseed oil or coconut milk.
Supplementation
Women should not fear using natural supplements, which can drastically improve muscle recovery. Try taking three to five grams of creatine monohydrate before or after your workout. In addition, you may want to take 1.5 to 3 grams of beta-alanine and 3 grams of L-arginine immediately preceding your workouts. Other effective additions include five to 10 grams of branched-chain amino acids and an equal amount of the amino acid L-glutamine, taken twice a day, either after your workout or before bed.
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