bulky

[PeakFitness]

Originally Posted by CarlaVeg

This thread made me wonder.... do you gals think Cathe, Jillian Michaels, & Kelly Coffey Meyer are bulky?

I don't think any of them are bulky.

[fitmom24]

I guess I am one of the panicky ones since I recently asked a question about bulking in regard to S90.

I have had over 20 years to figure out when I am "bulking" or not. I put on muscle very easily in the lower 1/2 of my body. My legs are the last thing to gain fat if I put on any extra weight. IMO, S90 works the legs quite a bit even if the program only has one workout referred to as the leg workout.

In regard to my body, bulking means big square muscles. I don't like that look on myself.

If it's just water retention, why isn't it distributed all over my body? Why doesn't it come off during a rest week in-between cycles?

I've done other programs that have caused the same issue for me. I completed the programs even though I didn't like the way I started to look. This time I didn't. As much as I enjoyed the S90 program, I didn't enjoy the way my pants fit or the way my legs looked in shorts.

So, whether the bulk is muscle or water, I don't like it and I'm not ashamed to say I "bulk".

Michelle

[kariev34]

Thank you all for the responses. I really loved reading them. I to think the word bulky is very subjective. What's bulky to me may not be bulky to you. I hate reading magazines that state women can't get bulky with heavy weights because its based on what each individuals perception is on bulking. For me, I'm a meso/endo so when I lift super heavy I thicken right up. It has taken years of trial and error to find out what works for my body (which is still not 10100% clear) but I do know that lifting heavy with minimal cardio makes me bulk. I know this could have been a very heated thread but I love hearing everyones opinions on this. That's why VF is so great.

[alikruegs]

I think it’s completely possible to have:
1) fat over muscle that, if it’s not burned off, makes you look bigger when you develop bigger muscles
2) water weight gain / bloat
3) muscles that are “too big” for your tastes
4) All or any combination of the above.
I personally dispute the notion that bigger = stronger. I tend to put on muscle tone very easily when I do strength work. When I was growing up taking ballet classes, there were girls in my class with smaller muscles who were stronger than me. I didn’t have extra fat / padding; in fact, I had very defined muscles, and teachers often mistook me for being stronger than I was (which always freaked me out because they would sometimes really push me beyond what I could handle). There’s a difference between looking strong and being strong (not that they are not at all related, but I think their correlation is often over-asserted here on VF). Take, for example, Tracy Anderson: I cannot, without nearly killing myself, keep up with her in PDIII and some exercises in PDII and Meta. My upper body is just exhausted, and she's still plugging along with those plank-down-dog-leg-lift things. She doesn't look like she's stronger than me. But, no contest: she is. And I wouldn't classify TA as bulky.

[Sue B]

Originally Posted by Kimberly33

I think this your view is plausible. But, I think that the water gain theory has more evidence for it. We can disagree about that. I think the studies that show that it's hard for women to put on more than a few pounds of muscle in a year support my view. But, unless we're going to pay to have people biopsied and weighed in a water tanks, we're probably not going to know which is correct for certain.

There are people in labs doing the biopsies and x-rays and expensive tests, and they keep saying the same thing.

And anyway, aren't we trying to maintain and gain muscle as we age? I don't see anyone telling older women that they need to get rid of muscle for their health sake.

[RedPanda]

Originally Posted by CarlaVeg

This thread made me wonder.... do you gals think Cathe, Jillian Michaels, & Kelly Coffey Meyer are bulky?

IMO:

Cathe = muscular and fit-looking

Jillian = skinny and ripped

Kelly Coffey Meyer = muscular and fit-looking

But none of them look "bulky". They all look great, and seem to have achieved the optimal look for their own body.

To me, the only women who look "bulky" are female body-builders who look as though they have been taking steroids. It's an unnatural look, particularly when paired with the extra-square jaw characteristic of the "roided-up". (I don't like that look on men either.)

[shortie]

IMO, "bulky" is just an adjective. It's not defining the whole woman, it's just a useful word to describe things getting bigger than someone wants them to be.

I agree that this is both subjective (one woman's bulky is another woman's just-right) --
and also it's physiology-dependent (one woman "bulks" up on spinning and leans down with running, while exactly the reverse can happen to another).

Personally, I'm thrilled to see a thread where so many agree that it can happen, vs. the usual "women don't have enough testosterone to bulk" stuff we see in fitness magazines.

[ddj]

Originally Posted by CarlaVeg

This thread made me wonder.... do you gals think Cathe, Jillian Michaels, & Kelly Coffey Meyer are bulky?

Not at all.

[Mopsy]

Didn't we have a thread a year or so ago that basically asked to define "bulky"? I think Alta started it and it wasn't to discuss good or bad, just to see what everyones definition was. The input was all over the board and I realized then that any other discussion was moot. We weren't even talking about the same thing. Pictures were posted, and as I thought someone was bulky (I think it was a body builder) someone else posted that she wasn't.

[Mollie F.]

Originally Posted by JP44

I'm sorry but I find the bolded part really patronizing and this gets posted all the time. Even your use of the term "panic thread" is insulting.

Why do you assume other women are simply wrong about what is happening in their own body? Because it didn't happen to you?

Fast twitch fibers build 10x faster than slow twitch fibers. (see http://www.thinkmuscle.com/articles/haycock/hst-07.htm) so just because someone is complaining about "bulking" after 3 weeks of a new routine (esp. if it's heavy lifting) doesn't mean they are imagining things (i.e. new muscle growth). They may have more fast twitch fibers which would responding more quickly to that type of training--particularly if it's heavy lifting.

Can we please stop the universal judgment that "female bulking = temporary water gain or fat over muscle"? This is just another variation on the myth that women can't bulk.

Women CAN get bigger muscles than they want based on THEIR muscle fibers & how they train. Some women will see faster muscle growth than others. Your body isn't theirs so it's not appropriate to denigrate that person's results/observations by what you experienced in YOURS.

Moreover, just as you don't appreciate having your more muscular look derided as unfeminine, why should someone who prefers a less muscular look be deemed "weak looking." (your term.) Aren't you also passing judgment on someone's body? How do know what their body is capable of doing? Maybe they can run 50 - 100 miles in their "weak looking" body!


Joan

I don't think that Kimberly was suggesting that women can't get bigger muscles if they want. And, while I don't think that this thread falls into that category, I've seen threads about "bulking" that could be described as "panic threads" (I liked that phrase, btw).

I should add that I'm small-framed, can build muscle relatively easily, but do experience a bit of--shall we say swelling? soon after I've started lifting. Nothing that lasts a month and a half, but enough to show that my body is making an adjustment to the new routine.

In truth, I just don't like the words "bulking" or "bulky" to describe my body's development. For me, those words have negative connotations that the size is awkward, difficult to deal with, or ungraceful. Personally, I find my muscles magnificent when they grow, and I'm a bit concerned when I see posts that imply that muscular arms don't fulfill someone's ideal of feminine beauty. It is traditional, sadly, that less-muscular women fit that traditional ideal more than their muscular sisters.