Will I get bulky?

The first thing to understand is that adding muscle mass is by far the most challenging and time-consuming change you can make to your body. It is virtually impossible to put on “too much” muscle quickly. Mass will always be the last thing that happens.

You get strong much faster than you get big. And you get lean much faster as well. With a good amount of effort, you can lose 10 pounds of fat in a month. With a tremendous amount of effort, it would take you 6-9 months to add 10 pounds of muscle. Out of all the things you can change about your body, adding muscle requires the most patience, and the most effort.

The bulky myth comes from the world of body building. Body building competitions don’t require drug tests. 100% of the athletes in those competitions use steroids. One hundred percent. They have to. They wouldn’t be competitive otherwise. And the tremendous muscle mass they are able to build is only possible with steroids.

And that field has nothing to do with strength. A body building competition is entirely visual - how do the contestants look? The goal of a body builder is to create large muscles, and they train in a very specific way to accomplish that. They do not care about how strong they are. Strength has no impact on how successful they are. Strength might be a bi-product of their work, but it is not the goal.  

Likewise, strength training has very little to do with muscle mass. Effective strength programs are built around complex, multi-joint movements, like a barbell squat. The goal is to learn how to use as much of your body as possible during any given movement.

Whereas, body building is focused on isolation. A body builder uses movements that put as much stress as possible on a single muscle. These tend to be single-joint movements, like a biceps curl. A body builder doesn’t do a lot of squats, because it distributes the work throughout the body. Instead, a body builder will use a machine, like a leg extension, because it puts the entirety of the work into the quads, thus increasing the size.

The goal of a strength program is to create strength that serves you through your day. In the end, the only reason we care about how beautifully you can deadlift, is because it is exactly the kind of strength you will need to lift that heavy box in your attic. Gym strength and functional strength are 2 very different things. At Lift, you can do either, or both. We design your training program around your priorities.