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The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

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271–280 of 358 posts

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#271
post #264

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I was a ridiculously cute little girl and I'm pretty damn sure a lot of my social issues as a young adult were rooted in getting essentially trained to play to the crowd as a toddler. At that age, it's a form of brainwashing and it's amazingly hard to root out after you become an adult and are puzzled that your antics no longer get you adoration. (PSA: Please don't do this to your own children. It's an awful thing to…

You'd be surprised. Male attractiveness is simply NOT TALKED ABOUT much, especially around older people. But my mother, who is quite reserved, once blurted out that in his early years father looked 'like a young god'. And yeah, I've seen a black&white photo. He looked pretty much like Clark Kent. Square jaw, glasses, swole from muscles... except he wore a linen shirt instead of a suit. He always enjoyed labor. I woul…

Women having sexual preferences and predilections is not at all the same thing as men getting a ton of social pressure from all quarters to look and act a certain way.

A very attractive female actress once said "I dress for women. I undress for men." For that and other reasons, I'm not convinced that male sexual preferences really drive the female tendency to try hard to look good and dress well, even though that's the supposed justification. Society gives women a lot of silly ideas about what men want and I think most women don't really bother to ask men if any of that actually holds water or not.

When I was relatively young and married I bought a new coat and got all mad when my husband failed to notice my new coat at all and, thus, failed to compliment me on it. I have to wonder how much women go around demanding that men tell them they like and approve of X, Y and Z rather than checking to find out if he even really, truly cares about X, Y or Z at all.

During my long, drawn out divorce at a time when I did not expect to be in a position to make a relationship really work long-term, I just began asking men point blank what they liked about me. The answers were surprisingly varied and completely destroyed a lot of preconceived notions I had about what made me "attractive."

It was very eye-opening and life-changing for me. It also made me enormously skeptical of a lot of "standard wisdom" related to such topics.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#272

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Just look at athletes before widespread steroid use. They have spent way more time training than actors and haven't looked like that even in sports that require dehydration like boxing. That's exactly the problem with lying about steroids. It took a while for Arnold and his successors to admit that they were on 1000mg of test per week (plus other stuff of course; normal production of even high test men is below 100mg…

Just look at athletes before widespread steroid use. They have spent way more time training than actors and haven't looked like that even in sports that require dehydration like boxing. Athletes train for performance, generally meaning muscle strength and endurance. Actors train for appearance, generally meaning muscle size . These different training goals generally require very different training programs. Would you…

It depends how much you take. TRT like doses don't make you balloon like bodybuilders. They are also much healthier. You can do 200-250/week for some time then back to 100-150/week and you will get huge benefits in both muscle mass and recovery but you will still look natural at least to untrained eye.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#273

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Speaking in effective time, it is obviously more than 60 minutes, I would say rather 160 minutes in the beginning and then getter lower with experience and getting used to it. Resistance training is great, but let's not oversell it to others! A beginner not only needs to buy stuff (or commute to/from the gym) and create their plan and schedule it, they also need to account for spending extra time to correct their pos…

> Speaking in effective time, it is obviously more than 60 minutes, I would say rather 160 minutes in the beginning and then getter lower with experience and getting used to it. I seriously disagree with this. 60 minutes is more than sufficient if you aren't screwing around. I also think it's baffling that people are still recommending Starting Strength when there are far more efficient and productive programs to sta…

Could you name some of the more effective and productive programs?

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#274
post #185

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I'd strongly second resistance training, it doesn't really take that much time either. A simple program like Starting Strength will have you train for not much more than 60 minutes three days a week and you'll make significant strength gains up to 1.5x body weight easily.

yeah.. 60-90 min workout, but probably a minimum 30-40min recovery time to feel okay afterwards, plus extended sleep! You really tend to sleep longer.. You want that 8 hour sleep, if you are actually working with weights about 3-4 times a week. Compare that with 30-40mins of medium-to-intensive cardio.. Massive cortisol peaks after intense workout sessions, etc etc..

if you need 40 minutes to acutely recover from anything but the most advanced powerlifting/bodybuilding training, then something is deeply wrong.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#275
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd strongly second resistance training, it doesn't really take that much time either. A simple program like Starting Strength will have you train for not much more than 60 minutes three days a week and you'll make significant strength gains up to 1.5x body weight easily.

Speaking in effective time, it is obviously more than 60 minutes, I would say rather 160 minutes in the beginning and then getter lower with experience and getting used to it. Resistance training is great, but let's not oversell it to others! A beginner not only needs to buy stuff (or commute to/from the gym) and create their plan and schedule it, they also need to account for spending extra time to correct their pos…

if you need almost 3 hours to do a beginner strength program, something is amiss, or you are resting for 10+ minutes between sets.

what do you need to buy? what posture correction are you doing? how is showering a meaningful amount of time when most people already shower daily?

you're inventing problems that don't exist.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#276
post #78

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By bodybuilding, you probably mean steroid-fueled muscle building. Most natural body-building will never reach that level. On the other way, there is plenty of good health reasons to train with weights, and build a good/solid muscle mass. It also improves a lot of other aspects in your life (social). So, weight-training, bodybuilding - lite is great. Steroid ladden/extreme body building one is probably not healthy.

The issue is not building muscles, in almost any body building competition, what comes with it is lowering body fat to unhealthy levels. Know well that something as simple as visible abdominal muscles already requires a body fat percentage that is lower than what is generally considered healthy.[0] One's musculature should not be “defined” for optimal health, — that requires dropping below healthy fat levels. Profess…

why would you link an article from "fatherly.com" as a reputable source

contest bodybuilders get lean and that has detrimental hormonal effects and tanks their metabolism / NEAT, but evidence on post-contest weight rebounds suggests these are acute effects and don't have long-term adverse health outcomes. if you want to read more, look for papers on "metabolic adaptation" by Helms, Trexler, or Schoenfeld

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#277

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> Steroid ladden/extreme body building one is probably not healthy. Steroids are not necessarily always bad, tho taking your body to the extremes of competitive bodybuilding probably is.

My reasoning is the following, and as someone who likes to do weight lifting I would love to be proved wrong: if steroids are not necessarily bad and we surely know they work wonders how is it possible that, in a world obsessed with looks and moving so much money in all kind of (absurd) products, they have not been legally commercialized somehow.

there are lots of anabolic agents that should absolutely be controlled.

trenbolone and other 19-nor substances are neurotoxic and thrash your internal organs.

fatburners like clenbuterol or dnp are uh, not good.

insulin (which is massively anabolic, btw) can kill you very easily if you mis-time your meals.

growth hormone enlarges organs at supraphysiological doses

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#278
post #187
post #138

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> is there any natural advantage of bodybuilding for both men and women? I'm especially curious about the long-term effects of training muscles for hypertrophy rather than functional endpoints (strength, power, endurance). It's always stuck out to me that workout guides just treat this as normal — "everyone" wants big muscles, so we should all do painful eccentric reps to stress them out and build up lots of not-so-u…

For naturals, there is significant overlap in the training style that produces maximum strength gains and maximum size gains. Larger muscles are stronger muscles. Studies have shown very similar size gains between groups performing high weight sets and more moderate "hypertrophy" style sets, though training with higher weight maximizes strength gains. One thing not revealed in short term studies, but which I have obs…

regarding [1], you would have a hard time getting agreement from big names in evidence-based lifting circles. e.g. I'm fairly certain Israetel, Nuckols, Helms, and others have all disagreed, and I am less certain but believe others (James hoffman, James Krieger) have too

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#279
post #239

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Nonsense, if your abs aren't visible as a man then you are carrying too much fat. What's unhealthy about body bulding, beyond the direct effects of the roids, is that these guys are like 300+ lbs. That and becoming severely dehydrated from taking diuretics before competitions.

Then I'm sure you can produce a source that runs contrary to my own on that matter, because even searching with neutral phrases such as “ Is having a sixpack healthy? ” returns nothing but results to me with experts saying that it isn't, and that to achieve it one must go below the minimum recommended body fat percentage.

In countries that aren't undergoing an obesity epidemic it is completely normal for men to have visible abs. Any man who does aerobic and anaerobic exercise for an extended period of time (and doesn't eat garbage, like 90% of Americans) will develop a six pack without even trying.

You cannot possibly think that men like this are malnourished...

https://yorkshireccc.com/uploads/crop_image/260/270/20140516...?

https://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Sainsbury+British+Champi...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cJwna2z0LQI/TeJHl4AZW9I/AAAAAAAAAO...

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1b/8b/fc/1b8bfcef69fdb3c9aae7...

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/06/04/article-2647902-1...

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong people are harder to kill and more usefull in general.

>Strong people are harder to kill Is that actually so? Looking at US homicide statistics, over 75% of cases involve firearms. Would a bodybuilder have better chances of surviving a bullet wound?

you can be killed by ways other than homicide
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