Will Strength Training make me bulky?
People love to say “absolutely not” to this question with regards to female training to help them embrace strength training. The truth is, it’s not that simple. I’ll start this conversation by caveating that you aren’t going to gain significant muscle mass accidentally. Even in genetically superior young men, you could hope to gain 1-1.5kg of muscle in a 6 week period if you were providing a decent surplus of calories.
However, the result you get from strength training completely depends on a few factors. First and foremost the response to strength training is driven by how you support it nutritionally. Just like gaining excess body fat, for the body to physically gain mass (or get “bulky”) you have to provide a caloric surplus. So if you come to me wanting to tone up, we’re probably going to spending time in calorie deficit in the first phase of that training to get body fat to a good level. It’s physically impossible to “bulk” up while in a deficit so you’ve got nothing to worry about.
If you started training weights a decent volume, 3-4 times per week and STILL maintained a calorie deficit, you still wouldn’t bulk up. You’d probably see a really favourable shift in body composition (body fat significantly reducing, and building a very small amount of muscle, something like 0.5kg across 6 weeks for example). Revealing the muscle you already had is going to get you looking and feeling great.
This is why most coaches will just answer with a simple NO when asked this question. If you started eating in calorie surplus and providing sufficient protein, you would start to build muscle and potentially get bulky given a few years of effort. Easy, eh?
In different example if you just did some extra steps and nailed a calorie deficit and didn’t do any strength training, didn’t pay much attention to protein intake, you’d definitely still lose weight, but it’s likely you’d also lose a significant amount of muscle mass, not achieving the toned look you desire.
Secondly you’re total training volume matters (check out my Strength Vs Cardio blog to understand this term). You probably only require a few hard sets per week on a targeted muscle group to maintain muscle mass, whereas you might need more like 10-12 sets per week to see any growth of the muscle (depending on experience levels). So if you come to me and ONLY care about having a nice ass, we might do 3 sets per week across the back, chest, shoulders and arms to help maintain them and build a little strength, then go big on the glutes and legs with more like 12-15 sets across the week.
Third and finally, genetics play a role. We don’t really have much control over this, but different people have different responses to strength and cardio training. If you’ve reached 40 years old and haven’t excelled athletically yet, chances are you’re unlikely to hyper respond to strength training and get really jacked!
