How do I workout when gaining muscle mass easily?

Hi everyone, my gf gains muscle mass very easily so when she does alot of leg workout she gets very stocky and over developed legs. Shes always self conscious about that and has been avoiding any workout that will make her thicker. Are there women out there who gain msucle easily and have found a way to tone without gaining too much muscle? She wants me to help her out but men and women's body work differntly. I take a large intake of protein to build muscle, but don't know how much women are suppose to take, and furthermore what kind of workouts they should do. Any ideas?
 
Hi,

I think that your gf has to avoid weight workouts with big weights and reps under 8.

For her is better to use little weights and to make 20 reps.

Step aerobics is good, pilates and callanetics also.

I can't emagine how big muscles she gains, I like toned women with well shaped muscles :)
 
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gaining muscle mass easily probably means there's a current lack of muscle mass. im a new member, but i know that i gain muscle easily when i've been lazy for a week or two. lol i gotta stay away from the video games..
i duno i always thought a girl with strong legs would be a good thing ;) lol
 
Well i dont particuarlly have a problem with it but I can understand what she means.. The calve muscles split into two maknig it look like a heart shape but her muscles are always dense. She can take u down with one kick lol. Thougt shes not a huge heavy set girl. Shes 5'5 and is just on the upper range of the average suggested weight for her age and size. She wants to tone up and be fit but is afraid she might bulk up. She did a lot of track and leg excercises when she was young. She ran 3 miles a day so that kinda accounts for the density in her muslces, but with all that previous excercise she thought it wuold tone.. but its just big and stocky. She wants me to fnid a way to make it leaner. and I guess longer? So that it doesnt look stocky. I know that for basic toning its high reps low weights.. but what is she to do with already built muscles.. I wuold like to show a picture but I'd probably get killed if i posted anything of her on the internet. Any ideas?
 
She sounds fine to me but whats her weight if you dont mind sharing? You say she's at the upper end of her ideal weight range but muscle weights more than fat so if she muscular you'd expect that.

"Tone" is a bit of a misleading word. There's muscle and fat. If you want to look more defined you need to lose the fat. That'll give the "toned" look. Simple as that (although the execution is far from simple ;) ).

Are you able to get her to measure her bodyfat percentage? If so, then she can decide whether she's in the correct range and how much lower she wants to go. She doesnt have to go mega heavy on the weights in order to work out and I dont think she'll get huge if she works out correctly.
 
I just want to add that a lot of women who think they "add muscle mass" easily... don't. They in fact have a lot of fat covering that muscle mass. This happens a lot in the abdominal area.

Men and women do not train differently (for the most part). High reps will do nothing but help her work on endurance. I would post her stats. Age, height, weight, body fat %.

Then I would take a hard core look at her diet. If diet is 100% on spot and her fitness program is 100% on spot... then I would chalk it up to genetics. Some people are stockier. Some are more slender.

But don't assume it's genetics if the eating and workout plan are not 100% :)
 
I gain muscle easily too

I gain muscle easily too. I have to watch what exercises I do for my legs. I always start off each workout session with an hour of cardio. I do an hour in the morning on an empty stomach to burn the fat. I noticed that this decreased bulk. I found that there is fat in between the muscle, making it look dense. My trainer friend told me to go on the treadmill and walk at the steepest incline. I just started doing this and will see how it goes. I used to do a lot of running and it caused me to bulk up. I can run for hours, so the walking will be less stressful on my joints. I sometimes mix it up between the stairmaster or high speed low level spinning on the bike.

After an hour of cardio I do an hour of weights and stretching. Stretching is very important. For legs I do 15 reps x 4. I keep it light so by the time I am done I am fatigued because of the number of reps but not so fatigued I am shaking.

The arms are a different story, I do heavier weights with less rep because I want the strength for swimming. I train 3x a week with a swim team.

Diet: 2 - 3 protein shakes a day with 1 tbsp of flax seed oil with each shake. I will workout on an empty stomach and post workout drink a shake. I drink a shake an hour before going to bed to decrease muscle loss. I eat approx 90g of protein a day. I rarely eat animal protein, sometimes chicken breast.

The only carbs I eat are sweet potato/yams, brown rice or millet. I only have 1/2 of cooked rice or millet with each meal. I eat green veggies and the only fruit I eat are blueberries (for antioxidants). Strawberries are ok too, but their not my fave. I take CLA before every meal.

I eat treats from time to time, but my treat choices are mindful. A tall mocha frapuccino light at Starbucks is 140 calories only, for example. I don't eat fake sugars except for splenda from time to time. No aspartame. I also eat no gluten (meaning no bread, oats, wheat, barley) I also drink no milk, but take calcium supplements.

I hope this helps.
 
ishtar thanks for the advice..
I think she feels its worse because of her height.. she 5'5 and weighs around 160. Her father builds muscle very quickly so that man is kinda bulky too. she feels thats where she gets it from.I guess she just wants to make the muscle leaner? Its developed to the point where you can see the heart shaped muscle on the upper portion of the calf muscle. So it kinda looks like a butterfly shrimp. So she avoids showing off her legs and is always self conscious about it. Btu at this point, how can you get rid of muscle? its not the fat issue for her legs.. i've been training her to lose weight but i have no idea how to ltin out a muscle thats alerady developed like that..
 
Different people have different body types. My girlfriend has a similar thing going on with her legs. She used to be a dancer and when she was her quads were pure muscle. Now she does not dance any more, but all she has to do is exercise for a few weeks and she immediately gets her quads back. It can be a genetic thing (hereditary?...) as well I think. Some people are more prone to gain quickly in certain areas due to the density of their muscle fibers. Some people just walk around and have huge calves.. Some people (like me) can calf raise 12 plates 20 times and have chicken calves lol.

I like the idea of your girl doing the non heavy exercises.. when she is not lifting heavy she will stimulate smaller muscle fibers and they will become toned as opposed to her large fibers being engaged and having them grow.

I guess you should ask her to make sure she is doing exercises that involve low weight and high reps. Heavy lifting will just keep her legs large.
 
I like the idea of your girl doing the non heavy exercises.. when she is not lifting heavy she will stimulate smaller muscle fibers and they will become toned as opposed to her large fibers being engaged and having them grow.

I respectfully disagree. Type I and Type II muscle fibers are recruited at different points in time and during different activities. Toning is not an event. Toning is the result of reduction in fat loss and the increase in muscle fibers.

Using low weights/high reps is for endurance. Nothing more.
 
Trainer Lynn is right. There's no special way to weight train for 'toning'. Toning is simply the process of losing body fat so that the underlying muscle becomes more pronounced/defined, giving a nice 'toned' appearance.

If you lack muscle mass to start with, shedding all that fat doesn't look great because you have nothing underneath to show off. You end up looking anorexic, instead of athletic.

Low weight and high reps are good for endurance, and probably physical therapy.


Now, if your g/f is gaining muscle mass in the legs, thats an indication she's consuming enough extra calories to build lean muscle mass. If she drops the daily calorie intake a couple hundred calories, it should reduce her ability to build muscle.

Lower reps with more weight will increase strength. I'm talking 4-5 reps here. 8-10 reps is the path to hypertrophy, and bodybuilding. lower reps with more weight tends to sacrifice size in favor of increased strength.

More cardio will help too. burns excess calories.
 
So let me get this straight.... if you just have bulky muscle, theres not way to lean out the muslce? Like.. i guess make the muscles longer which would make it leaner? I remeber reading an article about biceps buildnig and that for peaks you would focus in one area and then work out another way to make it longer.
 
user,

the article you read on bicep 'sculpting' is crap. our muscle shapes are determined by genetics. you can make them bigger,a dn that can change the shape since it'll buldge more in the middle than the ends...but you cannot 'shape' a muscle in any way other than it's original design (excluding surgical procedures of course). Muscles enlarge and shrink due to total mass.

Granted, some muscle groups, like the upper legs, have mutiple muscles, like the quads. Therefore different exercises can sculpt the legs...but only because you're placing more or less emphasis on the inner quad vs. the outer quad. since its technically two differnent muscles, you're not changing their shape, but changing their size alters the shape of the leg.

hope that makes sense.

the only way to lean out a bulky muscle is to reduce the density. as I said, if she lacks EXTRA calories in her diet to be used to bulk muscle up, that'll help a great deal.
i'd stick to lower reps with heavier weight because this builds more strength than size, but will harden the muslce up so it appears nice and toned if she gets her bodyfat down to show it off.
 
malkore said:
Now, if your g/f is gaining muscle mass in the legs, thats an indication she's consuming enough extra calories to build lean muscle mass. If she drops the daily calorie intake a couple hundred calories, it should reduce her ability to build muscle.


Is that seriously true!? I never realized that.

I too have this problem. I was a sprinter in high school, and during track season, i (no joke!) could NOT fit my thighs into some of my pants until after track season was over, and i stopped the insane amount of thigh work...

I am not scared to work out my legs cause I hate the way it looks. My calves arent too bad, but my legs are definately stockier - doesnt help that they are really short too, haha! ( i am only 5'3'')
 
Women do NOT gain muscle easily. Sorry, it doesn't happen. If you're legs, or anything else for that matter, look "bulky" it's because they still have fat covering their muscle.
 
I get this problem with my legs aswel. Its because i eat in excess during binges and then go and do loads of exercise on either my exercise bike or elliptical. I think its probably both muscle and fat that seems to create this bulk, because on the one hand eating too much food in general creates you fat, and on the other hand, if you are eating lots of carbs and protein then you will build muscle.

Id advise perhaps trying changing exercise routines..well thats what im going to try anyway, becasue i get the feeling that doing the same exercise that target a particular area like legs may well cause more bulk. But i dont know if this is true
 
wild i disagree. Please don't generalize the ENTIRE female race and put them into one category. My gf ran track and her calves are def. not all fat... one kick and she'll break you. She gets it from her father.. and i've noticed it in her brother too. It's very defined, so I know its not fat. But I'd like to comment on the calorie issue. I was under impression that it was protein that helps build muscle and not calorie.. i figured lower the protein intake would be more ideal. Can you explain why a lower calorie intake would stunt the ability to grow muscle?
 
user125 said:
wild i disagree. Please don't generalize the ENTIRE female race and put them into one category. My gf ran track and her calves are def. not all fat... one kick and she'll break you. She gets it from her father.. and i've noticed it in her brother too. It's very defined, so I know its not fat. But I'd like to comment on the calorie issue. I was under impression that it was protein that helps build muscle and not calorie.. i figured lower the protein intake would be more ideal. Can you explain why a lower calorie intake would stunt the ability to grow muscle?

Oh please...girls do not have enough test to "gain muscle easily" :rolleyes:
 
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