Bulk

Events!

We often hear two critiques of the CrossFit program, one from women, the other from men:

“I don’t want to get bulky…”
“I don’t want to get any smaller…”

I’ll let you guess which is from which.

Either way, both fears are misguided and misdirected. There is nothing inherent to weight training that makes your muscles “bulk.”

Let’s get a few things straight:

- Three things control muscle gain: Genetics, Nutrition, and Exercise, in that order of importance.

- “Skinny” is often just as unhealthy as “fat.”

- Carbohydrate provides short-term energy, and spikes insulin (blood sugar).

- Protein builds and repairs muscle, and helps regulate insulin.

- Fat provides long-term energy, and slows the digestive process.

- You do not burn body fat from a specific area by working it.

- Your body does not know the difference between Weights and other kinds of resistence.

- Anything your body can do more than 20 times will promote much stamina, moderate size, and little strength.

- Anything your body can do between 5-20 times will promote much size, moderate strength, and moderate stamina.

- Anything your body can do between 1-5 times will promote much strength, moderate size, and little stamina.

- A gymnastics hold you can only perform for 2-seconds has the same effect on your body as a weight you can only lift twice.

That last point is key to understanding the misconceptions we face: it’s not weightlifting that makes you big or bodyweight exercise that makes you small! If you train ring dips (and eat), you will put on size. If you back squat an empty bar, you probably won’t.