“I wanna build muscle, but not TOO much muscle.”

So you don’t wanna be beefcake…

Okay. I get it.

Not everyone wants to look like @danalinnbailey

As I always preach, this doesn’t happen overnight – in fact it’s hard as hell, especially NATURALLY, to build significant muscle size as a female due to the lack of testosterone.

That being said, there is a difference in training for hypertrophy (muscle size) and training for pure strength and/or endurance.

Hypertrophy has been found to be based more on volume of training per muscle groups in ALL rep ranges than the simple equation of “which rep range”.

If you REALLY want to limit muscle size when training, stick to these principles:

Less volume: 2-3 sets / exercise, rep ranges 1-6 with compound lifts 8-12 for accessory then limit the amount of “to failure”, or pump sets. Endurance reps for posterior chain exercises are still recommended.

Eat at maintenance: In order to grow, you have to eat. Eat less, grow less.

Train Explosively: Low volume plyometrics and power exercises are a good way to increase muscle density without size

Do excessive cardio: Joking, kinda…but not. If you don’t want to build muscle size, but still want to exercise – cardio based workouts (circuits) using endurance reps / bodyweight / or even just straight cardio will give you the benefits of exercise (not resistance training) without size.

I can tell you from 10 years experience however, that as a woman – your fears of “getting huge” without steroids are extremely unsubstantiated and IF that becomes an issue for you – then the fix is pretty simple. Chill out a little!

But let’s start with being consistent in the gym like 3 days / week shall we?

I’m genuinely curious, have any of you reached a point that you felt you were TOO muscular/physically fit/healthy? And if so, was that worse than when you were at your most unhealthy?