Why You Need to be Bodybuilding

When you hear the term “bodybuilding,” what do you think? Planet Fitness did a great job of demoralizing and criminalizing bodybuilders with their marketing, leaving many feeling fear when they think of bodybuilding. Some people are hesitant to weight train because they think they will get big and overly muscular.

In our experience, we’re hearing more and more women that don’t want to bodybuild because they don’t want to get bulky. They just want to be toned and have a goal of being toned in a particular area, specifically, and they don’t want to be bulky.

Both men and women should destroy the thought process now that bodybuilding will only make you bulky. That’s false.

People fail to understand that everyone has a little bit of bodybuilder in them and would highly benefit from building their body in some capacity. And there’s only one way to do that – resistance training.

Weight training basically means that you’re using resistance and weights, whether that’s via barbells, dumbbells, medicine balls, or resistance bands. You’re using some kind of equipment to create tension and resistance in your muscles.

All you need to know about bodybuilding is that you’re challenging your body and constantly adding a different kind of resistance.

Over time your muscles get stronger, period. As a result, you’ll feel better, look better, and live longer. But bodybuilding provides so many benefits in addition, including:

• Increased organ health
• More muscle = more fat burn
• Healthy digestive system
• Lowered cholesterol (the more fat in our body, the higher our risk for diabetes, heart disease, coronary diseases, etc.)

Lifting weights doesn’t mean you’ll avoid health issues altogether because genetics plays into that too, but if you have more lean muscle, you’re more likely to be healthier.

There’s a misconception that you get a better workout doing cardio instead of weight training based on the idea that your heart rate is higher when you do cardio. It’s not about one being a better workout because it’s apples and oranges or aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic means with air and helps increase endurance, while anaerobic means without air and helps to increase muscle mass and strength.

4 Phases of BODHI Strength Training Program

1. Strength & Conditioning Hypertrophy (muscle building)
2. Aerobic Conditioning
3. Anaerobic Conditioning
4. Stability & Balance

All four are extremely important to have a well-balanced fitness training program. The reality is that people mostly gravitate toward one, but the best way to burn fat and live your strongest life is to weight train.

Why isn’t it cardio?

When you’re doing cardio, your heart rate is elevated, and you’re burning calories. And that’s great, but when your heart rate comes down, you’re done burning calories. However, when you’re done with a weight-training session, your body goes into recovery mode, so it’s using more energy, burning calories, and using more nutrients to get those muscles repaired from the workout. This all lasts past the workout stage itself, even after the heart rate decreases.

This doesn’t mean cardio is bad and weight training is good. You need both. But if you want to transform your body, you have to put more time into weight training and diet and less into cardio.

So why wouldn’t everyone jump on board with weight training?

Misconceptions.

The most common misconception is that if you weight train, you will become bulky. It’s not the weight training that makes you bulky. It’s when we start weight training, building some muscle, and filling those muscles with glycogen. If our diet is excessive and we’re overeating for the body to handle, the fat grows and fluffs up. So as the muscle increases in volume, the fat gets pushed up too, which is why we look bulky.

Ever heard of skinny fat?

This means you have a high percentage of body fat and low muscle. So, you can appear skinny but have limited lean muscle build, which means more fat.

Don’t be afraid of bodybuilding. Everyone should be doing it. Trust the process, believe in yourself, and transform your body.

And if you’re a runner, listen to Karen’s story about how weight training impacted her performance on the track in our full podcast episode here.

So, are you ready? All the tools you need to transform your body and life are yours if you want them. LET’S GO!  

Check out our Project My Life podcast here.

If video is more your speed, you can find us here.