2013 Ms. International

Chest Workout And Training Tips

A great upper body is incomplete without chest training. Find out why you shouldn’t be copping out of your chest workout!

When most women approach their trainers with their results wish list, they hope for a firmer stomach, shapelier glutes and thinner thighs. Trainers almost never hear a woman say, "I want a firmer chest." In fact, most females are under the impression that chest training should be left out of the picture!
To these women, chest development should be left to the men. They're afraid chest training will make them less feminine. Ladies, that thought process is junk! Just trash it. If you want a complete program and a body to be proud of, you need to include chest training.

These busted myths and programming tips will help you get past your fears and lead you to a chest revelation!

Myth 1 Chest Exercises Will Make My Boobs Smaller

This myth gets perpetuated because female bodybuilders sometimes hit the stage with flat-looking chests that are far from what we normally deem feminine. It's not the muscle that makes their breasts smaller; it's the extreme diet.
Most bodybuilders walk on stage with body fat levels that are far lower than what's considered healthy for a female. Breasts are primarily fatty tissue, so when body fat levels go way down, so do breasts. Aside from the women who have implants, most fitness and bodybuilding competitors just don't have enough body fat to keep their bras full.

As long as you sustain body fat levels that are well within a healthy range, you won't have an issue. According to the American Council on Exercise, women need to have at least 10-13% body fat for "basic physical and physiological health." Dipping below 10% (for ladies) may bring "underfat" health risks.

Myth 2  Chest Training Will Make My Breasts Firm

This myth just makes me laugh. Supposedly, with some bench pressing, your breasts will go from soft to rock hard. Who needs a sports bra now?
Training your pecs will build muscle underneath the fat makes up your breasts. As long as you aren't dieting too severely, your fat mass should remain. If anything, the added muscle helps your breasts appear fuller and might actually give a little boost to your cleavage!

Myth 3  Just Do Push-Ups

Most women add push-ups to their regular routine as an afterthought and then wonder why their upper body isn't looking better. As with any other muscle group, you need a sufficient level of exercise variety and weight resistance training in your program.
A combination of bench press, incline bench press, cable or dumbbell flyes and push-ups is the variation and difficulty you should be aiming for.
Once you reach a certain level of fatigue, push-ups aren't going to do much for maximizing strength gains. Unless you put a plate on your back or find some other way to add resistance to push-ups, they're not going to help you get stronger.
Instead, add them to the end of your workout as a finisher.

Chestivus For The Rest Of Us

Now that we've covered what not to worry about, here's what you need to know about chest training:

    It might seem like a good idea to use light weights for "tone," but remember that muscles respond best to a challenge. If you lift light weight for high reps, you'll be making very few fitness improvements and won't be doing much besides burning calories.
    You won't gain muscle mass unless you're eating a high-calorie diet -- all the heavy lifting you do on a standard or fat-loss diet will increase fitness and strength, but you won't get big, so don't be afraid to lift heavy!

    Keep your reps within the 8-to-10 range for bench press and incline bench press. For flyes, take it up to 10-to-12.

    2-to-3 sets of each exercise will be perfect for strength gains. Any more or less may not produce the results you want.

    For compound lifts like the bench press, rest one minute between sets. Also, try to hit your compound lifts at the beginning of your workouts.

    Between sets of flyes, decrease your rest to 45 seconds. Because you're just using your body weight for push-ups, rest only 30 seconds between sets.

Frequency

Depending on your current workout split, you can work your chest muscles up to 2-to-3 times per week. Make sure you take a day off between workouts.
If you're using an upper/lower body split, add this chest workout to your upper body days.

The Workouts

If you're feeling really frisky and want to add other compound movements before the accessory lifts, go for it.

5 Reasons You Should Support Women's Bodybuilding

All bodybuilders are athletes. It's time we give the ladies the same respect we give to the men. Here are five reasons you should support brawny women!
Female bodybuilders get a lot of hate. In fact, many women who blur the lines between what is "normal" masculinity and femininity are ridiculed for their "manly" bodies. Because female bodybuilders have more muscle than most men who don't train, they're laughed at. Instead of being celebrated for their hard work and intense dedication to a difficult lifestyle, they're regarded as "unattractive," "unnatural," and, worst of all, "gross."

Reality check: not everything women do is for men's viewing pleasure. Bodybuilding is a sport. Female bodybuilders are athletes. They deserve your respect.

Still not sure you can get past the whole idea of cheering for a woman whose biceps are twice as big as yours? Let me help you out with five observations:

1  Building Muscle Mass Is More Difficult for Women

Men are genetically designed to carry more muscle—they're generally bigger and heavier than women.
Although a lot of women worry that lifting weights will make them bulky, the truth is that most women don't have the testosterone (or eat enough) to build mass to the same degree that men do.
As a result, female bodybuilders can do the same amount of training as men, and with the same intensity, without achieving the same results. In other words, women work just as hard but get less bang for their buck. Talk about frustrating.
I know, I know, "But steroids!" Clean or not, female bodybuilders have to do a lot of work.

2  Female Bodybuilders Compete Under More Stringent Regulations

If you've never perused the IFBB rules for female bodybuilding, you should. Male competitors don't have any limit to how big they can get. In fact, the bigger the better. Women, on the other hand, have to present a "muscular, yet feminine shape.1" "Femininity" is subjective—it's up to competitors to interpret the rules and then try to apply them.
Besides putting on fake eyelashes and doing their nails, female bodybuilders have to make sure they're not too big. In fact, the IFBB regulations also state that for women, "muscular development must not be carried to such an excess that it resembles the massive muscularity of the male physique."
Lady bodybuilders have to be big, yes, but also shapely, feminine, pretty, and graceful. That's a pretty long list of attributes to fulfill.

3  It's More Difficult for Women to Become Ultra Lean

For reasons having to do with reproduction, women are designed to hold 6-11 percent more body fat than men do. According to some studies, the hormone estrogen also makes it more difficult for women to burn fat2. So, not only do women carry more body fat than men, but it also takes more work for them to lose it.
Now, don't get me wrong—I'm not knocking male bodybuilders. But women have to fight their body to be rid of stored fat. The male body uses fat much more efficiently, and men's additional muscle mass expends more energy. For women, getting lean enough to see glute striations is probably more difficult than we fans can even imagine.

4  Female Bodybuilders Are Less Socially Accepted than Male Bodybuilders

The stigma attached to female bodybuilding goes far beyond the steroid conversation. Our Western culture tells women to be skinny, weak, and above all, desirable.
Women who bodybuild are not weak, they're not skinny, and to most people, they're too masculine-looking to be considered desirable.
Sure, hardcore fans of the sport appreciate female bodybuilding, but the majority of people in and out of the fitness community feel discomfort with the blurring gender boundaries.
I would argue that female bodybuilders have the bravery to ignore the social standards of their culture and do what they love. To me, that's awesome.

5  They're Breaking the Glass Ceiling!

Female bodybuilders are constantly showing the world what women are capable of doing. Women can be strong. We can have big muscles. We can be totally shredded. It doesn't matter what "parts" you were born with—you should be able to create the body you want, society be damned.

Mass Training

This section covers all the techniques that I have used to successfully gain muscle mass. There are many other ways to do this, but I have not used these methods. So many people in the gym have no clue about what they are doing, and they have no guidance. You do. Put this information to work and you will be amazed at the results. They work!
Use Heavy Weights
For anyone trying to gain muscle, several things must be done. One is to train with heavy weights. By heavy I mean a weight that is challenging for YOU.
The average guy in the gym usually works with a weight he can lift for 10-15+ reps. To gain mass, this is too light. Using an appropriate weight, you should only be able to do 4-7 reps. That's it! Using heavy weights for a few reps puts your muscles under much more stress than using lighter weights for many reps.
Free Weights, Not Machines
Next, the core exercises in your program must consist of free weight exercises, not machines. Machines are good for isolating and fatiguing individual muscle groups, but they are only to be used after your main compound exercise work has been done. I don't know of anyone who has gained a substantial amount of weight using just machines.
The main reason for this is a lack of stabilizer muscle development. Since machines are locked into a specific range of motion and help to support the
weight along that path, they fail to stimulate the muscles that surround the area you are working (stabilizers). This is a mistake. If your stabilizer muscles are weak, then the major muscle group will never grow!
Free weight exercises like the dumbbell press or squat, for example, put a very large amount of stress on supporting muscle groups. That's why you will get fatigued faster, and will not be able to lift as much weight as you did on the machine. But you will get bigger and stronger very quickly and have a true gauge of your strength.
If you use machines in your program, they should be used to work isolated areas and only after all compound exercises have been completed.
GP Stan for bodybuilding.

Anti Estrogen Drugs

As can be surmised by the commonly used term anti-estrogen, the primary goal of therapy with an estrogen maintenance drug is to block the side effects associated with this hormone from becoming apparent during steroid use (though often they are also used at the conclusion of a cycle to help restore the release of endogenous testosterone). For the purpose of combating estrogen a number of substances have been used successfully over the years, and more have recently become available due to advances in the field of breast cancer research (treatment of breast cancer is the primary clinical use for most of these agents).
Likewise the athlete now has several pharmaceutical options to select from when shopping, which can make the choice of what drug may be best for any particular case a confusing one. Since a number of issues including cost, availability, potential side effects and efficacy may factor into this decision, I thought a closer look at both the old and newer agents might be in order.
Aromatization is the technical term for it. It is a natural process in which an androgen (male sex hormone) such as testosterone can be converted to an estrogen (female sex hormone) in the human body. In normal situations of course the male body will produce estrogens only in very small amounts, though they still do play an important role metabolically (including visceral/organ fat disposition, bone growth/maturity and blood lipid regulation). Athletes however may find that estrogen can become an extremely dramatic problem with the administration of anabolic/androgenic steroids. With the natural process of aromatization in place and extremely heightened androgen level can result in a troubling buildup of estrogens. This may cause the onset of estrogen related side effects such as noticeable fat and water retention, as well as the buildup of female breast tissue (gynecomastia). Gynecomastia is a particularly upsetting occurrence for the steroid-using male athlete, as the characteristic unsightly buildup of tissue mass is usually permanent. Although many synthetic anabolic agents are resistant or not open to the process of aromatization at all, our standard bulking drugs such as testosterone and Dianabol are still readily aromatized. This has prompted the athletic community to seek the benefit of estrogen maintenance drugs when taking such steroids, a class of medications that are now considered standard remedies in the athletes drug arsenal.

Bodybuilding And Blood Pressure

A faster and more intense workout will yield a higher blood pressure and heart rate in the human subject. The heart is described as “hollow muscular organ”; its function is to pump blood to the whole body during a person’s life. The circulatory system of which the heart is part of sends oxygen and nutrients to the body and removes waste and carbon dioxide. One of the demands on the heart is that it must be able to shift whenever the activity of the person changes. Thus when activity increases and a person were to exercise, they would need more oxygen. The increase in oxygen demand leads to the heart being forced to pump more blood and therefore the heart rate of that particular individual to increase.
“Heart rate” simply signifies the number of beats the heart undergoes per minute. Under normal circumstances, the heart rate of and adult would be seventy beats per minute while that of a child would be one-hundred beats per minute and a baby’s would be one hundred and twenty beats per minute. Resting heart rates will increase due to exercise training. For example, professional athletes have slower resting heart rates due to physical training which keeps the heart stronger so that it may pump a higher volume of blood while beating less often. Other sources such as stress, temperature, hormones, drugs, alcohol and food can also affect heart rate.
Blood pressure is essentially the force of one’s blood on the arteries’ walls. It is measured by the systole, the “highpoint” where the heart releases blood by contracting, and the diastole - the “low point” in which the heart relaxes and thus is filled with blood.
When blood pressure is measured, it is generally measured in mm of mercury (mmHg) in a sphygmomanometer. The maximum blood pressure is systole and the minimum is the diastole for a “cardiac cycle”. Normal blood pressure should be should be 80/45 in babies while individuals at thirty years of age should have a blood pressure of 128/80. If ones blood pressure were too high, some of the blood vessels could explode, yet if the blood pressure was too low, the brain would “starve” or not be able to get what it needs. Thus, the body controls blood pressure in various ways to meet its needs. For example, it can tighten or loosen the blood vessels also the heart can change the amount of blood it pumps. Blood pressure will be affected by the flexibility of arteries, the diameter or width of the artery, the thickness or viscosity of blood and the volume of blood. The volume of blood can change if a lot of blood is lost causing the blood pressure to go down. As well, the heart rate can affect blood pressure. As one exercises, their heart rate increases thus resulting in an increase of blood pressure. As the heart rate decreases, the blood pressure decreases.

Femininity in Bodybuilding

When a coach in the gym offers exercises with dumbbells and a barbell to a woman, in 9 out of 10 cases, you can hear the answer: "I do not want to have big muscles" or "I do not want to lose my femininity." I wonder why so many women think that the muscles will grow, if they only take "iron" in hands.

The most of pumped women are Elite Professional bodybuilders, athletes involved in track and weightlifting, which are trained for years to achieve this result. But many do not understand and avoid bodybuilding.
So you want to be in shape, but do not want to be muscular. And you want to preserve femininity. What's the solution? Bodybuilding! And here's why.

Imagine that all the women who train with loads, have large muscles. Then why we don't see these girls in the athletic halls? It's very simple. In order to develop such musculature, a woman needed: genetic data, long-term intensive training, it is desirable to have a higher than average levels of testosterone (male hormone). Of course, there are those who take the extra androgens for the unnatural increase in muscle.

For the most of women is very hard to develop the large muscles in the present, because the levels of testosterone in woman body are lower by 20-30 times than in men. While women and men are equally strong from training with weights, their muscles still can not compare. To increase muscle experts recommend to raise more weight in order to reduce the number of repetitions to 3-5, but in this version of the achievements of women will be less than that of men.

What is femininity?
In the history of mankind, the ideal woman is constantly changing. For example, in 1890 in America was popular fashion model Lillian Russell, who weighed 90 kg. But gradually the beauty of the samples were brittle and eventually won an ideal slender women. Today, the ideal is getting closer to the shape.

Amy Blee, NPC USA Fitness Champion in 1997, said: "Being thin, I just do a service to others." She trains in order to increase respect for yourself. Training also altered the presentation of the beauty of Amy's healthy body. "My body - my sense of self is the mirror - she says, - The physical and spiritual strength are always together. I am convinced that very thin man, not healthy."

Amy Blee does not agree with the fact that the muscles spoil femininity. Sharon Bruno, a former bodybuilding champion and fitness professionals, agrees with her: "It's more than physical data, it is a complex, which includes personality traits such as self-confidence. Every woman is unique and this is her femininity ".

Control your body!
We found out that you do not need to worry. Think of yourself your ideal and strive for it. The purpose of bodybuilding - not to be like someone, but to show the best of what you can do. You can choose how you want to become stronger, and in this lies the beauty of bodybuilding.
Bodybuilding course will not solve all your problems, but it will help enhance the health and feel better. Muscles - this movement is our life.
Experts recommend the same basic program for both men and women. In order to maximize the achievements of recommended practice for at least 3 times a week. So, if you are interested to have a healthy and beautiful body, start bodybuilding!