How heavy is heavy?

sardelsa

AnvilHead wrote: »

sardelsa wrote: »

SueSueDio wrote: »

sazzabox wrote: »

I just wonder when do you start getting bulky? Obviously the heavier you lift the bigger the muscle?

Even to look like the women on the right side takes years and years of hard work. I am on bulk cycle #3 and I still look nothing like them at all.

I wouldn't go so far as to say you look *nothing* like the women on the right, lol. You've made great progress and are living proof of the great results you can get from strength training without magically turning into a "she hulk" from it.

Thank you. I am having one of those days where I still feel like I look small and disproportionate, especially in the upper body.. gonna have to reel it in for the remainder of this cycle.

jayemes

@sardelsa you're a huge inspiration - and your upper body is amazing. I'd kill for your shoulders! If only building muscle was as easy as people thought and you could do it by accident......

quiksylver296

jayemes wrote: »

@sardelsa you're a huge inspiration - and your upper body is amazing. I'd kill for your shoulders! If only building muscle was as easy as people thought and you could do it by accident......

Or at least with a couple-three quick gym workouts... :laugh:

sardelsa

jayemes wrote: »

@sardelsa you're a huge inspiration - and your upper body is amazing. I'd kill for your shoulders! If only building muscle was as easy as people thought and you could do it by accident......

Thank you so much @jayemes I appreciate that! It's just frustrating when you have been lifting for years and certain areas don't show as much progress (partially my own fault).

AnvilHead

sardelsa wrote: »

jayemes wrote: »

@sardelsa you're a huge inspiration - and your upper body is amazing. I'd kill for your shoulders! If only building muscle was as easy as people thought and you could do it by accident......

Thank you so much @jayemes I appreciate that! It's just frustrating when you have been lifting for years and certain areas don't show as much progress (partially my own fault).

As the saying goes, “The day you started lifting was the day you became forever small”.

giantrobot_powerlifting

RPE 10

canadianlbs

i'm not as expert as others in the how-it-all-works thing, but i did notice something that seemed anomalous. did you really mean 33 pounds for bench press or was that a typo?

because that seems a little odd. this isn't a judgement, because it's more about relative strength across your own range. you're benching so much lower than your squat, and yet it's the muscles most affected by benching that you feel are bulky.

idk your body weight so there's no way to compare it as percentages. for example though: say you weigh 140 pounds yourself. in percentage terms, you'd be benching less than 25% of your body weight, yet you'd be squatting 125%.

everyone does have a range across the different lifts, and lower percentages are common for women between upper and lower-body work. even so, i do think that's wide. i just skimmed that for-example weight of 140 in strength-standards charts, and it puts your bench well below novice level while you're squatting about halfway between intermediate and advanced.
this is assuming you are squatting at least to parallel, which is a lot harder than just going part of the way and coming back - but since you're working with a trainer that seems like a fair assumption to make. [here's a link to the table i used]

there's sure to be a reason for it, i'm just curious because there wasn't enough info in your posts for me to guess at what it is. are you deliberately limiting your bench press?

jesspen91

canadianlbs wrote: »

i'm not as expert as others in the how-it-all-works thing, but i did notice something that seemed anomalous. did you really mean 33 pounds for bench press or was that a typo?

because that seems a little odd. this isn't a judgement, because it's more about relative strength across your own range. you're benching so much lower than your squat, and yet it's the muscles most affected by benching that you feel are bulky.

idk your body weight so there's no way to compare it as percentages. for example though: say you weigh 140 pounds yourself. in percentage terms, you'd be benching less than 25% of your body weight, yet you'd be squatting 125%.

everyone does have a range across the different lifts, and lower percentages are common for women between upper and lower-body work. even so, i do think that's wide. i just skimmed that for-example weight of 140 in strength-standards charts, and it puts your bench well below novice level while you're squatting about halfway between intermediate and advanced.
this is assuming you are squatting at least to parallel, which is a lot harder than just going part of the way and coming back - but since you're working with a trainer that seems like a fair assumption to make. [here's a link to the table i used]

there's sure to be a reason for it, i'm just curious because there wasn't enough info in your posts for me to guess at what it is. are you deliberately limiting your bench press?

A lot of women have big upper/lower body discrepancies. I can hip thrust 75kg but can only bench 25kg.

canadianlbs

jesspen91 wrote: »

A lot of women have big upper/lower body discrepancies. I can hip thrust 75kg but can only bench 25kg.

15 and 80 though . . . ?

i've always assumed that the 'strength standard' sets already took that into account. but admittedly i wouldn't know, because my own squat is so borked i usually bench at or above what i can squat. that's partly why i do refer to standards sometimes, to see whether i'm lagging anywhere.

i was curious here because the op asked about correlation between 'heavy' and 'bulk', yet the area she feels she's bulking up is not the one where she seems to be going heavy. that made me wonder if she was intentionally limiting herself on bench to avoid the bulk that concerns her.

however, it's true i don't know how heavy actually is heavy to her, for bench press.