Lifting for the inside or outside health?

No, seriously, I was being sarcastic.

Vague stories aside about how 20 years ago you accidentally had bulging biceps, but don't remember a single other detail about your physique, nobody gets accidentally ripped.

There were tons of cameras in 1993. Let's see these bulging biceps. My bet is: either they never existed, or they were attached to so someone with rather high body fat who accidentally ate a lot while accidentally building muscle.

Your sarcasm was lost on me, but that's ok. It doesn't really matter to me if you believe the story or not. Have a nice life with all that lifting! For those of you who have been nice enough to answer my questions with knowledge and your own personal experiences I thank you.

Yeah for some weird reason I prefer to believe in things when I have some evidence they actually happened.

20 years ago I had "bulging biceps" I was in my early 20's and in a male dominated trade in the military. After going through boot camp and then trades training I could easily do 7 chinups, pushups up the wazoo and lift the 100lb bullet up 4ft to place it on the tray. I was not purposefully working out but most definately eating a lot of food to keep up with the activity I was doing...

I was 5 ft 7, weighed about 155lbs not sure of bf% because I wasn't even aware of that 20 years ago

True story but no pics of those guns (I have pics of the guns I worked on) but to be frank my physical transformation didn't really phase me and I didn't think to take pics...so no pics but it did happen, true story.

So just cause there are no pics etc don't discount what people remember, I know I was strong then, I know I had "bulging biceps" as my sister used to make me flex for her friends...hehe...bulging being subjective of course.

Thanks SezxyStef for somewhat coming to my defense. Not sure what else I can say to prove my story was true. I lifted dead weight patients my junior and senior year of high school some times working double shifts. That meant from the bed to their chairs and rolling them over. The end result was biceps that were developed to say the least that got comments from my guy friends. It was my job and a hard one that was very physically demanding.

I think most people know how much adults weigh and could do the math if they felt like it, so maybe the confusion comes in because it involves a profession that is female-dominated. You know those nurses never could have had guns all those years, being female and all. They don't even know a barbell from a dumbbell; how on earth could they have big biceps? Dude, do they even lift?

My sister had enormous biceps and I have no idea what she was doing. I never asked her, but hers were just crazy big for no apparent reason, lol. She did work on her car, so maybe something involving that. In pictures she never flexed and never wore sleeveless things, so I don't know what that would prove anyway.

No lol I'm just using my BS detector. In my mind I replace all the unverifiable statements with blank ones and it exposes just how little usable information is actually here.

OP is highly motivated to steer things to a particular conclusion, IMO, and should just get to the point of complaining about how the world works.

For one, I don't accept a dichotomous "outside vs. inside" view of "health", since quality of life is necessarily a measure of a person interacting with an environment.



Here is what we can actually learn here: some people somewhere are self conscious about their biceps being too big from lifting, despite the fact that a program designed for increasing strength has little to no isolation work on the biceps, since they contribute relatively little to most movements and generally don't need extra training. OP is not educated enough to realize the difference between lifting and bodybuilding, and like most people not educated on the subject, has some pretty interesting ideas about biceps. OP also not clear that in order to build big arms she would have to use BOTH training AND a calorie surplus, which is what she did accidentally to develop her arms in the past.


The reason, my dear, that I can't take you seriously here is that you clearly do not lift and never have, otherwise you would know very well that it is the single most effective way to improve your quality of life, for the rest of your life, particularly when a proper strength training program is followed. It makes you better at EVERYTHING.

Prove me wrong. Get a copy of "Starting Strength", and spend the next year getting a good squat, deadlift, and overhead press, and learn to do a pullup. If at the end you don't feel like it was one of the most important commitments you ever made for yourself and those who care for you, then I WILL GLADLY EAT HUMBLE PIE.

You know nothing about me and to make assumptions about me is quit funny(INSERT SARCASM). You must suffer from low self esteem to be attacking someone that you don't even know. Do you feel better having done so? I asked a queston and got my answers. Maybe your intentions for your statements is to motivate, but you MY DEAR have done quit the opposite.

If just one curious woman reads this and realizes being afraid to lift because it will make her bulky is a sort of running gag around here, That's enough for me.

You're right, I know nothing about you. Because you won't provide details. When I ask, I am accused of something awful for questioning your conclusions. But since your conclusions don't make sense, I figure there is a mistake in there and would love to help you fix it or at least point it out to others. That's the kind of support I appreciate, and what I try to give. Real answers, not someone to make me feel better about never reaching my goals. Or even worse, someone spreading unrealistic fears which deter me from ever trying.

If I thought you were actually just asking questions, rather than trying to make the point that lifting is only for vanity, I might approach this very differently. Lifting with a good program is the single most important health decision you can make after committing to a healthy diet, and can not on its own make you bulky (you have to back it up with a positive energy balance to achieve that).

I feel like I'm in a relationship with the iron. It's challenging. It's challenging enough that I won't get easily bored and every bit of weight added to the bar is a victory. It's a mental game and the prize is a better me. One rep at a time.

Sure it makes me stronger, more resilient, increases my bone density which is increasingly important as we age.

Sure, it'll make me look good naked if I choose to cut. Or by the other turn it'll add mass to my frame if I choose to structure my diet another way.

Sure it'll strengthen ligaments, tendons and other connective tissue.

But it's really a spiritual and emotional challenge. All the other stuff is just gravy...

If you don't mind me asking, how much time do you spend with the iron? You mentioned bone density and as a woman I know how important that is especially at my age. It's been an eye opener for me to read everyone's reasons for lifting.

Well, I'm doing an upper/lower split, so I lift 4 days a week. That's not really necessary for a beginner - you'd be better off with a 3 day full-body routine. I lift for about 40-50 minutes depending on what lifts I have scheduled for that day.

Any good, compound-lift-based barbell routine will put you under enough progressive resistance to increase bone density. Or at the very least stop you losing too much of it. Depends on factors such as genetics, diet, age, gender, etc. But to do nothing as you age is to maximise your bone density loss. To do something is to at least mitigate it.

Thanks for starting this thread. I'm probably a lot more casual about my lifting than most of the people who are responding. It's about "the inside" benefits for me, but any outside benefits that come are welcome. Mostly I'm just trying to maintain strength so that I can stay active as I age, and in hopes of improving body fat %. I tend to think of weight-bearing cardio (walking/running/dance) as preserving bone density, so it's interesting to see so many comments about lifting for strong bones, and obviously I don't want my arms and shoulders breaking, so it gives me something to think about. The mention of it helping with diabetes also surprised me, so I guess I have some research to do.

I feel like I'm in a relationship with the iron. It's challenging. It's challenging enough that I won't get easily bored and every bit of weight added to the bar is a victory. It's a mental game and the prize is a better me. One rep at a time.

Sure it makes me stronger, more resilient, increases my bone density which is increasingly important as we age.

Sure, it'll make me look good naked if I choose to cut. Or by the other turn it'll add mass to my frame if I choose to structure my diet another way.

Sure it'll strengthen ligaments, tendons and other connective tissue.

But it's really a spiritual and emotional challenge. All the other stuff is just gravy...

If you don't mind me asking, how much time do you spend with the iron? You mentioned bone density and as a woman I know how important that is especially at my age. It's been an eye opener for me to read everyone's reasons for lifting.

Well, I'm doing an upper/lower split, so I lift 4 days a week. That's not really necessary for a beginner - you'd be better off with a 3 day full-body routine. I lift for about 40-50 minutes depending on what lifts I have scheduled for that day.

Any good, compound-lift-based barbell routine will put you under enough progressive resistance to increase bone density. Or at the very least stop you losing too much of it. Depends on factors such as genetics, diet, age, gender, etc. But to do nothing as you age is to maximise your bone density loss. To do something is to at least mitigate it.

I am an active person, mostly cardio. Basketball is my favorite activity, talk about a workout.

I am actually strong. Anytime my husband needs help with moving or lifting I am the one he calls on for help. I suppose that's from the lifestyle I had growing up as a country girl.

But, have been thinking about changing things up a bit with my exercise routine and maybe add some light lifting to it.

Thanks for your input!

Being strong is not a good reason not to train. Just start with heavier weights, problem solved.

I have the opposite problem. I solve it by lifting less weight.

Don't want to get big? eat less. that's the other problem solved.

I really hope you conclude all the reasons not to lift are silly, and the reasons to lift are myriad and magnificent.
[/quote

No, seriously, I was being sarcastic.

Vague stories aside about how 20 years ago you accidentally had bulging biceps, but don't remember a single other detail about your physique, nobody gets accidentally ripped.

There were tons of cameras in 1993. Let's see these bulging biceps. My bet is: either they never existed, or they were attached to so someone with rather high body fat who accidentally ate a lot while accidentally building muscle.

Your sarcasm was lost on me, but that's ok. It doesn't really matter to me if you believe the story or not. Have a nice life with all that lifting! For those of you who have been nice enough to answer my questions with knowledge and your own personal experiences I thank you.

Yeah for some weird reason I prefer to believe in things when I have some evidence they actually happened.

20 years ago I had "bulging biceps" I was in my early 20's and in a male dominated trade in the military. After going through boot camp and then trades training I could easily do 7 chinups, pushups up the wazoo and lift the 100lb bullet up 4ft to place it on the tray. I was not purposefully working out but most definately eating a lot of food to keep up with the activity I was doing...

I was 5 ft 7, weighed about 155lbs not sure of bf% because I wasn't even aware of that 20 years ago

True story but no pics of those guns (I have pics of the guns I worked on) but to be frank my physical transformation didn't really phase me and I didn't think to take pics...so no pics but it did happen, true story.

So just cause there are no pics etc don't discount what people remember, I know I was strong then, I know I had "bulging biceps" as my sister used to make me flex for her friends...hehe...bulging being subjective of course.

Thanks SezxyStef for somewhat coming to my defense. Not sure what else I can say to prove my story was true. I lifted dead weight patients my junior and senior year of high school some times working double shifts. That meant from the bed to their chairs and rolling them over. The end result was biceps that were developed to say the least that got comments from my guy friends. It was my job and a hard one that was very physically demanding.

5'7", 155 lbs and doing 7 chinups? loading 100 lb shells overhead?

that would put you in a very small group of women who have that kind of upper body strength. I would indeed expect some nice guns on a girl like that! (sexy as hell, btw)

you I can believe. The other one, not so much.

I don't even understand where your snide remarks are coming from and why. I know what my arms looked like when I was lifting and moving dead weight patients almost on a daily basis for two years. Just because I wasn't working my arms out the way you do, doesn't mean that there wasn't something there. I was asking questions about the health benefits of lifting and what their motivation for doing it is.

Ignore the sceptical remarks, you know what your arms looked like you don't need to convince anyone else. I can relate, when I was a young carer my arms were quite muscly from all the lifting I had to do as well.