Bulking: Causes & Cures
The fact that women are becoming afraid of squats or lunges and avoid them because they ’cause bulking’ is something that needs to be addressed. I have dealt with this for the length of my entire career. Let me explain what I’ve come across as the reasons for ‘bulking’ and why you shouldn’t be afraid to lunge or squat. The short answer is that improper technique causes the ‘bulking’ that women fear, not specific exercises.
Bulking is not ’caused’ by isolated exercises, like squats or lunges. It should be noted that bodybuilders use squats & lunges to get bigger, sure they do, and they work for that. They use ALOT of weight. They eat ALOT. & They train or take steroids for YEARS to increase muscle size.
Fitness is like language. Specific exercises are like words in a sentence. They way you say them changes their meaning. Same with specific exercises. You can’t blame the exercise, you have to look at the execution (the saying) of it.
Fear based words marketed to women like ‘bulky’, ‘masculine’, or ‘unfeminine’ is a sad cheap trick used to undermine female self-esteem by linking essential bone-building strengthening exercises with…. not being female. How 1950, right?
‘Bulking’ (or the feeling of it) is the result of a combination of a couple of things and I’ll try not to dip into deep nerdville on the detail. I’ll try to keep this under a bazillion words. 
Quad overuse, gripping, hamstring weakness and insufficient turnout=bulking, or… muscles over developed in one area and underdeveloped in others. It’s not ‘squats’ causing bulk, its doing squats improperly that make the thighs feel bulky. It’s not lunges ‘causing’ bulk, its doing them improperly that causes the bulky feeling. Your body only does what you teach it to do.
The answer isn’t in avoiding theses exercises…. it’s in understanding them and finding out where you are going wrong in your technique and execution. Learn. Fix. Understand. Change the result.
Here are some reasons you could think you are ‘bulking’:
- After a workout you get whats called a ‘pump’ this is simply blood that’s been forced into working muscles delivering enough oxygen. This goes away after a few hours.
- High impact aerobics gives the feeling of bulk afterwards: IF you don’t know how to jump properly. If your feet don’t hit the floor correctly you will absorb each jump in your quads and knees=bulky feeling.
- ‘Squeezing’ the top of the thigh, when doing everything creates a feeling of bulk, you may not even know that your are relying on your quads to do everything. You may be squeezing them all day, with every step and not realize it.
- Performing plies improperly because of a lack of turnout….will develop muscles in a way you may misconstrue as bulk. But realize you are training them that way, but they more than likely… NOT actually BIGGER. They are doing what you told them to, improperly.
- Short, repetitive movements, either weighted or not….will create a bulky feeling as well.
- Not eating enough calories to fuel workouts that are extreme will cause your body to conserve bodyfat rather than burn it. You will literally train your body to conserve bodyfat.
To look long…. ‘long’ requires the muscles to stretch over the length of your bones **continually** while you move & exercise. The longer your range of motion, the further you can move straight limbs away from the center of your body in all directions the ‘longer’ your muscles will appear to look.
“I know, but I’m short….I bulk faster….”
Short movements done repetitively without the balance of long lever movements develops a bunchy, congested thick feeling muscle.
Shorter people, I have good news for you, you probably don’t naturally ‘bulk faster’. You can can be, say 5 feet tall and have long limbs and long muscles for your frame. Veryyyyy generally let’s talk about fast twitch & slow twitch muscles.
Fast twitch muscles are in fact, shorter from insertion to insertion, slow twitch muscles are longer….and once you figure out what type you are, it’s easier to understand reality, rather than myth when it comes to getting the look you want.
An easy way to see this is in gymnastics, the girls who do rhythmic gymnastics are smaller, thinner… with long limbs, and more than likely slow twitch muscles. The girls who do floor, vault, balance bar and uneven bars are smaller with shorter, more pronounced & developed fast twitch muscle fibers. Sprinters versus pole vaulters is another body type to take a look at….
Now also remember there are combinations of these types and of course exceptions, this is very general for purposes of this discussion.
Please don’t think for one moment that dance isn’t full of squats & lunges, it most certainly is….plies are squats, that are turned out. Yoga, is filled with squats, and lunges as matter of course…even if you think you are avoiding them, you are not. So you may as well understand them. The demo portion of the Mat Workout 1 dvd teaches you exactly how to line up your squats & lunges using your active resistance points, and where/how you should initiate each movement. The Technique Study section lets you practice that muscle memory and that’s why the Technique Study is so important.
With many of my training clients I am fortunate enough to be able to parallel their weekly active resistance training with a full hour stretch session once per week.
You MUST lengthen your muscles after workouts by stretching them fully and deeply. There is a 5 minute cooldown which serves it’s purpose, but if you really want muscles to look longer and stay looking longer you must work on stretching for a significant amount of time. I recommend starting with a once weekly stretch session. You can start that immediately, and your goal is to be able to hold any stretch for 30 secs-2 minutes.
Try this quad stretch:
