Why "Lifting Weights Makes You Bulky" Just Won't Go Away

You can find a lot of negative, dishonest and inaccurate messages in the fitness industry. 

One of the most pervasive narratives that won’t go away: 

Heavy weights or certain styles of exercise make women “bulky” or “too muscular.”

Let’s correct the record.

Too Huge too Fast?

Recently, I watched a video on Instagram where a female fitness and nutrition coach talked about her personal experience with CrossFit. She started the video by telling women that they didn’t need to make it their life mission to go to the gym and gain as much muscle as possible. 

She’s not wrong about this, even if I love adding some muscle. In general, people just need to move more, and strength training doesn’t need to pack on a bunch of muscle to be beneficial. You can get stronger without adding size, and hypertrophy training—think bodybuilding—is a specific style of training that takes a lot of work. 

In general, do some strength training, add some cardio and get active outside the gym to win.

Here’s where things took a negative turn for me: The coach went on to say that she really didn’t like CrossFit-style training because it made her way too bulky and way too muscular. 

In her own words, “these traps were trappin’.” She was referring to her shoulders looking too big for her personal preference. 

I found this really interesting because—looking at her current physique in the video and on her feed—she was not muscular at all. The aesthetic was definitely more “I do yoga and lift weights at medium-low intensity.” 

And that’s totally fine. But she definitely wasn’t overloaded with muscle. 

What’s Really Going On

I deliberately scrolled back through her feed over a period of years to look for evidence of her ultra-trappy traps, and I could find nothing. 

There were plenty of pictures where she was larger and obviously carrying a lot more body fat, but I found absolutely nothing that indicated that she had ever been ultra-muscular. Interesting.

In the comments on her post, a litany of women were expressing a similarly held belief that CrossFit made them huge. I didn’t waste anymore time looking through additional profiles because I already had a pretty good idea of what was happening. 

I want to be clear: Gaining muscle is hard work. You have to eat enough, train enough and work hard enough to gain that lean tissue. It doesn’t just show up.

And to actually see the new tissue? You have to be lean enough. Veins and rippling muscles don’t just appear. 

But what happens if you start lifting heavy, working hard and eating a little too much food—more than is needed to support lean muscle growth? If you’re already carrying extra body fat, you’re probably going to get bigger. 

You might feel some cool changes like your quads and your booty growing, and maybe your shoulders and triceps pop out. But if you’re not managing your intake to support a leaner composition overall, things are going to feel “larger.” 

And that makes a lot of women uncomfortable. This is understandable, and I get it.

Is the solution to not lift weights and gain muscle? I would suggest that’s a bad plan. 

The solution is to manage your diet and lose body fat. The muscle people are so afraid of gaining will actually provide the aesthetic they’re after when body composition changes. This is true even if they don’t add much muscle at all. 

I’m willing to bet a lot of money that most gals who are saying they got too big lifting weights were not actually very lean. Sorry, but it’s true. You just don’t gain a lot of muscle by accident all of a sudden.

And I’m also certain that if the coach had photo evidence of the time CrossFit made her too jacked, she would be plastering that all over social media and selling it. Because there are a million people out there looking for the secret to getting jacked fast.

Lift and Live Well

The sad thing is that this too-bulky narrative causes women to give up strength training and head straight to the spin bike. There, they don’t get stronger—and I believe that everyone should train to maintain strength as they age so they can live full lives.

Let me say it again: Lifting weights will not make you too huge.

If I ever discover the secret training program to help you get “too muscular,” trust me, I’ll tell you all about it. 

In the meantime, lift some weights, manage your diet, and don’t worry about getting too big. Get stronger, manage your body composition and live well.

And if you need help with that, send me a DM, text or email!