Figure Athlete - 10 Keys to the Lean & Sexy Look, Part I

10 Keys to the Lean & Sexy Look, Part I
by Jen Heath

In most endeavors, there are recipes that will virtually ensure success. For example, I've heard NFL coaches say that winning a football game is as simple as running the ball, stopping the run, and taking care of the football.

The recipe for beating alcoholism is the application of the twelve steps in the Alcoholics Anonymous program. In business and personal development, you can follow the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and be well on your way to success.

Building a great physique is no different. What I'd like to share with you are my top ten key ingredients for building a great female physique.

The author: Walkin' the walk!

Some of these ingredients I learned through mistakes, some I learned through conversations with intelligent coaches and trainers, and some I figured out through trial and error. Regardless, I wish I would've known all of these things prior to ever setting foot in a gym because it would've enabled me to get where I am today a whole lot sooner.

Many women these days want to look like figure competitors and other natural female athletes — they want to have muscle yet be really sleek and lean. It's sad when I see women trying damn hard every day to achieve these goals with little in the way satisfactory results. I've noticed several patterns as to why most trainees struggle getting into top flight condition. Let's start with number one:

Many women believe that just because they're putting in their time they're going to get positive body composition changes. That's like saying enrolling in college will automatically get you a 4.0 GPA, a degree, and a six figure job offer.

Unless you have the genetics of a professional athlete, simply showing up won't cut it. How many women do you know who go to the gym religiously three or four days per week and spend 45-60 minutes performing a variety of "toning" movements with lighter weights? They look basically the same month after month and year after year, don't they? The problem is, that's about two to three hours of exercise per week that:

A) Isn't worth anything for burning fat. (No matter how hard you work on triceps kickbacks you're not gonna burn any significant number of calories!)

Kickbacks: Just say no!

And...

B) Isn't worth a darn at building muscle either. (No matter how many 10 pound leg extensions and dumbbell bench presses you do, you're not going to be building much muscle.)

These people could probably get better results with only 20 minutes per week of intenseweight training. That brings me to the next ingredient in my recipe...

Most women tend to shy away from picking up heavy stuff. Some of them are afraid of getting overly muscular. I've even noticed that many T-Vixen type women who actually want to build some muscle get it in their head from time to time that they have to train with higher reps and more isolation exercises.

The thing is, female muscle will respond to training exactly like male muscle. A muscle can either get bigger or it can get smaller. The fat covering up a muscle can either get bigger or smaller.

What most people call "toning" is actually a muscle getting a little big bigger (yes, that does mean it increases in "bulk") and the fat cells covering a muscle getting smaller. You put those two things together and you get "tone."

Most women I talk to would like more muscle in their arms yet don't necessarily want behemoth guns. Whenever a woman tells me she just wants to "tone" her body with light weights, I usually end up having a conversation similar to this:

Jen: "Okay, so if I understand you right, your arms now measure 9 inches, but you wouldn't mind getting them up to a firm and solid 12 inches. At the same time, you don't want to get 16 inch monster arms, right?"

Client: "Yes, that's exactly right!"

Jen: "Well, let me ask you this: Would you rather take a month or two to build that 12-inch arm or would you rather it take you forever?"

Client: "I want it now!"

Jen: "The reason I ask is because the same thing that builds the 16 inch arm the fastest will also build the 12 inch arm the fastest — lifting intensely with progressively heavier weights. Once you achieve the amount of muscle you desire you can always reduce the volume to maintain."

Client: "Ah, I see!"

The point is, as women, few of us want to get extremely masculine, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't train like men and seek to build what increased muscle we do want at a rapid rate. In the muscle building alphabet, if a small muscle is "A" and a very big muscle is "Z," you can't go from A to Z without going through all the other letters of the alphabet first, and that never happens overnight.

If letter A is 9-inch arms and letter Z is 20-inch arms, you likely don't want to go from A to Z (and frankly that's scary if you do), but you may want to go from A to E, or A to F. Catch my meaning?

The quickest way to achieve this is getting into the gym and picking up heavy stuff. About the only time you wouldn't want to lift heavy is when you have a body part that's already as muscular as you'd like, or when you're talking about a body part that you don't want to develop at all, like the neck and traps.

When it comes to lifting, you always want to be performing lifts with good form and good tempo that allow you to add on a lot of load over time. These include exercises like presses, chins, squats, deadlifts, and lunge variations. A triceps kickback isn't a movement you can add a lot of weight on over time. A close-grip bench press is.

Form and tempo are important because it's easy to demonstrate an increase if you go from using a strict controlled tempo with a two second pause at the bottom to a set you do where you're throwing the weights around. So make sure you keep your form and tempo solid.

Now, sticking with the theme of lifting heavy, here's my third ingredient:

Progressive is a key word in my recipe. A lot of physique enthusiasts seem to overlook this. They go in the gym and try hard on a consistent basis but they miss out on the "progressive" part.

You'll hear about a million and one different ways to build a muscular body, but the one recommendation you'll never hear is that you should lift lighter weights over time. The loads must be progressive.

From a man's perspective, a fellow trainer friend of mine pointed out that oftentimes men seem to get too caught up in the pump, the burn, and the volume instead of the weight increase. I know this is a mistake I used to make.

Let's say you only have 50 pounds of weights and you want to build up your chest. So you utilize all sorts of supersets, post-exhaustion sets, drop sets, quad sets, and every other Weider principle under the sun. Regardless of how many supersets you do or how much you make a muscle "hurt," if you're lifting the same weights a month from now, there's a pretty good chance your muscles won't be any bigger.

I transformed at a much faster rate once I figured out that adding weight to compound movements was the way to go. I even started lifting with powerlifters once a week for fun. In return, my shoulders, chest, back, and legs started taking on even more shape. This was largely due to the fact that my powerlifting buddies were making sure I was adding weight to the bar on a consistent basis.

That brings me to step four, which is the easiest way to ensure your weights progress over time.

Each time you repeat an exercise you should check your logbook to see how much weight you lifted last time and for how many reps. You should always be trying for more reps. Each time you increase by 3 or 4 reps you increase the weight by 5% the next workout.

Let's say for example the sets and reps on your last squat workout looked like this:

95 x 5 (warm-up)

115 x 8 (warm-up)

135 x 8

155 x 6

155 x 5

Your top work set was 155 for 6 reps. The next time you repeat this workout you'd try to get more than 6 reps with 155 on your top work set. As soon as you could get 8 reps with 155 you'd increase the load to 165 and build back up.

The only accurate way to track your lifts is to keep records. No matter how well you thinkyou can remember, this isn't an area where you wanna be making recalls from the card catalogs of your head. At my gym, hardly any women have a water bottle, let alone a pencil and notepad. Don't let this be you!

You probably won't always improve every single workout, but that's the goal. If, on occasion, you don't feel energetic and strong in a particular workout, take it a bit easier and back off on the weights that day. If you go a couple of workouts without any weight or reps increase, you'd then insert an entire back-off week or two where you reduce the load and intensity across the board and take it a bit easier in the gym.

This is progressive resistance training. I believe every woman should work toward being able to perform a chin-up, dip, bodyweight bench press, and 1.5 x bodyweight deep squat and deadlift. I'm certain that I don't look like a man, and I've progressed to meet all of these requirements. You can too.

Does this mean that as a woman, in an effort to get strong, you should train like a powerlifter strictly with low reps? Or does that mean that doing a maximum single per workout is enough to stimulate optimum growth? Well, there are a lot of ways to skin a cat, but along with high levels of tension there's a certain level of volume that's optimal for growth.

A recent review paper determined that hypertrophy seems to occur best with weights around 75 and 85% of your 1RM (rep max) with a total volume of around 30-60 reps per body-part twice per week. (1) So that basically means 3-4 sets of 6-12 reps per body-part twice a week is optimal for hypertrophy.

Here's a simple way of setting up an effective workout:

Set up two upper body workouts and two lower body workouts and rotate through them on an every-other-day basis. Each workout you'll have a primary emphasis as well as a secondary emphasis. The primary muscles would be trained first (and thus more intensely) and with a bit more volume.

Workout 1: Monday

Chest and Lats Primary — Back Thickness, Shoulders, and Arms Secondary

Warm-up: Push-ups, Band External Rotations

A1. Incline Bench Press 4 x 6

A2. Wide Grip Pulldown/Up 4 x 8

B1. Flye or Cable Crossover Variation 2 x 15

B2. Single Arm Side Incline Lateral Raise 2 x 10

B3. Lying Triceps Extensions 3 x 8-10

C1. Barbell Curl 3 x 10

C2. Resistance Abs 3 x 10

Workout 2: Wednesday

Quads Primary — Glutes and Hamstrings Secondary

A1. Squat 4 x 6-10

A2. Leg Curl 4 x 6

B1. Leg Press 1 x 20-30

B2. Stiff-Legged Deadlift 1 x 12-15

C1. Calf Raise Drop Set 2 x 10-10-10 (triple drop)

Workout 3: Friday

Delts and Back Thickness — Lats, Chest, and Arms Secondary

Warm-up: Push-ups, Band External Rotations

A1. Seated Military Press 4 x 6-8

A2. Chest Supported Row or Barbell Row 4 x 8-10

B1. Low Cable Chest Presses 2 x 12-15

B2. Supinated Grip Pulldown 2 x 12-15

C1. Incline Dumbbell Curl 3 x 6-8

C2. Triceps Pushdowns 3 x 8-10

D1. Hanging Leg Raises 2 x 15-20

Workout 4: Sunday

Hips and Hamstrings Primary — Quads Secondary

A1. Deadlift 4 x 6-8

B1. Dumbbell Split Squat 2 x 8-10

C1. Glute/Ham Raise 4 x 8

C1. Leg Press Calf Raise 3 x 30-50

Tuesday: Repeat Workout 1

On most exercises you'd increase the weight each set and take the last set to failure or close to failure. If you use this scheme along with the principles I've explained, you'll definitely be on a fast track to an extremely sexy body.

Speaking of enjoyment... Maximizing your time in the gym doesn't mean racing through your workouts. Good trainers often say that if you don't take time to rest you'll get burned out. This principle applies to weight training more than you know.

Too many women think they're not getting a good workout unless their heart is racing at 200 beats per minute and sweat is dripping off them like a faucet. I've noticed that many ladies try to treat weight training like cardio and rush between exercises in an effort to burn more calories and feel "torn up."

The problem is this: If you don't rest long enough between sets you can't regenerate enough ATP and thus you won't be able to use enough weight to stimulate growth! So, slow down, girls!

Take your time and rest as long as you need to lift some decent weight. A lot of people will initially feel very lazy doing this. But realize this: even though you might burn less calories in an hour of weight training than you would in an hour of cardio, the majority of calories burned with intense weight training aren't burned in the workout anyway — they're burned in the recovery period as your damaged muscles repair themselves.

In one study, subjects performed 4 sets of 10 on the bench press, squat, and power clean. They only burned about 300 calories during the exercise bout itself, but they burned an additional 700 calories over the next 48 hours! (2)

I generally recommend rest intervals from 90 seconds to 3 minutes between sets. A good way to set up your workouts is by the use of antagonistic supersets. Here you superset exercises that involve opposing muscle groups and alternate back and forth with 1-3 minutes rest between sets.

For example, you might do one set of squats alternated with a set of leg curls. Or a set of bench presses alternated with a set of pull-ups, or a set of biceps alternated with a set of triceps. When training in this fashion you can train fairly fast and each muscle group will still be receiving adequate rest so that you can move heavier weights.

You might also try experimenting with Beta-7, which can help your anaerobic endurance and recovery between sets.

Next time I'll cover how to maximize your nutrition and cardiovascular training to complete the package!

Jen Heath is a professional natural bodybuilder and training and nutrition design consultant. She can be looked up at www.jenheath.com.

1. The influence of frequency, intensity, volume and mode of strength training on whole muscle cross-sectional area in humans. Sports Med. 2007;37(3):225-64.

2. Schuenke, Mikat, McBride. Effect of an acute period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: implications for body mass management. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2002 Mar;86(5):411-7. Epub 2002 Jan 29.

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