Articles
“Why Am I So Skinny?” Why Some Women Can’t Gain Weight
When it seems like everyone else is trying to lose weight, it can feel isolating to a skinny person trying to gain weight. On top of that, some skinny women actually eat quite a lot and still can’t gain weight.
We’re naturally skinny ourselves, and we’ve spent the past 15 years helping over 15,000 naturally skinny people build muscle, gain weight, get fitter, and improve their health. Our clients include naturally thin high school, college, and professional athletes, including women on our Olympic rugby team. We’ve also worked with underweight teens and grandmothers. This is what we do.
You’re probably naturally skinny because you have a thinner bone structure, fewer fat cells, a faster metabolism, a smaller stomach, or a lower appetite. Maybe you have all of those traits. We do.
Fortunately, there are solutions to all of these problems. In fact, most of them aren’t even problems. Having fewer fat cells is a good thing. There’s no downside to that.
Gaining weight and building muscle is difficult, though. It’s hard to build curves where you want them. It’s frustrating to lose weight when you get stressed or sick. Let’s talk about what’s going on and how to fix it.
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Seated Cable Row With Neutral Grip: Overview, How To Do It, & Tips
The seated cable row with a neutral grip is a great exercise for women who want to build some muscle in their back. You use a weighted cable machine that is set up horizontally with foot plates. Like other horizontal rowing variations, the main muscles it works are the lats, rhomboids, forearms, traps, and rear delts. It’s also fairly good for your arms, though, and should stimulate a bit of biceps growth. Let’s take a closer look at how to do this row variation, common mistakes, and how to program it into your workouts.
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Barbell Romanian Deadlift For Women: Overview, Proper Form, & Tips
The Barbell Romanian deadlift is one of the best female lifts because it’s a compound lower-body exercise that targets your hamstrings and glutes while also training hip mobility, good posture, and balance. The barbell allows you to safely and consistently increase the weight over time, allowing for easy progressive overload. The end result is not only an attractive, curvy body but an athletic one too. Let’s take a closer look:
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How to Make Your Butt Bigger in a Week
There are four ways to make your butt bigger in one week:
- Do a few sets of glute exercises to get a muscle pump. That will make your butt look bigger for about 30 minutes. It isn’t much, but it’s a start.
- Train your glutes hard enough to cause some soreness and swelling. That swelling will make your buff look bigger for a few days. If you train your glutes every few days, you can keep them looking fuller and harder forever.
- Eat enough carbs and calories to pump your muscles full of glycogen. When you eat more food, especially when that food is rich in carbs, your muscles will start holding onto more glycogen (which is made of carbs). That glycogen makes your muscles look harder and fuller. Training your glutes will cause them to store even more glycogen.
- Build muscle! Building muscle takes time, and you won’t gain a noticeable amount in a single week, but you might see noticeable progress in a month, and you’ll certainly see progress within a few months.
I’ll explain how to do all of this, and then we’ll give you some extra butt-building tips.
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Double Dumbbell Front Squat: How To Do It Properly & Tips
The double dumbbell front squat is a great variation for women ready to progress past the dumbbell Goblet Squat. It’s a great choice because while it hits the quads and glutes, it’s also a full-body exercise that hits the anterior core, upper back, and shoulders as you stabilize the dumbbells on your shoulders. The double dumbbell front squat will help to develop not only an attractive female body but an athletic one, too. Let’s take a closer look:
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Single-Arm Dumbbell Row on Bench: Overview, How To Do It, & Tips
The single-arm (1-arm) dumbbell row on the bench is a classic lift. It’s a great beginner exercise for building muscle in your upper back. The main muscles it works are the lats, traps, and rear delts. It’s also fairly good for your arms, though, and should stimulate a bit of biceps growth. Let’s take a closer look at how to do it, common mistakes, and how to program it into your workouts.
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Dumbbell Sumo Deadlift: Overview, How-To, & Tips
The dumbbell sumo deadlift is a great variation of the conventional barbell deadlift. It helps to build strength in the quads, glutes, and hamstrings. What makes it different is that you stand in a wide stance with the dumbbell between your legs, like a sumo wrestler, and you use a dumbbell (or kettlebell) instead of a barbell. Inside, we’ll take a closer look at what that means in terms of benefits, when to use this variation as a female lifter, etc.
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The Best Post-Workout Drinks For Women
Right after lifting weights, your muscles are primed for growth. You just gave them a stimulus to grow, there is heightened blood flow to the area, and the body has already started the recovery process.
Getting in some protein and calories not too long after your workout is the key to a great recovery. Great recovery equals great muscle growth. You show up to the next stronger, and you keep this process up. Over time, you’ll see muscle gains.
Inside, we’ll take a look at some solid post-workout drink options for women interested in maximizing their muscle gain.
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How Much Weight Should a Female Beginner Lift?
When getting into lifting weights, it can be confusing as to how much weight you should lift. There’s no definitive answer because every woman is different. But there are some good tips to figure out what the right weight is for each exercise that matches your own current levels of strength, athleticism, and recovery. Let’s take a closer look.
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Clamshell Exercise—Overview, How-to, & Tips
The clamshell is an isolation exercise for many of the glute muscles that don’t get stimulated to their full potential with the standard squat or hip thrust movements. For women looking to get the most three-dimensional and athletic glutes, they’ll need to be training the rotation motion of their legs. Clamshells are a great exercise for this. Let’s take a closer look.
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