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The 8 Worst Reasons to Lift Weights

November 24th, 2008 Posted in Healthy Lifestyle

There are at least 100 good reasons to lift weights. Fat loss, muscle gain, sports specific training, powerlifting, general fat loss, and so much more. These are all great reasons to start weight training.

Have you ever thought there might be some bad reasons to lift weights? I was contemplating this while watching the New England Patriots stomp the Miami Dolphins yesterday, and I decided that the following 8 reasons to lift are probably ill conceived for the most part. What do you think?

The 8 Worst Reasons to Weight Train

1. You want to be a professional female bodybuilder.

   Female Bodybuilder

   If you are a woman and you want to be a professional bodybuilder, then it might be a good time for you to check your sexuality. Once you start living the lifestyle of a professional female bodybuilder, you can be sure that no man will be interested in you for your femininity. If you are lucky you might find a very sexy lesbian who is interested in he-shes.

   Why does this happen? The professional female bodybuilders use steroid and growth hormones just like professional male bodybuilders. Many of them have to fall back on subscription based, pornography websites to make their living, as only the top 2 or 3 bodybuilders in the industry actually make enough dough to live on.

   The heavy use of androgens causes a thickening of the jaw line, growth of facial hair, and many other symptoms that basically result in the woman looking like a man.

   Furthermore, professional female bodybuilders are single handedly responsible for the myth that women who lift weights will develop big bulky man-muscles. 99.99999% of the time, a woman will not get bulky muscles unless she trains like a bodybuilder, eats like a bodybuilder, and supplements (illegally, I might add) like a bodybuilder.

2. You want to sport the biggest arms in the world.

   The biggest arms in the world use to belong to a man named Gregg Valentino… I don’t think the record has been broken. To beat his record your arms will have to attain a 29 inch circumference. Mr. Valentino has claimed time and again that he didn’t inject oil into the muscle tissue to artificially swell them up. Believe whatever you want.

   Greg Valentino

   Read more about Greg Valentino.

3. You want to be a professional male bodybuilder.

   To have any hope of ever winning a professional bodybuilding contest, you will have to use every drug in the book, and besides you’ll end up with a big swollen belly. I mean I’ll give props to the bodybuilders for all the hard work they put into making their bodies appear huge and perfect, but it’s definitely not for me.

   Below you will see Ronnie Coleman, a truly awesome, freakishly huge, 8 time winner of Mr. Olympia. But do you really want to compete with bodybuilders of that caliber? Good luck.

   Ronnie Coleman

4. You want to be the strongest man in the world.

   If you even try to win the World’s Strongest Man award, Marius Pudzianowski will kick your ass. Then he will eat you.

   

   Furthermore, you are not as strong as Marius. Sorry, but unless your name is Bill Kazmaier, you’re just not.

5. You want to show off your massive chest and arms to the girls.

   Sure, this is how we all start lifting as teenagers. Bench presses and bicep curls. Big arms and big chest are the way to a woman’s heart, right? HA!

   If you don’t train smart, you will end up with pencil legs and risk injury from muscular imbalance. Weight lifting is a full body exercise strategy, and should include as much lower body work as upper body work. You should also include as much back work as chest work.

   Furthermore, I can’t tell you the number of women that I’ve talked to, who have laughed profusely at men with big arms and skinny legs. Guys, if this is you, you should know that the women are laughing at your resemblance to a stick figure, rather than at your massive 17 inch pistols.

6. Marathon Runner

   You want to run a marathon.

   Being that your legs needs to sustain the weight of your body for 26 miles, you are better off weighing as little as possible. This actually turns out to be good news since marathon-style endurance running is extremely catabolic.

   Furthermore, endurance running might be the best way to drain your body of muscle mass. In fact, I can’t fathom why a marathon runner would want to lift weights at all, even super high reps. Correct me if I’m wrong.

7. You want to lose weight.

   First of all, you are more likely to gain weight when you first start lifting because muscle weighs more than fat. A better goal would be to lose fat rather than to lose weight. Lifting weights and adding muscle or muscle density to your frame will elevate your metabolism, causing an increase in your BMR (basal metabolic rate), which means your body burns more calories just by being alive.

   Furthermore, you are wasting your time even trying to lose fat if you eat like a hog. Diet is responsible for at least 75% of your results from working out.

   I have read several studies, which have determined that people lose little or no weight by exercising when sticking to a typical trans fat, processed carbohydrate, sludge-filled American diet.

   Not only don’t they lose weight, but their overall body composition barely changed, which suggest 0 muscle gained and 0 fat lost. Dieting is the key to fat loss, not weight lifting.

   If you really want to do something that will help change your body composition and make you healthier all around, try an acai berry supplement. You can get a free trial of Acai Slim today, or you can browse the Sambazon acai product catalog and choose from the very best acai products on the planet.

8. Girl Athlete

   You want to pick up women at the gym.

   This is probably the worst place to attempt to pick up women. They already know you are looking and most of them don’t want to take it any further than that. What is the male to female ratio in the free weight or machine area anyway? Maybe 1 female for every 15 males? Those aren’t great odds my friend.

   Furthermore, think about it this way: a woman goes to the gym to make herself sexier and that’s hard work. She’s concentrating on working out while every single male in the joint is eyeballing her no matter where she goes or what machine she uses. What makes you think she wants to be hit on right now? If just one in every 10 guys talked to her, she’d be giving out a dozen fake phone number each day.

   Please gents, do the ladies a favor and keep a lid on it until she’s already showered and walking out to the car.

Written by Steve
Steve is a formerly ISSA certified personal trainer and sport nutritionist, who has been studying, practicing, and experimenting since 1994. Please use the content at Project Swole to supplement the advice of your doctor or physician. All medical questions should be directed towards a qualified medical professional, and the advice provided at Project Swole should be used at your own discretion.

At Project Swole you will Build Muscle and Lose Fat with articles on weightlifting, conditioning, nutrition, diets, martial arts, and all forms of exercise.

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Tags: weight lifting, Weight Training, weights