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Flip through any muscle and fitness magazine and you’ll see fitness models and competitors, figure competitors, and bodybuilders sporting a flawless physique. They display lean and finely detailed muscle, and a present healthy looking tan.
What does it take to acquire such a muscular, yet feminine build?
Often times, when ladies train for that “competitor” look, they are under the impression that lighter weights and more reps will get them ripped, lean, and detailed. This is false.
Other women rely on endless cardio; as much as two hours a day for that polished look. This can be disastrous.
Finally, the last group of ladies that want the popular “competition ready” body resort to extreme low or no carbohydrate diets. This route is also a serious mistake.
There is no one right way or single method to getting a fit, hard, lean, and muscular body. Such desired physiques required vision, dedication, determination, focus, and effort.
I come across many ladies brand new to the sport of fitness that put in all the above factors. Many ladies diet down from a healthy 18% body fat to a good 8-10% body fat and wonder after all their hard and committed work, why they don’t have the hard and ripped muscles like the top figure and/or fitness models they see in the latest fitness magazine or the flashy personal websites.
This is a very good question.
The figure and fitness ladies that you see sporting very dense bodies that look so magnificent have worked very hard, and often times for several years or more to attain that look.
While you can build 3-6 pounds of muscle in a three months time-span, it takes a few years to build density.
Scenario
You are fairly new to the sport of fitness. You read a few articles and got some basic information on nutrition and training. You may have even been on a fat-loss program for several weeks to see how well you could progress.
Through all your effort and dedication you managed to drop about 7 pounds of body fat and get to a stunning 9%! That’s excellent work. However, you step back to compare your 9% to the fitness model’s 9% in the fitness magazine and find you look much different. You are not as hard and detailed as the fitness model. You lack that certain “look” you were striving for. What went wrong?
The reason you may look dramatically different from the fitness or figure models at 9% is due to muscle mass and muscle density.
The Truth
The finely-tuned physiques you see displayed in the fitness magazines are ladies in “peak” condition. Peaking is a temporary condition in which the body fat is reduced to very low levels, often times dangerous levels, so the muscle detail is predominantly visible. Most ladies in peaked condition are anywhere from 8-10% body fat, sometimes lower. The peaking process involves specific training and dieting methods, and is usually done for physique shows and photo shoots. In addition, a peaked physique is a severely dehydrated physique, posing health risks.
