Maybe.
Working out with weights might give you big or bulky muscles.
Don’t get scared, and definitely keep doing your strength workouts. Even some of my clients fear that working out with heavy weights will make their muscles bigger. Let’s talk about how to make that happen if bigger muscles are your goal – and how to avoid it.
(This post provides general information only, and is geared toward females between roughly 20 and 60 years of age. Always consult your personal fitness or health professional for advice that is specific to you!)
If you are working out with weights and you have good form, and your nutrition is adequate for your body and activity level…
…a strength workout is likely to make you stronger and improve your muscle tone (definition), but not make your muscles bigger. You do not have to stick to “light weights and high repetitions” – those types of workouts are usually endurance workouts rather than strength workouts, anyway. (Nothing wrong with an endurance workout, but we are talking about strength workouts here, a.k.a. using weights or other resistance that challenge your body after 8-15 repetitions and make your muscles stronger.)
Training for hypertrophy, or big muscles, usually involves consistently training to muscle fatigue using the heaviest weight you can possibly handle with good form and at which you can usually only complete a few repetitions of the given exercise – like no more than eight. A typical hypertrophy workout would involve 4 or more sets of just 3-5 repetitions of the same exercise, with long (<60 sec) breaks between sets.
However, if you are working out with improper form, or an incomplete range of motion, and/or you are eating significantly more than your body requires, and/or you are under a significant amount of stress or not getting adequate rest…
…you may find that your muscles are growing bigger, even if you are working out with relatively light weights. Muscles require extra fuel to grow bigger, and stress and lack of sleep can send your hormones confusing messages that can lead to unintentionally larger muscles. Working out with improper form or an incomplete range of motion can overwork just a portion of your muscle, so your muscle may look and indeed become bigger as that one area compensates for the work that the full length of the muscle should be handling.
On the other hand, if you are chronically under-eating for your body and activity level…
…you may find that no matter how many strength workouts you do, you never seem to get much stronger or see any improvement to your muscle tone. You body will use muscle for fuel before it uses fat for fuel, so if you’re working out frequently but not eating enough to fuel your body, you may find that you get stuck at a plateau or even lose definition and tone.
So, how can you achieve your version of a more toned look?
Fuel your body with the right amount and quality of food for your goals.
Work hard in your workouts, and rest hard on your rest days.
Work out with good form and a complete range of motion, at weights that are challenging but not necessarily the very, very biggest. (But they can be pretty big before you really have to worry about growing any muscles.)
Repeat, consistently, for a few months.
And what about if you are eating perfectly, working out perfectly, and you are still feeling bigger without seeing an improvement in muscle tone?
Hang in there for a month. It can take time for your body to drop the layer of fat (that we all have) covering your muscles. Fat storage is a whole body process, not area-specific, so your body will lean out all over, not just in the area(s) you are working on.
