Q:Hi Anne, I hope you feel better now:) Thank you so much for the pear shape posts... You have no idea how much that helped me... it's like *this* is what I've been waiting for like... ever :) One question though, recently I fell in love with spinning classes, do you think it's a "bad" kind of workout for the legs or not? Thanks again, have a great rest of the night, xoxo Zuzana

a-cup-of-joy-please

Pear shape and spinning

Hi Zuzana,

I’m glad you liked it :) You know, I went through so much struggle in my life to find out how to change my pear shape destiny with so much hardship and hate towards my body that I thought it might be helpful to share my experiences and knowledge with others so they don’t have to go through all of this themselves. I think this is one of the reasons why I became a personal trainer. There are so many women out there asking for this specific help and most of the time they end up with the super cool and sportive male personal trainer who gives them the average advice and typical machine workout having no idea what the girls are talking about or…even worse: Having no idea how bad you are feeling about your body and how important it actually is for you to change it.

Once I was talking to another personal trainer and asked what he does when people have specific body shape requests and he said “Well, you know, they don’t know what they are talking about and don’t know that it’s unrealistic to do anything about it. You can’t go somewhere and expect people to change the way you were born. So I just listen, pretend that I made a plan just for their issue and train them like anyone else as the most important thing is to get them fit anyway. After a while they forget about the hole body shape thing any way.”

I was so TERRIFIED and SHOCKED when I heard this! I didn’t say anything to him, just nodded while he was talking as he was supposed to be far more experienced then me (he is a personal trainer for a long long time and I just wanted to get an advice). But after what he said I knew that maybe I don’t need any advice from him at all as he believed in something completely different. 

Since he is a man and was ALWAYS sportive, toned and low in body fat (you know those guys;)), he didn’t have to go through those hardships himself. He never had an dis balanced body. He never made the experience that one part of your body reacts more to exercise then another…maybe to a little degree but not THIS MUCH. How can he know what kind of struggle it is to get everything right.

To come back to your question> Spinning! Although my books would say that high reps will never let our muscles grow (Reps above 25+) and that hypertrophy best occurs at 8-12 reps, those books haven’t thought about the different abilities of hypertrophy of certain muscles. Every person has some muscles which they can train in the perfect 8-12rep range and the grow is very little while other body parts they can train 100+ reps and they will still grow. 

As for us pear shaped girls for some ever reason we have a good muscle grow around our leg area. Some pear shaped girls more and some less. So all I can advice to you is that you gotta test this out. 

If your muscles get even big from spinning then you have the tendency for a lot hypertrophy in your legs…an I mean A LOT. To avoid this and to still enjoy all of the spinning you might go lower with the level you are spinning in. Like this you still have your cardio but are less likely to grow super big muscles around your legs. But maybe you are lucky and your muscles don’t react as much with a grow on spinning. It is less likely down to the very high reps but I have seen girls who even got bigger muscles from only spinning (and I mean the bulky version every guy would dream for when he works out his legs and calves;)…I tell you: I would love to give my calves to any guy who struggles to get some volume into them.

So> Try it out for a while and tell me what you experience. 

Since your question might be helpful for others as well I’ll publish your message. If you don’t really like it then I’ll delete it as soon as you wish.

Take care and enjoy your day,

Anne

edit: (I edited the title so it’s easier to figure out for others what this post is about)

To have that famous PUMP!

Hi guys,

do you know the feeling when you have worked out and your arms, legs and your body feel like swollen? 

Yes, that’s the pump effect. Your blood vessels are getting wider to transport the increased amount of blood through your veins and this gives you this “pumped up” look.

Measure yourself…makes fun ;)

My upper arms are without workout about 25cm …after a workout I get in between 26-27cm around my biceps. WOW! 

The same increase with the legs. My upper legs are normally 46cm and after a workout about 47cm. 

So when you want to measure your legs and you want smaller results the best time to measure them is BEFORE a workout as otherwise you might get bigger results.

But it depends on the workout. When you do high reps you are less likely to get such a big pump and the difference might be only 0.5cm…not really this much.

Try it :)

How big is your PUMP after each session?

Take care,

Anne

Top