Have seen this phrase for years, it even fooled ME in the past… fooled me into wasting time, money, and still not having “the answer”. La la la… do these little safe non-offensive, non-making-you-actually-sweat exercises that won’t “bulk you up” etc and you’ll have “long lean muscles”. Ladies… it’s a LIE. Plain and simple.
Saw it on the door of a new gimmicky “women’s fitness studio” in a very nice area of town today and well, let’s just say I had had enough – especially after reading it on a collegue’s unrelated website (AND SHE KNOWS BETTER!). That phrase… “long lean muscles” means nothing, you are not going to get taller from doing their exercises (unless you slightly appear taller from improving your posture – but you should be working on that anyway, right?). When you stretch, you do make the muscles longer – TEMPORARILY – that’s how they work… but they go back to normal so you can function – you know… walk around etc.
Seriously, if you could get taller from exercise, pretty sure I wouldn’t still be 5’3.5″:
Yes! Attack of the 50 Ft Tall Woman!
Likewise you often hear people trying to sell Yoga or their proprietary system using the same “long lean” claims. Yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong and other forms of mind/body exercises are fantastic for you and you should absolutely practice them, but they are not going to make you “long and lean”.
We have established that you can’t get “taller” from stretching, yoga or heaven forbid, the “useless gimmick exercise system marketed to women du jour.” It’s time to tackle the other half of the phrase… the “lean” part. Like it or not, the “lean” part of the phrase has a lot to do with what you eat – certainly, high intensity short duration interval exercise will really help you, but what you put in your mouth will either support or undo your efforts towards losing body fat. Also the more muscle you build, the more calories you burn constantly – besides muscle makes for fabulous female curves. Here’s my article on the kettlebell physique 🙂
Start eating well, mindfully – as an example, Primal Blueprint has worked fabulously for me – eating real food – and don’t cut your calories down to nothing – so many of those “long lean” sellers advocate strict vegetarian or vegan diets with nearly no protein – and you simply MUST have protein (even if you insist on vegetable sources, you need protein – seriously) Two of my neighbors – both overweight and in the easy prey demographic for the ‘long lean’ rhetoric have bragged to me JUST THIS WEEK about how they have not had red meat in x amount of time. They were astonished to find out that I had been taking up the red-meat-eating slack for them, and further augmenting it with pork products to include our beloved BACON. They were bewildered… but but but but….. meat makes you fat, right? I used to believe that too – I also used to think that millions and millions of Jane Fonda style leg lifts and yoga moves would give me ‘long lean’ legs and get rid of the thunderous thighs I thought I had. Trying everything, I did the full 10 day “master cleanse”, gone full raw vegan, restricting my diet down to levels that I hate to even admit now. People began to act “concerned” around me, or even worse acting like I was some kind of monk and I still didn’t look the way that I wanted. Likewise, my lifting stats at the gym were easily summarized in one word: PATHETIC.
Tried nearly all the “good girl” methods and they all failed me – still had a shape I didn’t like at 118lbs and 18% bodyfat (I was 5’3″ at the time – I’ll share the story of the extra 1/2 inch another blog post, it has to do with diet), and people were acting like I had a disease which was SUPER annoying. After gaining weight from a bad lifestyle picked up from a then-boyfriend, and trying to lose it using what I knew from before at the gym, I finally found kettlebells almost at random. Why not… I’d tried everything else…. EVERYTHING ELSE. Just ask. After searching the city for over a year, enduring some pretty awful forms (barely escaping injury a couple times) of kettlebell training and ridiculous ideas, I finally found Tim Shuman, RKC Level 2 who taught me the RKC Hardstyle method of kettlebell training. This worked – the intensity was finally correct – kettlebells tricked me into doing cardio (I hate cardio machines as well as jogging/running), and got the lifting workout done quickly. No more 1hr-1.5hrs at the gym 3-4 times a week – and the results with kettlebell training were so vastly superior.
So to summarize? Let go of the silly ideas they try and sell to us – “long lean” promises, starvation diets, etc and start on a kettlebell training program with an RKC or HKC instructor in your area. For once, you won’t be wasting your time. Then find an eating strategy that uses foods you enjoy – Primal Blueprint, Paleo, South Beach.
RKC Hardstyle kettlebell training was so effective for me that I vowed to become an RKC Instructor myself and passed the RKC in Orlando October 2010, this past July I became an RKC Level 2 in St. Paul MN – and there’s no end in sight.
Tired of wasting time?
Click here to search for a proven and tested RKC or HKC kettlebell instructor
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