
Men and women can both increase the size of their muscles and become stronger through resistance training. A woman’s muscles will grow in response to training just as a man’s will. Muscles increase in size when muscle fibres are exposed to more load than they’re accustomed to. In response to the overload, the muscles adapt and become larger and more capable of handling the extra force.
Testosterone is a hormone vital to muscle growth and is more plentiful in men than women. Despite lower levels of testosterone, women do gain strength and muscle size. Women have higher levels of the female sex hormone oestrogen relative to men. Oestrogen helps protect against muscle breakdown during exercise, indirectly helping with muscle mass preservation. The downside is that as women go through menopause and their estrogen levels drop, they lose muscle mass faster.
Women may feel hesitant to weight train for fear it may make them look bulky, however this is not likely due to lower testosterone levels in women. The bulkiness they often refer to happens when they build muscle, but don't lose the body fat surrounding it.
Muscle fibres are divided into two main types of slow-twitch muscle fibres and fast-twitch fibres. Fast twitch fibres are great for generating strength and power while the slow twitch muscle fibres play a big role in endurance exercise. Men tend to have a higher ratio of fast-twitch fibers relative to women. The greater percentage of slow-twitch fibres that have means women can handle more training volume and, thanks to oestrogen, don’t experience as much muscle breakdown when they do.
After age 30, you can begin to lose as much as 3% to 5% muscle mass per decade. Most men will lose about 30% of their muscle mass during their lifetimes. However older men can still increase muscle mass lost because of aging. is never too late to rebuild muscle and maintain it.
Testosterone, the male hormone responsible for muscle growth, reaches a plateau during the 20s and then begins to decline. As a result, muscle building after this age can be challenging.
Women over 50 go through menopause, which means reduced levels of oestrogen, a hormone that promotes muscle growth and so they lose quite a bit of lean muscle.
Because women don’t have the muscle growing hormone of testosterone, women can still build muscle over time, it just may take longer. It would be ideal for women to focus on using a weight that challenges the muscles, as this is how muscle can increase in size.
The best way to build muscle mass, no matter your age, is progressive resistance training (PRT). With PRT, you gradually amp up your workout volume.
After you have established a routine, the easiest way to progress is to add a second and then a third set of the exercises. Another way is to decrease the number of reps per set and increase the weight to the point where you are able to complete at least eight reps, but no more than 12. As you improve, you can increase weight, while still staying within the range of eight to 12 reps.