My girlfriend wants to bulk down.

[wannabestud]

My girlfriend has biceps around 14" and she works out to stay in shape. She wants to lose muscle and become 10" or 11". I have never found any website that shows how to bulk down or what to do. Can someone tell me what she needs to do; diet, workout, etc, and how long it will take? Thanks.

[goblin6]

Prettymuch stop lifting and just do cardio. thats what leaps out at me.

[wannabestud]

Do you know how long it will take?

[Hibiscus09]

How heavy is she lifting? I think her arms would come down if she went to lighter weights & more reps. This at least would keep them toned as opposed to stopping altogether. Also, cardio before breakfast would probably bring her muscle size down. That's a pretty big drop in inches -- but she should see her arms decrease over time doing this.

[wannabestud]

She does 30 pounds, 20 times per set. And she has done 40 before. She was wondering if she just stopped all together and went to cardio/aerobics, would she decrease her size? Or if she needed to have a certain diet, etc. to help get reduce the muscle faster.

[Machine]

...help reduce muscle faster? This goes against everything ever learned here. Lets think of all the things that help muscle grow and reverse them:
-Drink a lot (alcohol)
-Don't sleep much
-Avoid protein like a plague
-Don't drink water
-Lift light
-Do long cardio sessions before and after weight-lifting...

yeah that ought to do it

[Hibiscus09]

30lbs, 20 reps is a lot of weight for a woman to be doing bicep curls with -- well, at least a woman who wants her arm size to decrease. I do 4 sets starting at 12lbs, then 15, 20, 25. My biceps are 10 1/2 inches -- I wouldn't mind getting a little stronger. I don't mean this to sound insulting but are her biceps out of proportion with the rest of her? I'm 5'4, 125 lbs & mine kind of go with the rest of me. If she's not overweight then her best bet would be the lighter rep more weights thing. Not lifting altogether is probably not a good idea long term.

[freaker]

Former Ms. Olympia Kim Chizevski lost well over 30 pounds of muscle in a year to compete in fitness. Supposedly she did a lot of cardio and had some kind of special diet.

[wannabestud]

She's pretty built. Her upper body isn't in proportion with her lower body, so she's wanting to get that way. She's 5'3" and weighs 135. She wants the muscle to go away all together, and then when she gets the way she wants, she wants to start cutting. Do you still suggest a lightweight workout? Should she limit her calorie and protein intake?

[Hibiscus09]

I do think she should do light weights, high reps (15-20). She'd probably do fine with about 80 grams of protein in her diet. I take in a gram for each pound I weigh but I'm trying to hold onto what muscle I have. If she wants to lose weight or bodyfat then she'll need to adjust her calorie intake. Here's a good site she can go to to determine her caloric needs:

http://www.hussman.org/fitness/bmrcalc.htm

She needs to know her bodyfat to use the BMR calculator.

By the way, does your girlfriend jog? I jogged to train for a 10K about a year and a half ago. I worked my way up to 6 to 8 mile runs & lost a lot of the muscle on my upper body.

[wannabestud]

I'll tell her.

[TrishB]

I agree with Hibiscus. She will be very disappointed if she just cuts out weights altogether. She will quickly just end up with large flabby arms. Something us girls hate with a passion!

So have her keep up the weights....definitely go alot lower though, and up the reps.

[wannabestud]

Basically she'll be cutting and losing muscle?

[MagicMel]

She wants her arm size to go from 14" to 10" or 11"?
What was her arms size when she started lifting?

When I was in my very early 20's, I'm 47 now, I started "body building". I join Jack LaLanne's gym. The first thing they did was measure. I had 12 1/2 arms and weighed 126lbs. After a year and half of working out, I built my arm size to 15 1/4". Then I stopped training completely, zippo zilch zero nada! New girlfriend, new hobbies, new interests in general. I lost a lot of mass, but I made sure I stopped eating like a body builder. I did not "turn muscle into fat", I stayed healthy looking. But my arm size never got below 13 1/2".

The point is even though I stopped training, I never got back to my starting size.

If she continues training even with light weights and high reps, she will probably just be preserving what she has as far as muscle mass. If she adds more cardio she will cut down fat and some muscle, but I doubt she can get down to 10" or 11". That's just a lot of size to lose.

Just my opinion.

[wannabestud]

Her size was 14". And still is. I guess what's done is done. She's 5'3" and weighs 135. She says that she just noticed that she was like a brick outhouse. I think she looks good like she is, but if she becomes the size of a pro female body builder, that's not going to work for me. Even though you lost 2 inches, she might, or might lose more. Who knows?

[MagicMel]

Taking that 14" starting size into consideration, I would just take the advice of Hibiscus. Change diet/calorie intake. Check BF% and goto the link that was in her reply. I would also recommend
HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). It's great for burning fat, and she probably will lose SOME muscle mass, too.

Good Luck.

[Hibiscus09]

Good idea, MagicMel. I do that 3 times a week in the mornings before breakfast -- kicks my behind!

[wannabestud]

I'll tell her. She made the comment about annorexia and I told her I would leave her if she became annorexic. Hope it scared her out of it. That's a dumb thing to do. Anywho, thanks, and I'll make sure to tell her. Dialing the number right now

[Hibiscus09]

Your welcome! Hope everything goes well.

[wannabestud]

She's going to try it.

[Hibiscus09]

Hey, make sure she knows that when I say lighter weights, more reps, I mean not more than 15lb dumbbells while she's bringing those babies down! It feels kind of silly to do it at first but do it anyway.

[wannabestud]

Alright. Me-I'm bulking up. Fast metabolism doesn't help either

[newlifter87]

lol im sad now... my 12 inch newbie biceps are smaller than a girl who is trying to lose muscle.....

[wannabestud]

LMAO!

[pammii]

when i was competing and heavily into training my arms got up to 19'' (i was 8%bf @ 5'11 when i reached 19''), then i found out i had a degenerative spinal disease and had to stop everything, so i decided i wanted to bulk down cause i didnt want huge flabby arms like trishb said. plus i had no reason to be that big anymore, so i went rather extreme to lose the muscle quickly...

i basically did everything youre not supposed to, ate less than 1000 cals a day, even lower than 500 some days. i barely slept, lived on diet pepsi (caffiene), diet jelly and eca stacks and used lower weights on my arms until failure and did that a couple of times a day. it was bad, i did get really run down and sick, but i did get my arms and legs down in size. my arms are now a nice filled out 14''.

machines post made me laugh cause its almost what i did, i wouldnt recommend it at all, its just what i did to lose size extremely quickly.

sounds like she's going about it the CORRECT way lol might take her a while to get them down and she may get frustrated but she wont get sick from it

good luck to her,
cheers
pamela

[Hibiscus09]

I curl up to 25lb dumbbells & ya'll have made me absolutely paranoid. My skinny arms are 10 1/2 inches not flexed & 12 1/2" flexed. I guess I look like Olive Oyle.

[pammii]

lol i wouldnt mind having 10 1/2-12 1/2'' arms, then i could atleast fit into fitted shirts properly off the rack

how long have you been lifting hibiscus?

[Hibiscus09]

About 7 years! You should have seen them when I started! Lol I was so skinny & had such a small frame -- shoulders, arms -- everything but the butt! Anyway, when I look back at old pix, I'm glad for the arms I have!

[pammii]

lol im so envious, im huge, always have been even when i was underweight. i used to be a competitive swimmer before i got into bb, so ive got the typical frame, tall, wide shoulders and chest. i guess i was blessed with strength and genetics.

the way i got so big and ripped was lifting as much as my guy training partners would and bulking big time. i felt like a freak, but it got the results i needed at the time lol.

now im 18% bf, and have a pot belly and big bum. *sigh* its all about cutting cutting and more cutting now, thanks to my sebatical from clean living

what weights do you use for your arms and whats your goal in inches?

[Hibiscus09]

Pammi, I'm doing a Body For Life thread in the female bodybuilding section under Journals if you'd like to check it out. My before pix is at the bottom of page 1 of the journal. My workouts are listed there also. I've been doing his (Bill Phillips who wrote BFL) recommended workouts which are upper/lower body but am more accustomed to doing 2 body parts per workout. I'm about to go back to that with upperbody.