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Rachel came to R5 with one simple goal. More shape in the lower body.
Like most girls, she had some insecurities and they revolved mainly around her bum and legs.
Classes at the gym, YouTube videos and home workout programs were just a few of the methods she tried in order to increase the size and shape of her glutes, quads and hamstrings.
But they all fell short of one vital ingredient - weight, and lots of it.
You see it doesn’t matter how many different variations of exercises you try, how many reps you can do in one workout, or even how sore you can make a body part.
One thing muscles need to grow is heavy weights.
I tend to find a lot women (and occasionally some men) have two main barriers when it comes to lifting heavy weights.
1 - They believe lifting too heavy, will result in a nasty shock 4 weeks later as they walk past a mirror and are suddenly confronted by a 95kg female bodybuilder (I wish it was that easy!)
2 - Lifting heavy weights seems complex and have no idea what’s right and wrong.
Fortunately for me Rach certainly wasn’t afraid to get stuck in. Which ruled out No1.
But years of suspect technique had left her with a couple of less than healthy knees. So Rach’s program started by addressing No2, how to lift with perfect technique and activate (work/turn on) the intended muscles.
It was at this point I began to see Rach really flourish in her lifts. We built strength through all her main compounds in a variety of rep ranges.
Which gave her a brilliant foundation of strength that carried over into her accessory exercises when working more specific area’s within a muscle.
Rach’s body type is naturally ectomorph, which from a body composition point of view, means she is naturally very slim.
This has its pro’s and cons.
She will struggle to put on weight - less body fat, wooo! But she will also struggle to hold large amounts of muscle mass, booo!
Increasing Rach’s ability to not only hold muscle mass but build upon what she has, will come down to not only lifting heavy weights, but her food consumption.
With the ectomorphs body type generally struggling to gain large amounts of body fat, we were able to push her calories very high very quickly.
It’s was still done gradually over several weeks to minimise any drastic changes in fat gain, which can often start alarm bells ringing in a clients head.
But eventually we peaked at around 2600 calories per day.
Rach trained here at our personal training studio in Sheffield for approximately a year. It’s not uncommon for muscle growth transformations like this to take longer due to genetic dispositions.
Due to Covid and the studio being out of action, we took a few months off within that year. During other months we supplemented with some Virtual PT sessions, in which there were limited resources, fundamentally weight.
Given the circumstances and limitations we faced, I think it makes what Rach has achieved all the more impressive.
A massive well done for all the hard work you’ve put in. A fantastic client who never failed to make me laugh. Cant wait to have you back.
If you have any further questions about this transformation I’d be more than happy to answer them.
All the best,
Ryan
