The title of this article might lead some readers to think that this is a Playboy magazine type feature on watching trim and toned females go through their stretching exercises. Now as most guys will agree, observing a fit and toned lady in a gym is a thing of beauty to behold, but this article is really about what the guys all too often do wrong in the gym…and what the ladies usually do right.

Show the typical female how to do an exercise and after a bit of time on the learning curve, she’ll do it correctly…with proper form and technique because she is not overly concerned with how much weight she uses.

On the other hand, show the typical male – particularly a young one – how to do an exercise and he not only wants to skip any learning curve but technique all too often takes second place to seeing how much weight he can use – or at least showing all those around him how much weight he can move.

Now you guys reading this may say, so what? I don’t want to develop the muscles of a girl.

Well, then so what is that if you learn to do the exercises correctly, with proper form first, the strength and size will follow. But if you neglect proper form you’ll never develop either strength or size to your fullest potential.

And oh, yeah, girls generally don’t develop big muscles because, well, because they’re girls. It’s a matter of hormones. You know, primarily high estrogen and low testosterone…it’s what makes girls girls!

So, let’s get back to our scenario of female exercise technique versus male exercise technique. Show a beginning female how to do a bench press and she’ll (probably gingerly, which is not such a bad thing when you come to think of

it…after all, you’re lying on your back with an iron bar, maybe even one with iron plates on each side, over your head) pay attention to lowering the bar slowly and carefully, pausing ever so slightly, and pushing it back up slowly and carefully. No back arch, no butt raising from the bench in an imitation of the arc of triumph.

Now watch a typical guy bench press. They don’t want to be seen with anything less than a wheel on each side, so even though they may be a relative beginner with a max of 150 they load the bar up to 135 to start. What then ensues resembles more of a life and death struggle rather than an exercise. The bar descends freefall, bounces of the chest, the feet dig in, the butt comes off the bench, the back arches into a chiropractors nightmare, the bar goes up unevenly, often with the help of a spotter who is straining delts, traps and his own back to help haul the bar up, all the while yelling “all you, man!”.

The truth is that most people in the gym – and almost everyone outside of the gym – don’t really care all that much about how much you’re lifting. What they do tend to care about is what you look like. You think telling a young lady that you can bench press 300 pounds is going to make her heart go all aflutter? Well, in the first place, she doesn’t have any earthly idea of what a 300 pound bench press feels like. And besides, probably half the young guys she meets who workout tell her the same thing…probably even inflate the number more than you do. And, bottom line, she thinks (insert the actor/celebrity of your choice) is totally buff and dreamy and she doesn’t know or doesn’t care what he can bench press or leg press or any other kind of press.

We use the bench press as a prime example but the same is true of any number of exercises, particularly the squat – those little six or eight inch dips with the bar loaded with twice the weight that should be on there, the proof being evident when you take look at the thighs of the guys doing it that way, or the leg press –almost any guy type person loads the machine up with every 45 pound plate in sight and lower the weight four or five whole inches, all the trying to convince himself and everybody else that he’s a strong dude and that the babes in the gym are looking – which they are, but at the guy with the V-taper and totally buff abs doing wide grip chins.

Now, watch almost any female, even a soccer mom, do the same movements. Then cut the weight and mimic her style.

In just a few workouts you’ll have the technique down…then the poundage increases will start to come automatically…and so will the muscle.

Keep it up long enough, and that babe you’ve been dying to impress might forget about watching the buff guy doing chins and glance over your way.

Arley Vest