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is Body Pump enough?


danellaj

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Hi ladies, apologies if this has been asked before. I saw a lady at body pump today with a killer phisique, seriously this lady's body was smoking, strong and lean. Anyway do ya'll think body pump classes are enough to build muscle or not? I just find clases are so much easier to motivate myself but I dont find I get gains as quickly as when I was free weight training different body part for each day. 

I dont mind if it takes time, but I dont want to waste my time if im not going to build any muscle there and am just plodding along with all the pregnant ladies that seem to frequent body pump (no disrespect to the preggers ladies out there, hope to be one myself soon, but I hope I can work a little harder than you all with me having no tummy to carry and all)

Anyway thoughts?

 

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Gidday Danella. For some reason, this topic isn't showing up on our front page. Sorry about that - I'll get our web guys to look at it when they get back from holiday.

I'm not a lady, but IMO Body Pump is good for motivation and cardio. I'd want to hit the weights room as well, though, for the muscle building side of things.

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Some of those body pump ladies are lean from the cardio they do (from pump and possibly other activites) and a lot can be from the diet they keep. having low body fat shows up the muscle/shape underneath, but that muscle shape/size could be largely due to their own genetics for having a decent amount of muscle to begin with. For a beginner pump will probably build you some muscle mass for a short while, but I doubt there would be any long term muscle building as you would very quickly adapt to the high reps and low weight. I guess one of the reasons why some pump ladies might look musclier than your average cardio addict gym goer (or for example a long distance running adicts) is because pump could preserve some muscle mass by the fact it stimualtes your muscles while you lose body fat  from doing the class and from your diet - but pump n itself won't be building you a lot of muscle.

The other downside is that they don't focus on form at all. For example In the leg tracks there is not enough time for deep enough squat (and if you look around at this point you can see the variety of ridiculous squats going on - knees knocking together, awkward lower backs) - doing this repetetively is not going to make your body happy (lowerback, knees, hips). If you have any form of tightness or weakness in say your shoulder area (which a lot of peple do) those high reps of overhead press are going to quickly exasserbate that which is not a good way to prevent shoulder injuries. And the general format of the whole thing smells like overuse syndrome. Learning to lift correctly with lower reps and heavier weight is much more beneficial for long term adaption of muscle size and strength as well as preventing injuries and has more health benefits like healthier joints and bones. 

Yeah one or two people in a pump class might look really good but if you look around they are usually the exception and not the rule.... 

If you specificially want to build more muscle, especially being a female which makes all of this 10x harder, and you feel like freeweights works better for you anyway then you should trust your instincts as it probably (definitely) does. And there are a heap of ways to improve and progres on your weight lifting too. But theres nothing stoppping you from doing a pump class now and then if you're feeling low on motivation or for some cardio and calorie burning. But if you are lacking motivation you could always give a trainer a ring, or look up some workouts/exercises online for some variety/direction in your workouts. 

In my book pump, as psuedo says, should just be regarded as cardio as compared to weight lifting it is much less effective at building muscle. 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

You could always try and find someone else from your gym to train with.

One way of doing that is doing a training session with a PT and asking them if they could buddy you up with another client (or two) of thiers with similar goals. It might cost you a PT session or two but dem gains are priceless. 

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