Hello Everybody! This Q+A was recorded previously - I'm sick and sounding like the cookie monster as far as acoustics go, so you're welcome basically. (adore you all thank you for your patience!!) 

Partial Transcript: This week, rather than doing a one set topic type episode, I thought that I would go through and answer some of the questions from previous Instagram Q and A's, versions of questions that I tend to see a lot, things like that. So let's get going. First question I have, I don't want to get bulky. I know, I know, but I'm dealing with some body image issues. How can I get stronger without putting on unwanted muscle? Okay. Let's imagine that you got your license at 16, right?

And you drove for like a year and you're driving and you have your license and that's great. And all of a sudden you're accidentally a NASCAR driver. That's sort of what you're thinking is going to happen. And I know that sounds a little condescending, but please let me explain. You as a natural born woman, you're not going to bulk up.

That's really unfortunately not how it works. So, or fortunately for you. So the good thing for you here is that strength is not based on muscle. It's neural. All that means is that big muscles don't Equate to being strong and small muscles don't equate to being weak. It sounds like you want to start lifting weights.

It sounds like you're just afraid that you'll accidentally put on too much mass. And I don't want to invalidate that because that's valid. Like you're allowed to look however you want. So it's not wrong to say that, but Luckily strength is a neural adaptation, so it's central nervous system based and it's going to come from adaptations that happen not due to your muscle size.

If you kind of want to know what I'm talking about, go look up the lightest weight classes, especially in like Chinese lifters. They start so, so young. That they kind of develop through the weightlifting system and a lot of them stay relatively light and they're really small. Like you would walk past them in a grocery store in the lightest weight classes, and you would never know that these people are some of like the strongest, most athletic people on the planet look that up and you'll kind of start to see that, yeah, these people are throwing hundreds and hundreds of pounds over their head, but they're like 120 pounds.

How is that possible? And it's possible because their goal and their sort of objective within their training is not to put on muscle. It's to get as strong as possible. And those are different. So if you need a more relatable example, when I was the strongest I've been in my life, I had less muscle mass than I do right now.

Now, I would say I probably squat close to 30 to 40 pounds less than I used to. And I have more muscle mass now. Then I did when I was training three or four hours a day because I was purely training for strength. That's what I was competing in. If you've seen me, I'm not exactly the Hulk now. And the biggest kicker of it all is I tried to be, I tried to get more muscular.

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