Woes of Female Weightlifters and Clothes
This is an overdue post from forever ago.
As some background, I was on and off weight training through college. Come graduation, I had a more stable schedule (engineering major basically means you replace all liquid drinks with coffee and pray each exam that your professor didn’t pull something out of their ass for that one question weighted 75% of the total grade...) *ahem* Anyway....
Became edumicated, got my piece of paper in the mail and started adulting (suck it oxford comma). Which meant - hey, I can do weightlifting.
So that happened. I started weight training with some calisthenics (went from 0 to 3 STRICT PULL UPS), and I started putting the muscle on. Unfortunately, my diet wasn’t too great so I... got a bit bulkier.
Come about two months later, I’m in a department store trying on button down shirts and realizing, “Huh, my biceps are too big for this shirt but the rest of it is very loose.”
I did research on this, and didn’t find an incredible amount of evidence. Lots of female weightlifters talk about how they have issues with jeans due to leg growth, but upper body seemed less touched upon.
I some months later after that incident, and have some of the same issues. Some of the formal shirts I got are snug on the back and biceps, and literally nothing else. Sleeveless shirts work better, but sometimes the arm hole isn’t large enough for my back (Google is calling it the latissimus dorsi..... ) It’s slightly frustrating, but at the same time, I take it evidence as the growth I’ve made in strength.
I can do pull ups. I finally can bench over 100. I’m squatting weight equal to my body weight. While I am attempting to lower my body fat percentage, I am proud of the progress I’ve made, fitting clothes or not.
AND TO ANYONE WHO FOUND THIS ARTICLE: you are not alone. And you’re not going insane.
Until then, I’ll be sticking to my sleeveless blouses and knit cardigans for work. :)