Those unsightly little red marks or lines, that are seen in certain aspects of your body that have you scrambling to find solutions to get rid of it.
Those little suckers actually come with the territory of bodybuilding and weight training. Now, the thing is, you may say “Oh, I already knew that”. But, the thing you may not have known is that certain areas you thought you’ll never experience stretch marks because you’ve experienced stretch marks before, are going to be new playing grounds for them.
In this post I am going to talk about stretch marks, obviously and solutions to combating them when they are occur or even preventing them or at least in the drastic amounts that you would receive if you were unaware of them in the first place.
The reason why I am talking about stretch marks is because, I, personally did not think that I would be getting stretch marks in areas that are generally for men. I want to make you aware of it because it can be very unsightly and very damaging to your self-esteem. By you knowing now, you can prepare yourself for them and will it help you to develop a sense of pride in exchange for the lowered self-esteem or increased consciousness that comes with stretch marks.
First, I want to address what is stretch marks because sometimes we think we know what they are but we don’t know why they occur. Knowing why they occur, helps ease the mind on having them in the first place. This will also help you understand why it’s generally inevitable if you’re moving from a certain body weight to a higher one, in a short period of time during your bulking phase, that stretch marks develop.
Basically, stretching occurs on the skin when there’s a period of rapid growth. It’s easy to comprehend this in relation to weight training and bodybuilding, where that if an individual is growing muscles at a rapid speed, then the skin will not be able to adapt to or change in the same speed that the muscle growth is occurring. This then will cause stretch marks. These marks then could easily be found anywhere, where rapid muscle growth is occurring.
For men, it used to be the shoulder areas, chest, etc., that was a place for stretch marks. For women, it was the thigh area that was more prone to stretching and causing the unsightly stretch marks. But, as we’re women who are bodybuilders or weight trainers, then we fall into the category of the men’s stretch mark territory.
I have experienced stretch marks in areas I didn’t even know I could, specifically the chest, deltoids and biceps. They were my main areas of stretch marks. I did not even put two and two together, to realize that I wanted to bulk and get big, but it came with a price. Now, I wear these stretch marks with pride because it’s an expected part of bodybuilding. If you’re not gaining stretch marks, maybe you’re doing it wrong. Although this is a fallacy in some cases, it’s still fun to say 🙂
Although there isn’t any product out there to 100% prevent stretch marks, there are some that can reduce the amount of stretch marks that you develop. One is any cream or lotion that contains Vitamin E. It’s been suggested that a Vitamin E oil product, is even better for preventing stretch marks. Whether this is true or not, I haven’t come across any studies to say so but it’s always worth a shot.
Then there is the cocoa butter products, that help with the same prevention of some stretch marks from developing but in the long run, this is still something that has been tested but has not yielded significant results to say if it’s a positive that it does prevent it or not. I personally use cocoa butter products to prevent and reduce my stretch marks and they absolutely, do work.
Those two items also, yet again help with reduction of the appearance of stretch marks, just in case they do develop. It does take sometime for the reduction to occur, months or even years, but it does reduce significantly. They are always going to still be there, unless laser or surgical procedures are done.
But the main point of this article is to explain to you, that there is nothing wrong with them. Wear them with pride. Yes use the products to reduce them because some can be absolutely horrendous lol. But, it comes with the territory so please do expect to get some unless you’re doing a lean body mass bulk, which in essence is a very slow bulk that doesn’t really have the individual increase body fat percentage. Basically what you would get in say 3 years of bulking, you will get it in maybe 5. It all depends on what you want, how quickly you want it and if you’re ready for some of the consequences that comes with it 😉