October 24, 2024, 10:57 am | Read time: 3 minutes
Fitness has long since ceased to be an exclusively male domain. Many women now perform weight training. Nevertheless, one myth persists: breast training is supposed to make breasts smaller. Is this true? FITBOOK asked a CrossFit athlete and a sports scientist.
Many women prefer to train their legs and buttocks in order to get in shape in these areas. Breast training is often avoided because there is a fear that this could reduce the size of the breasts. Is this a myth – or is there something to it? FITBOOK asked the experts.
Overview
The important role of the chest muscles
First of all, sports scientist Jörn Giersberg explains the important role of the pectoral muscle. One of its functions is to pull the arms towards the body and rotate them. The chest muscles also help with breathing. As the counterpart to the back muscles, it is therefore important to train the chest so that no muscular imbalances occur.
Chest training is also aesthetically beneficial
Training the chest muscles also makes sense for aesthetic reasons. “The triceps are often one of the problem areas for women,” says Giersberg. “The advantage of chest training is that the triceps are often trained as auxiliary muscles and prevent the unwanted ‘bat wings.'”
Losing weight through chest training
We all know that if you want to lose weight, you should train as many muscle groups as possible. This burns a lot of energy and also increases your basal metabolic rate. Alongside the buttocks and legs, the chest is a very large muscle group.
Women who want to lose weight can, therefore, benefit from chest training. However, losing weight, specifically from the breasts, is often not the desired outcome. So let’s get straight to the point: what effect does breast training have on the breasts?
Does chest training reduce breast size?
“Even if you can’t specifically lose fat, stimulating a large muscle group stimulates the fat metabolism of the entire body and, therefore, also the breasts,” says Giersberg. Accordingly, increased training could actually make the breasts smaller. However, this is not due to localized fat burning from chest training but through the activation and stimulation of large muscle groups that increase the body’s calorie requirements.
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The female crossfit athlete’s perspective
Of course, a woman has to have her say on the subject. And not just any woman, but fitness economist and CrossFit athlete (and manager of her own CrossFit studio) Ann-Katrin Weber.
She also admits that a lot of chest training can make breasts smaller. “Strength training creates more muscle; fat and glandular tissue decrease,” says the expert. The body fat percentage decreases. This means that the “soft” part of the breasts decreases in favor of the increased muscle mass.
How much weight training is needed to reduce breasts?
However, this should not deter women from engaging in weight training. “As I said, such a development can be expected through intensive and very frequent training – i.e., from around three to five times a week accompanied by the right diet,” Weber reassures us. In this case, however, the effect is probably also intended.