I’m starting a small coaching business out of my garage gym, and one of the markets I’m interested in working with is the trans community – folks who might feel unwelcome or unsafe in a large commercial gym environment, but who could really benefit from no-nonsense strength training.
Anyway, my friend (a PCP) mentioned that a colleague of hers, who sees a lot of trans* patients, said that transmen who are actively taking testosterone should do more high volume/low intensity work, because their muscles get stronger faster than their tendons.
This smells like BS to both of us, but I’m curious if there’s any research one way or the other out there.
I wouldn’t make any changes to their programming based on this alone.
Those concerns are pretty bro-sciencey, and are commonly heard in the world of anabolic steroid abuse (i.e., when people are taking huge doses of anabolics, far outside of any physiologic range). In that context, there may (or may not) be something to it - I’m not aware of strong evidence on the matter.
But for your clients, I’d program for them pretty much like you would anyone else.
To piggyback this question, would you have any specific considerations for a trans female (Male to female) who wished to start lifting. My girlfriend wants to start training to help develop her figure amongst other things and she is worried about becoming too masculine (she has pretty much refused to bench press for fear of pec development). My hunch would be to train as normal but avoid too much hypertrophy type training in the upper half and use some glue isolation type work such as hip thrusts. Any advice appreciated.