"Long and Lean" myth

Personal physiology determines our limb length, and by extension, our muscle lengths, and is not something we can change. We can't create "long, lean muscles", but we can eat and train to get lean and muscular. The way we train does have a *certain* amount of influence on how we're built.

Usually a very "bulky" look (totally subjective anyway!) is the result of either 1. still having too much body fat covering up the muscles, which indicates nutrition for your goal needs to be addressed, or 2. the focused, purposeful building of a lot of muscle with a very specific size-focused strength training program (usually 5 to 6 days per week) over an extended length of time (years, not just weeks or months), along with nutrition specifically aimed at growth, and often "supplemental" help.

Men who I've trained are generally far less concerned about having "too much muscle" than the women, but most women would be well served in getting closer to their physique goals by training to be strong and build a little muscle than by trying to train to be skinny. I WISH it was as easy to build muscle as women who are afraid to lift weights think it is! 😂

Muscle doesn't sprout up overnight; if a body part does start to get bigger or more muscular than you'd like, simply back off on the volume of work for that body part, or change training methods for a while. But most of the time, the improved strength, workload capacity and ability to recover, better posture, sleep and appetite, along with having a little visible muscle, all become welcome changes and well worth the effort of doing a bit of strength training every week. Losing a little bit of body fat, and gaining a little bit of muscle will likely get you at least 90% of the way to your ideal, individual shape.