228‒Improving body composition, female-specific training principles, & overcoming an eating disorder

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Baxter's path ran from sprinting to bodybuilding to recovery.

  Holly Baxter, a coach and competitive bodybuilder who grew up in a small Australian town, was a sprinter (100 m, long jump, triple jump) and only began lifting around grade 11. She later worked with a coach linked to 2000 Olympic 400 m champion Cathy Freeman, and built a career in nutrition and resistance training, eventually spending about half her work week coaching in person.

• 02

  Her eating disorder began early and lasted a decade.

  Baxter describes a childhood with a lot of hostility and confrontation, depression, two suicide attempts and hospitalization for much of grade 11. A brief period of anorexia became binge eating disorder and bulimia, a pattern that continued for about 10 years. She was fortunate to avoid esophageal erosion, though she never had blood work then to check electrolytes.

• 03

  Weekly therapy was the turning point.

  Since 2016 she has consistently attended therapy nearly every week, missing maybe 20 weeks in total for travel. Consistency made her accountable and got her talking about past trauma and family communication styles she had never examined. Part of recovery was accepting a body weight over 70 kg (peaking around 75 kg) after years of fearing it; she now sits around 63 kg.

• 04

  Contest-lean women are not healthy.

  At competition Baxter got to about 10–11% body fat. She lost her period for about five years, even after calories and body fat returned to normal, which she attributes to years of bingeing and purging. Among competitors she has coached, roughly half lose their cycles; Attia frames amenorrhea as the body signaling it isn't fit to reproduce.

• 05

  Building muscle is slow, even with excellent conditions.

  Natural athletes gain on the order of a pound or so of lean mass per month at best in a dedicated phase. Baxter's best year was 13 lb of fat-free mass in 12 months, including about 6 kg in one late stretch, with training volume up about 50% in the first 12 weeks, 2–2.5 hours a day, five days a week, and 10,000 steps instead of cardio. You won't 'accidentally' get bulky.

• 06

  Beginners need little volume to start.

  Baxter starts new clients with 30–40-minute sessions, three days a week, and perhaps one working set per exercise at RPE 6–7 (a set of 10 with 3–4 reps in reserve). Weekly volume starts around 10–15 sets per muscle group and can progress to roughly 30 in advanced lifters if they can execute.

• 07

  Compound lifts anchor the program, with lots of variation.

  Every program includes a squat or hinge variation (heels-elevated, Smith machine, box squats, deadlift variants), adjusted to anatomy, since long femurs change squat mechanics; Baxter's low-bar squat went up about 50% for that reason. Exercise choice adapts to the equipment available.

• 08

  Nutrition is about half the outcome.

  Protein targets for hypertrophy range from about 1.8 to 3 g per kg of lean body mass depending on preference. For a build phase, a 10–20% calorie surplus is enough; studies comparing 20%, 40% and 60% surpluses mostly show extra fat gain above about 20%.

• 09

  Cut slowly, then 'reverse diet'.

  For a 140-lb woman wanting to lose 10 lb of fat, Baxter aims for around 0.5–1% of body weight per week, about 0.7–1.4 lb. After a cut, she adds calories back in small weekly increments (about 100 kcal) so maintenance is restored gradually, holds weight for a while, then cuts again if needed.

• 10

  Female programming leans toward higher reps, with exceptions.

  Baxter defaults to the hypertrophy range (8–12 or 8–15) and some endurance work (15–20) for women, but says it's roughly a 50/50 split, and many women do well with heavy, low-rep work too. Her clientele has shifted to ages 35–65, where bone density and life constraints like raising kids reshape priorities.