Boobs

Monday’s are devoted to female related topics to help females begin or continue to train. This particular post is borderline irrelevant.

It’s not that I’m above posting about boobs (I’m not), it’s just that I routinely get questions about them. I have a stinking suspicion that the questions are from male readers disguised as women, but, alas, I am a man of the people! The most common questions I get are:
How much do you love boobs?
What if my boobs are too big for cleaning and snatching (the Olympic lifts; stay focused)?
What should a big-boobed woman do about her big boobs when she benches?

Well, my good readers, to answer these questions we will need a lesson in anatomy. Boobs, uncommonly referred to as “breasts”, are a collection of adipose tissue that lay over the pectorals. They are held to the clavicle and pectoral fascia via suspensory ligaments that extend through the mass of the boob to help maintain structural integrity. I find suspensory ligaments interesting. Normal ligaments hold bones together to form joints; their strength is dependent on their cross-sectional area, and they respond to loading by becoming stronger and stiffer. A regular ligament’s strength decreases due to immobilization and lack of stress. This is why un-fit, sedentary, and old people will injure themselves easily (especially when attempting activity that they are not adapted to). Suspensory ligaments are a very different in that one end is anchored on a bone, and the other end attaches to organ tissues, namely boobs, penises, ovaries, eyes, intestines, and so on.

Click to enlarge

Suspensory ligaments of the boob are probably under stress when the boob is subjected to gravity. The modern woman often wears a bra, and this probably relieves the suspensory ligaments of tension and may help prevent the “sagging” appearance of boobs (that is, until “old age” has its effect). We can probably observe middle aged women from primitive or tribal cultures and see a distinction between their level of “boob sag”, yet I don’t think this hypothesis has been scientifically tested. I would also hypothesize that a woman who routinely exercises would maintain the integrity of their suspensory ligaments in a way that keeps them “stronger and stiffer” like their bony ligament cousins; consistent exercise probably staves off the “saggy boob effect” to some extent because of applying stress to the tissues (other than gravity).

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