The Student Room Group

Calling all body builders (or just any1 with stretch marks!)

Ok, I've been doing weights since around.... september? In preparation for this summer:cool: .

I'm building up a nice figure, nice arms, good abs, etc....

The thing is, I've started to get little stretch marks from doing weights (on my shoulders and bicept/tricept area.... Now it's gotten bigger! :eek: !!

How do I prevent it in the first place? (is there a way?) and how do I minimise the ones I already have?!:frown: .

I wanted to show off my arms, thinking that hard work will pay off, but now I feel like hiding them to prevent people seeing my stretch marks:frown: :frown: :frown:
Reply 1
Never happened to me. Did it happen all very suddenly? A friend of mine who was extraordinarily low in body fat had a similar thing happen.

To 'minimise' the ones you already have there are little cosmetic things that supposedly help, such as 'bio-oil'.
Reply 2
There are a bunch of things you can do which will apparently help reduce the appearance of stretch marks. Using a loofah when you shower helps stimulate circulation. Massage cocoa butter into them. Use vitamin E oil (recommended for healing scars, so I'd guess this would work fairly well). Bio oil.

Diet wise you can eat foods high in vitamins A, E and C. Get more zinc in your diet, apparently good for skin. Eat foods containing silica (beets, brown rice, bell peppers, soybeans, leafy green vegetables and whole grains), which helps form collagen, the supporting fibers in the skin. Eat foods that contain essential fatty acids, which help make cell walls. Essential fatty acids can be found in many vegetables, vegetable oils and fish oils.
Reply 3
learn to live with it
Reply 4
Rosetinted has said everything on the preventative side - particularly the zinc!

As for getting rid of them, they will eventually fade and go white, but you can have laser or electro-pulse treatment on them while they are still red/pink so that they leave less of a mark after they fade. The electro-pulse is safer, but I had it done once and it was really painful, like being zapped with little bolts of lightning.

There are a lot of creams, one is called something like stri-vectine which claim to help, but they dont work in my experience.
I had lots once but they have since faded to white like scars, as pendragon said. Theyre invisibile unless you look REALLY hard, or stretch the skin around them.
cocoa butter did it for me. but they never fully go away. anyway, stretch marks are usually due to initial gains. you won't put on muscle anywhere near that quickly once you've been training for a while - trust me!
Reply 7
rosetinted
There are a bunch of things you can do which will apparently help reduce the appearance of stretch marks. Using a loofah when you shower helps stimulate circulation. Massage cocoa butter into them. Use vitamin E oil (recommended for healing scars, so I'd guess this would work fairly well). Bio oil.

Diet wise you can eat foods high in vitamins A, E and C. Get more zinc in your diet, apparently good for skin. Eat foods containing silica (beets, brown rice, bell peppers, soybeans, leafy green vegetables and whole grains), which helps form collagen, the supporting fibers in the skin. Eat foods that contain essential fatty acids, which help make cell walls. Essential fatty acids can be found in many vegetables, vegetable oils and fish oils.


I'd like to add aloe vera gel to the list as well