In the simplest terms possible, please tell me how to start a weightlifting program. I need to know how much weight to lift and how many repititions are necessary. Give me a formula, like x% of how much I can lift once, or something. Anything. Please. I don’t see any benefit to walking into the weight room and lifting weights at random and expecting results.
For the record, I’m interested in toning and weight loss. I’m not at all interested in huge muscles or anything like that.
Your best bet would be to sign up for at least one personal training session. The trainer will help you determine the correct amounts of weight to lift, and make sure you are maintaining the correct form.
Oops, forgot to add:
A PT session can be expensive, like around ~$75, but it’s well worth it if you have no experience with weights. But you should only need one or two to learn your way around.
One guiding principal, if you actually want to build muscle: High intensity, low repetition. On one set, you should do no more than 11 or 12 reps, and your last rep should be as absolute killer, that is it should take every last bit of strength you have. If not, you should increase the weight. You should wait a couple of minutes between sets.
You should wait 48 hours between working out one specific muscle group. It is in that 48 hour recovery time that new muscle is developing. Some guys work out, say, the triceps one day, and the biceps, the next day. As a beginner, you should only work out every other day so you don’t risk inadvertently working out the same muscle group every day. (It is my understanding that the abs can be worked on every day).
You should follow a semi-strict diet, but I won’t go into that since it’s information easily obtained with a Google search.
The goal in weightlifting is to stress your muscles so that they get stronger to handle the stress. The key is to stress your muscles just a bit. This will encourage the muscle to get bigger without causing an injury.
Bring a notepad the next time you workout.
Start out using the machines. They might have several different manufacturers. If they do, stick to one manufacturer at the start.
The machines are the easiest to use and encourage you to be in the proper position. Read the seat adjustment instructions printed on the machine to get yourself in the proper position. Write down what the machine name is and what adjustment settings you made.
Most machines will have a weight stack in which you can use a pin to select your weight. Put the pin in the easiest weight to start with.
What you want to do is find a weight that you can do 8 times but not more than 12. Lift the weight you have selected with a slow, smooth motion. If it is really easy to get to 12, increase the weight by one increment and try again. Eventually you’ll get to a weight that is difficult to lift 12 times. Rest for 30-60 seconds and lift the weight the same number of times. Write down that weight.
So for example, say you’re doing the chest press. You start out at 20 pounds but that’s too easy. You increment the weight to 30. That’s a bit harder, but you can still easily lift it 12 times. You increment the weight to 40. Now you can only lift it 10 times. Rest, then lift it again 10 times. That would be two sets of 10 reps.
You’ll want to go through the major muscles. You’ll want to work your biceps, triceps, chest, back, abs, lower back, hamstrings, and quadriceps. Find machines which work these muscles. Repeat the above procedure to find your starting weight.
The next time you go, do two sets of the same weight, but increase the number of reps by one. So if you did 10 chest presses, do 11 next time. If you did 12 reps last time, increase the weight by one increment and do 8 reps. Like if the last time was 12 reps at 40 pounds, do 8 reps at 45 pounds this time.
Just keep repeating this process where you do 8-12 reps at a given weight. When you get to 12 reps, bump up the weight and start back at 8 reps.
The more sets you do the better the results. Two sets is about the minimum. You can do three or four sets if you feel up to it.
Be sure to give yourself one day between workouts. You must allow your muscles time to rebuild.
When starting out, don’t try to lift too much weight. Do a little less weight than you think you could handle. Then in the successive workouts, increment the number of reps by 2 instead of 1 if it’s too easy. If you lift too much at the start, you’ll get sore muscles which will prevent you from being able to go back the next time.
If you have questions about a specific machine, the gym staff will help you without getting into a personal training session.
I agree with the replies above. Personlly, I think the ‘resting’ rule is the most important.
Lift every other day. It is not the lifting of weights that builds your muscles but the recovery those muscles make in the next 48 hours that build them. That is why your last lift or two in a set needs to be difficult - the strain in the muscle forces the muscles to repair, which then builds it bigger next time.
But of course - don’t over do it. Overstraining can damage.
I will second the PT advice. Worth every penny.
I’d also strongly recommend you learn the ettiquette of a gym. In particular, do NOT sit on the machine while you rest. I have no idea when this became acceptable (my gym has signs warning against it, but everyone, and I mean EVERYone ignores this), and it drives me nuts. As someone else mentioned in this thread, you want short bursts of heavy (NOT injurious) reps. I could easily sneak in a set while some dipshit is camped out on the machine.
My PT showed me how to alternate between two machines that work opposing muscle groups. One muscle group gets a rest while the other is being worked. Most people jump on a machine and hog it, sitting on the machine for two to three minutes between sets. This takes longer for everyone involved.
Wipe the machine down after every use. They’ll have bottles of something (bleach water, usually) and towels available for this.
Don’t be afraid to ask regulars for help and/or advice. Most people have a “serious” face at my gym, but one thing I notice is that they’re willing to help any time.
Ack, I forgot to mention something else: stick with it. It’s very possible you’ll feel like complete shit for the first six weeks. Your muscles will hurt, in places you didn’t know could hurt. You’ll be exhausted. You’ll want to sit down at a buffet table instead of a regular table.
But once your body adjusts, you can look forward to: looking DAMNED good; sleeping as if you were on a sedative, but waking up more refreshed than ever; not worrying about “dieting,” just eating good food; being healthy.
I worried about being too big. Yeah, my muscles got bigger, and relatively fast, but I also lost a lot of body fat, so it evened out.
Have something else to do on the off days. I like to swim for 30 minutes.
What you really want is two separate things, HeyHomie. I have opinions, though they may not be shared.
[ol]
[li]You don’t lose weight by working out. [/li][li]Toning is useless until you’ve lost the fat.[/li][/ol]
Now…for #1, I’m being very specific. Working out will absolutely help you lose weight, but only if you’re willing to exert willpower on the nutritional aspects. If you’re willing to cut the calories and eat properly, the weight training will accelerate the process, and leave the end product looking better than if you hadn’t worked out.
For #2, you’re putting the cart before the horse. You need to lose fat and gain muscle before you decide to add definition and “tone”.
Don’t forget to add a good amount of cardio into your workout. To be honest, if I was starting again, I’d shift to more like a 65/35 percentage of cardio/weights, eventually getting to 50/50, or maybe 40/60, depending on your goals.
I second the machines-suggestion. It will help with your form, and offer a safety mechanism (e.g. no huge plates and bar falling on your neck!).
In both gyms I’ve joined, I received an orientation visit with a trainer. If you’re just now joining, ask for one! If you’ve been around a while and just not utilized your membership, ask anyway! A good trainer would be happy to offer a quick orientation in the hopes of getting you to pay for individual sessions later.
My $0.02,
-Cem
Thanks for all the replies.
For clarity’s sake, I’ve been watching my calorie intake and doing cardiovascular workouts. My doctor says it’s time to begin weight training, but he didn’t give me any advice on how to go about it.
You need to educate yourself about weight lifting. A good online resource is stumptous.com. Run by a gal but chock-full o’good info for anyone. One of the best books on the subject is Getting Stronger bu Bill Pearl. PUblished a few years ago (so it’s usually easy to find at the used book store), it’s a great, plainly written, incredibly comprehensive guide to lifting.
For a beginner, I’d aim for lifting two to three times a week doing a full body workout with a full day rest in between each session. Here’s an example workout. Notice you don’t need to do a ton of sets or repetitions intially and you don’t need to spend hours in the gym. You want to hit the bigger muscles for a while and get in a good routine of working out regularly.
As far as what weights to lift with, that’s highly variable even among people of similar ages and builds. Familiarize yourself with the exercises you want to do and then go to the gym and try out weights. If you can’t do 12 reps, the weight is too heavy. If you don’t feel like you’re doing anything, the weight is too light. If you can, the first time you go to the gym, try to pick an off-peak hour. You’ll feel more relaxed figuring out the machines without someone breathing down your neck.
A really great thing to do is to take a notebook and write down the exercise you’ve done and the number of reps and weight for each set. It’s a great way to track your progress and also to remind yourself what your routine is. You’ll be able to see “hey, I could only do 12 reps of 70 pounds on the lat pull down last week but this week I can do 15!”. When I first started lifting, I felt stupid writing things down. Then I realized all the real lifters always write stuff down.
After you’ve lifted consistently for a good two months (three would be even better), then you can start worry about picky alternating push-pull or upper-lower body routines.
I completely agree with this.
And I find it funny that all the “AB” machines that they sell on TV would have you believe that doing 1000 crunches a day is going to give you a 6-pack. Sorry, you could have abs of steel by doing that, but until you lose the fat covering them your never gonna see them.
The best way to get in shape is fortunately the easiest. However, no one wants to do it because it’s hard. A mix of any cardio activity that raises your heartrate, basic weight training, and a low fat / moderate carb diet will win out over any “secret diet plan” book of the month or “excercise piece of equipment” of the month.
I don’t see any benefit to walking into the weight room and lifting weights at random and expecting results.
Too true. Here is a way of looking at it that I have found useful. If you needed dental work, you wouldn’t go to a self-serve dental office and start tinkering around with the equipment, would you? If you needed surgery on your foot, you wouldn’t go to a self-serve hospital and rent a surgical suite and start to work.
So you need to do some work on your body. Get the help/advice of a professional first, or spend a good amount of time educating yourself with some of the excellent books available. Even if you don’t injure yourself, there is a very good chance that you will get minimal results and get turned off to the whole deal. It really pays to be educated about what you are doing in the gym.
I’ve never heard of a doctor recommending weight training without a specific purpose, so I suspect that there is more here than what you have said. Whatever it is, be sure to tell your trainer exactly why you want to train with weights so he/she can make informed choices for you.
Read this.
2 tidbits of advice on why not to overdo it -
When you stimulate muscle growth, you are stimulating production of human growth hormone. It has the positive effect of bulking up your muscles and promoting fat metabolism. However, it has the negative effect of making you want to sleep until noon. You need to keep at it every day, so don’t work yourself into a coma.
If you hurt yourself, you can’t work out anymore, maybe for a really long time. Be balanced, prudent, and safe. The pecs are very macho, the rotator cuff not so much. But if you bulk the chest while leaving your rotators as weak as a little girl, you are constructing a body designed to tear itself apart.
Don’t neglect your abs and what is now faddishly referred to as the “core”. This holds the whole game together, if you neglect it you are risking back injury.
Finally, I like this site . In terms of presentation and organization it is somewhat spare, but it is chock full of solid advice and references to scholarly papers on exercise.
If I may be permitted a little hijack…
I notice everyone on this thread saying not to weight train every day. I recently purchased a Bowflex and structured a workout program, which I’ve been doing sigh every day.
Would it be appropriate to change the Bowflex to every other day and do aerobic exercize such as a treadmill on the alternate days?
That’s probably for the best. Lifting every day is counterproductive unless you’ve worked your way up to a high recovery capacity and you know what you’re doing.
Don’t beat yourself up too badly. I personally think that the universal 48 hour rest period does not necessarily apply in all situations. I think it is mainly valid for those who push their muscles to near failure every time and for older people with declining recovery time. The golden rule is listen to your body. Be sure to take breaks now and then, and change up your routine, and you should be fine. However, you do need cardio, so if you’re neglecting that, then you do need to make room for it somewhere.
Another way is to work different muscle groups on different days so each muscle only gets worked every few days.
This is better, but you still need time for your central nervous system to recover.