Lifting weights is a great way to build muscle, burn fat and develop, as well as maintain, bone density at any age. Training with weights will help you build strength and endurance while also helping to prevent injuries during competition. Personal trainers at most commercial gyms and fitness centers are happy to give free training tutorials. All that weight training will help you do is tone your muscles, melt your flab and get that figure you have always wanted. Here are some ways to start lifting weights.
How To Begin Lifting Weights
- Always warm up. Before you lift a weight, do at least five minutes of aerobic exercise to get your muscles warm and pliable. If you’re going to do arm exercises and there aren’t any upper-body aerobic machines around, you can even do a few minutes of arm circles.
- Create a workout plan based on the tips that the fitness specialist has provided. List which days you will work specific body parts while scheduling at least one day of rest in between each workout session.
- Perform 20 repetitions for two sets of each exercise you have selected with an intensity of 30 to 50 percent of your one rep maximum. This will ensure that you are not causing more damage to the muscle. Again, this is set, rep and intensity are designed to facilitate blood flow to the muscle.
- Embrace the weight room: if you’re a gym-goer, feeling intimidated by the hard-bodied experts in the weight room is enough to cut a workout short. If working out in the weight room embarrasses you, there are some tricks you can employ to ensure that you don’t shy away from it: bring a friend or tune out all the action with your favorite workout songs.
- A cycle is a period of time, usually measured in weeks or months, during which you perform the same set of exercises with the goal of increasing your strength in those exercises. The average cycle lasts about 8-12 weeks.
- Weight Training for Busy People: If you are extremely busy and travel a lot, you may not have the time to visit a gym and in all likelihood. So, exercises such as pushups, squats, chair dips, sit ups, crunches and leg raises all work exactly the same way as lifting weights. Consult a fitness trainer to chalk out a 10-15 minute circuit for yourself, which you can even do in a cramped hotel room.
- Pay attention: Remind yourself which muscle you’re working, and focus on that muscle. It’s easy to do lat pull-downs without challenging your lats. And it’s easy to do abdominal crunches without really working your abs.
Hopefully, these rules will help most of you who are interested in lifting. If you commit yourself to these ways to start lifting weights, you should be able to transform your body in a matter of months. The experienced folk, tell us, how has lifting weights changed your body?