Weighty Issues

While I firmly believe that pretty much everybody can benefit from weight training, I also think that there are different kinds of training for different people.  Some people scoff at small weights; some fear bulking up.  Other people feel intimidated by the Olympic bar and free weights.  Still other people put their faith in weight lifting machines.

 

Here’s the deal on the machine/free weight thing:  for most exercises, using free weights is more challenging because we don’t have a machine restricting our movements.  We have to recruit more stabilizers.  Under some circumstances, though, machines are the way to go, such as when we are recovering from an injury and we need to be extra careful about our range of motion.  I personally wish I had a lat pulldown machine and I like a lot of the things that can be done with the cables, but I find that my dumbbells and barbells and kettlebells meet all my weight needs.

 

Now, on to the kinds of weight lifting for different people.  Weight lifting comes in three rough categories:  endurance, hypertrophy, and maximum strength.

 

Endurance is the place where everybody starts and it is a perfectly fine place to stay for our whole weight lifting career if it fits our goals.  People who are concerned about getting “too muscular” or who want to “look more toned” like the results of this kind of lifting.  For endurance lifting, we use smaller weights and we do sets of 15 to 20 reps.  As with all kinds of weight lifting, we want to choose weights that just barely let us finish the set.  When 20 reps at a particular weight get too easy, it’s time to increase the weight and do 15, building up gradually to the next level.

 

Hypertrophy is what my French teacher used to call a “five dollar word” with deep scorn.  The ten-cent version:  body building.  Once we’ve got used to lifting at an endurance level, we can do this.  In this kind of weight lifting, the goal is to go all Charles Atlas.  To do that, we lift heavier weights for fewer repetitions per set, aiming for 8 to 10 reps.

 

Maximum strength is exactly what it sounds like.  We try to lift the heaviest amount of weight possible.  That means that we warm up with a set of ten at a reasonable weight and increase the weight each set until we can complete only one beautiful rep.  It is actually important that the rep be beautiful so we don’t get hurt.  This is why this kind of lifting has to follow some learning in the endurance phase, where we can work out all our form issues.

 

The good news is that all the kinds of weight lifting, machine or free, make us stronger, help maintain our bone density, and increase our metabolisms.  Go play.