Strength Training 101

Yesterday I wrote about starting with cardio.  Once we have a cardio base and an exercise habit in place, it’s time to get into our weight training.

 

Weight training is where the real changes start to happen in our bodies.  We shift our body composition away from fat and toward lean body mass.  We get stronger (of course!) and look better.  We burn a lot more calories, both while we work out and in our daily lives.  On a mental level, we also find that we feel empowered.

 

Just like with cardio, we want to start small with our weight training goals.  One weekly session that we commit to is better than two or three that we flake on.  Most of us end up with two or three sessions per week, but how many and how long depend on what our goals are.

 

While we are building the habit of lifting weights, we also want to build up our endurance.  That means we use pretty light weights and do lots of reps, about 12 to 20.  We want to make sure we do exercises for our upper body, our lower body, and our core.

 

Once our habit is built, we can, of course, continue with an endurance program, increasing the weights we lift as we get stronger.  However, we may want to work on other goals.  If we want to build big muscles, we shift our workouts to lifting heavier weights and sets of about 8 to 10 reps, making sure that the weight is heavy enough that it is hard to complete that last rep.  The fancy word for making big muscles is hypertrophy.

 

Others of us may want to lift the most weight.  In this kind of workout, after our warm-up, we lift progressively heavier weights in sets of about 5 reps until we get to the point where we can only do a single rep.  This is called the one-rep max.

 

Still not sure what to do or where to start?  Ask me!