Those of us who would like to gain some strength will perhaps not be surprised to learn that, like all the other skills we’ve been talking about this month, habit and routine help.
When we’re first starting out, we might want to commit to one weight workout a week. We’ll see more progress when we increase to two non-consecutive days a week. Most of us don’t really need more than three weight workouts a week, but that will depend on our goals and on how we structure our workouts.
In general, we don’t want to work the same muscle groups two days in a row. The way strength training works is that we do damage to our muscles when we work them and they heal stronger. (That’s an oversimplification, but it gets the point across.) People who want to work out on consecutive days do things like alternate between upper body days and lower body days.
The specifics of our workouts will be dictated by our goals (remember: endurance, hypertrophy, max strength, power), but the mechanics will work similarly. We will do a number of reps of an exercise at a weight. We’ll increase the reps until we’ve hit the target for the kind of goal we have, then we’ll increase the weight, reducing the reps back to our starting number. In short, we’ll alternate increasing reps and weight.
A trainer can help plan and track all that data. You know how to find me!
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