No workout program would be complete without strength training. Although you need to do aerobics to keep your heart and lungs in good working order, you need to do resistance training to maintain your muscular strength and endurance, boost your metabolism and strengthen your bones. What's best about strength training is that it's easy and convenient — you'll find weights in every gym, or you can buy free weights to use at home.
Starting Out
If you've never lifted weights, make an appointment with a personal trainer. You need to learn proper form to prevent injury and to ensure that you're getting the most benefit out of the exercise. A trainer can also help you determine how much and how often to lift.
In general, if you can't maintain good form for at least eight repetitions while lifting a weight, it's too heavy; if you can perform more than 12, it's too light. Schedule two to three strength training sessions a week, allowing a rest day in between sessions to give your muscles time to repair and recover; if you want to lift weights every day, work out your upper body (arms, shoulders and upper back) one day and your lower body (calves, gluteus muscles, hamstrings, quadriceps) the next.
Target areas:
Weight training increases your muscular strength and endurance and muscle mass. Because muscle burns more calories than fat, regular sessions in the weight room can boost your metabolism. And because muscle takes up less space than fat, you'll look trimmer even if your weight stays the same. Other pluses: Lifting weights can lift your spirits. A recent study found that strength training improved mood in people suffering from depression. It also seemed to help them sleep better.
Other studies show that people tend to become more physically active once they start weight training, perhaps because their increased strength makes other activities easier to do and more enjoyable.
Pre-Activity Shape-Up
When you can't get to the weight room, try resistance bands, isometric exercises (such as tightening and relaxing your buttock muscles) and floor exercises (such as push-ups and leg lifts) to help keep your muscles in shape. To complement your strength-training regimen, add a stretching program. It's also important to do some sort of aerobic activity to keep fat off and maintain cardiovascular health.
The Warm-Up and Cool-Down
Before you strength-train, do five minutes of any activity that uses the muscles you'll be exercising, such as riding a stationary bike to warm up your legs or rowing for an all-body workout. Another alternative is to do a few repetitions with light weights of the exercises you've planned for later. Five to 10 minutes should be enough to increase the temperature of your muscles, making them more flexible and less susceptible to injury.
If your heart rate goes above 100 beats per minute after you work out with weights and you plan to do some floor exercises, such as sit-ups and leg lifts, you need a cool-down to keep from getting dizzy or faint. Walk around or pedal slowly on a stationary bike until your heart rate slows down. Otherwise, you don't need a cool-down; just go ahead and stretch your muscles.
Stretching is particularly important to maintain your flexibility. Be sure to stretch any muscles you'll be exercising after you warm up to prevent injury and again after you finish to boost flexibility and diminish soreness.
The Right Stuff
Having some basic gear and clothing will make all the difference in your enjoyment of a sport, not to mention your performance. Here's what you'll need:
Weights: Your gym will have weight machines and free weights. You can also purchase free weights for home use. Weight machines are probably better for beginners because they guide your movements and are safer; it's easier to make mistakes with free weights, says Liz Neporent, M.A., an exercise physiologist in New York City and coauthor of Weight Training for Dummies.
Clothing: Wear a shirt that's fitted; an oversized T-shirt can get in your way (or worse, get caught in a machine). Also, consider wearing bike shorts or leggings instead of loose shorts when you're working on machines that could put you in revealing positions.
Gloves: Mainly used for lifting heavy weights, weight-lifting gloves have padded palms that can prevent calluses and help you maintain your grip when your hands get sweaty.
Weight belts: These thick waist belts are meant to support your lower back when lifting, although the jury is still out on whether these belts actually help performance.
Pro Talk Mini-Glossary
Want to talk like a pro? The PHYS mini-glossary has the terms you'll need:
Free weights: Metal weights that aren't attached to pulleys or chains, such as dumbbells (one-piece weights) and barbells (poles with removable disks on each end).
Lactic acid: The source of the "burn" you feel after a tough strength-training or weight-lifting session. Your muscles produce lactic acid if they don't have enough oxygen to completely convert sugar to energy. To relieve the burn, move around or participate in some low-intensity, rhythmic activity afterward, such as swimming.
Rep: A single repetition of an exercise. For example, one bicep curl is one rep. You should perform each rep slowly and steadily, pausing between lifting and lowering the weight and taking about six seconds total for each rep. Don't cheat by going fast — you won't reap as much benefit and are more likely to injure yourself.
Resistance training: Any form of exercise that involves working your muscles against some external force or resistance. Strength training, or weight lifting, is one kind of resistance training, using weights as the resistance. Push-ups and exercises with resistance bands are other forms of resistance training. All types of resistance training tone and strengthen muscles.
Set: A series of reps — usually eight to 12 — make up one set. You should usually perform one to three sets of each exercise, with a 30- to 90-second pause in between.
Working in: Rotating on a machine with another gym-goer. While one of you rests between sets, the other one uses the equipment; then you swap places. Or you can use two different machines and switch stations between sets.
Working to failure: Lifting a weight until you can't lift it any more. That's the sign that you're exercising enough to see an improvement in strength. If you aren't working to failure, you may not be getting the maximum benefit from your strength training so you may want to do more repetitions or increase the weight.
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