Overview
As discussed in my previous post, I think anyone wishing to get in better shape should lift weights. Of course there are exceptions for those with bone and joint issues, but I'm talking about otherwise healthy people.
Resistance training is great, but people will have their individual goals in mind when doing it, and that means training differently. Some train for muscular endurance for athletic performance (think rowers and swimmers); some only want to get strong; some just want to get huge; but most just want to look better without going into any extremes- so that's what I'll talk about in this post.
Aside from goals, how you train depends on your experience and personal preference. There is no one right way to do it. For the inexperienced, it's best to find a friend or a personal trainer to show you the ropes before trying anything on your own. Once you are familiar with the gym and most of the exercises, you can either follow a certain program or stick with a trainer.
A big mistake most trainees make is not adhering to any coherent regimen, and doing whatever they feel is 'right' (by the way, it's
regimen, not
regime, which means
a government in power). I have been guilty of doing this. Find a program that fits your agenda or mix-and-match. The important thing is to be consistent and to push for steady progress toward your goal.
Guidelines
"Everybody want to look like a bodybuilder but nobody want to lift no heavy-ass weight" -Ronnie Coleman
If you want to look good, you must lift heavy.
By heavy I don't mean train with weights that are
really heavy. I mean it should be challenging for you, enough to work your muscles hard, but not so heavy that it takes an extraordinary amount of effort to lift the weight. The general rule of thumb is to choose the heaviest weight that is you can lift 8-12 times,
with good form. At the end of each set, the last few reps should be hard. Not "I'm going to have an aneurysm" hard, or anything remotely close to that, but requiring a decent amount of effort and focus. For those who would rather place precedence on strength instead of aesthetics, the rep range should be lower, at about 5 reps per set.
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| Ahnuld and his training buddies didn't screw around. |
Lifting heavy is the best way to go because not only are you encouraging muscular development, you are also doing anaerobic exercise, which is effective for losing bodyfat. However, simultaneous muscular growth and fat loss, "recomposition," is hard to pull off if you're not a newbie or you don't have a lot of extra fat tissue.
The whole idea behind resistance training is to make your muscles work relatively close to their maximum capacity, so your body has a reason to make your muscles grow. When you recover with sufficient rest and nutrition, you will be slightly stronger, so you will need to do more work in order to continue growth, bit by bit. This is called progressive overload.
This is the best Google Images could do. Close enough.
The general idea of weight training is this: you work your muscles hard in the gym, close to their maximum capacity, causing microtrauma (microscopic tearing) to your muscular fibers. Good nutrition and sufficient rest will repair these damages, and then some. Thus, you get a tiny bit stronger. This concept is called
overcompensation. If you want results, you'll need to do two things: 'damage' your muscles sufficiently (i.e. give your body a reason to make your muscles grow), and eat and rest well.
You get results from recovering from lifting heavy, not from the lifting itself.
But of course when you get stronger, you can't just keep using the same weight. You have to use something just a tiny bit heavier whenever you get a tiny bit stronger. This concept is called
progressive overload and it is critical to prevent you from stalling and plateauing. Novice lifters can often pull off
linear progression, meaning that you are steadily getting stronger every time.
Okay, so now you know why you need to lift heavy. But what about the kinds of exercises you should be doing?
No, not that Heavy.
Simple, compound movements. Compound means it uses many muscle groups at once, in contrast to isolation, which means only one or a few muscles at a time. Compound is king for improving body composition.
Of the compound exercises, barbell movements are extremely good for trainees of all levels. They recruit many muscles at once- the major ones are squats, deadlifts, bench press, overhead press (often called the "military press"), and rows. Calisthenics (body-weight exercises) are also very important: push-ups, pull-ups, chin-ups, dips, etc.
Here is a great resource for almost every well-known free weight movement out there.
Free weights (barbells and dumbbells, collectively) and calisthenics are also vastly superior to
most machines. There are a few good machines out there but there's no need for beginners to use them.
It is a good idea to eschew weight machines when possible. Some are good, but most are bad. I may go into detail about this in the future, but in the mean time
do not use the smith machine if you can help it, with the exception of simply using it as a fixed bar to do pull ups or some other calisthenic exercise. As for lifting weights, the biggest drawback the smith machine provides is a false sense of security that can lead to some pretty bad injuries.
Starting Strength
A very good beginner's strength program, lauded by many as
the definitive novice strength program, is
Starting Strength. It's named after the book in which it is found that you can also find online (I bought a hard copy from Amazon, and it's totally worth it), and it's chock full of great knowledge for the beginner weightlifter. It's an indispensable resource for learning how to do a lot of the basic lifts with good form on your own, and it features some great explanations of kinesiology as well.
On this program, often called 'SS,' one can experience a very rapid increase of strength and muscular development, given everything is done right. Linear progression is to be expected, and it's really quite amazing. Some people get pretty incredible results. It's simple, with two sets of workouts: A and B.
There are a few variants for those who want a little flexibility, too. The version I do goes something like this:
A: Squats, Bench Press, Pull-ups
B: Squats, Overhead Press, Deadlifts
For each exercise, you do a few warm-up sets, then 3 "work" sets of 5 reps before moving on to the next one. The work sets should be hard but doable with good form, and there should be several minutes' worth of rest in between sets.
You alternate workouts A and B, with rest days in between, for 3 workouts a week. So, for example, starting on Monday:
A/off/B/off/A/off/off
B/off/A/off/B/off/off
It's simple, but it works. If you get stuck early on, there exists only three possible problems: not lifting right, not eating right, or not sleeping right (8+ hours a night). Skinny guys will need to eat a lot of good, quality food. That means a lot of protein and a lot of calories, every single day.
Rest days exist for recovery; doing squats every other day requires that you eat a lot. But that doesn't mean go nuts with junk food. A common recommendation for very skinny people is to drink a Gallon Of Milk A Day: GOMAD. Yeah, the acronym is fitting. But it works. A gallon of whole milk every day on top of a good bit of solid food will virtually guarantee weight gain for perpetually skinny dudes who can't seem to gain weight ("hardgainers").
For not-skinny novices, especially skinny-fat guys, they can pull off recomposition
Common Mistakes
There are many ways to train right, but there are even more ways to do it wrong.
Unfortunately, people are ill-informed, and many don't know to lift heavy- even some personal trainers are pretty ignorant of this fact (mine was).
When girls lift, they usually use weights that are
way too light, under the pretense of 'toning,' which ends up just being a waste of time. Some guys are guilty of doing this, too.
There is no such thing as 'toning exercises.' This is an extremely widespread misconception that needs to end. To
look toned, one needs two things: muscular development and/or size, and a low bodyfat percentage. And guess what's the easiest way to achieve that? By
lifting heavy.
It's very easy to spot people who are lifting weights that are too light: it looks like they aren't even trying. I have no idea why so many people lift like that.
If you don't put forth much effort, you can never expect to get good results. But there's another side of this problem: guys obsessed with the amount of weight they are lifting and not caring about bad form. This is an about-face from lifting too light to lifting too heavy. Bad form not only makes you look stupid, but more importantly, it can lead to injuries.
If you can't lift a weight with good form, then it is too heavy for you. The biggest exception to this is at the end of a set if you need a little extra something to get the weight up.
At the other end of the spectrum are the guys who just overdo it. Either they get unnaturally muscular to the point of being a freak, or they have an incredibly imbalanced physique. The latter often materializes in the form of 'chicken legs,' but there is a more subtle variety- the guys who are overdeveloped in some areas and underdeveloped in others. What I mean is those guys who walk around with massive arms, but something
just doesn't look right. These are commonly referred to as "curl bros." Speaking of curls, they are hands-down the most abused and overemphasized movement
ever. The bench press might be in a distant second place.
And then there are the guys who don't ever train the lower half, and this results:
