Lift your mass to new heights…

It’s certainly strange that while many people are aware of the term “weight lifting”, only a few of them know of its benefits. Indeed, weight lifting or strength training is something you can do to re-shape your body, lose excessive fat, enhance muscle tone, become stronger, fight off osteoporosis and reduce blood pressure. Interesting? Well, there’s much more to it.

Definition of Weight Lifting (Strength Training): By definition, weight lifting is the controlled process of lifting of light / heavy weights and /or resistance in a prescribed manner as an exercise.

Weight training is now considered a vital, life-long exercise program by major sports and health authorities. For example, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends that every adult should take some sort of suitable weight training for the sake of better results in general health and the body’s function.

It is, however, essential to seek some advice or gain enough information on weight training before you proceed as weight lifting is a quite generalized and yet diversified exercise. By following these simple tips, you will be able to discover how this simple tool could help keep you motivated, and will enable you to get fruitful profits on your time and energy investments.

1- Set Frequency, Follow A Schedule: While there’s no recommended frequency, experts say that you need to exercise between three and five days per week. This exercise should ideally include each muscle group with weights, at least once a week, or preferably twice. For example, you can do shoulders, arms, legs and chest twice. Similarly, abdominal muscles (Abs) can be exercised two to three times a week.

Nevertheless, you should do 2 to 3 sets for each exercise. Do remember to change your routine every 6 to 8 weeks to prevent plateaus. For beginners, however, lifting weights once a week is not enough, and four or five times a week might be a little too much (especially for a beginner). Therefore, weight lifting twice a week is suggested but thrice a week is preferable.

2- Divide Your Body: You can divide your body into two parts for convenience and well-balanced, proportionate results. As a guide, you might consider the following suggestions:

(a) For the Upper Half

Arms: Specific weight training must include overhead triceps press, seated triceps press, triceps dip, triceps press-down, biceps curl, machine preacher curl, preacher curl, and cable curl.

Chest/Shoulders: The recommended exercises include dumbbell shrug, lateral raise, bent-forward cable crossover, upright row, bench and incline press and parallel dip.

Back: The particular activities are chin-up, decline seated cable row, T-bar row, and lat pull down.

(b) For the Lower Half

Legs/Buttocks: The traditional recommendations are leg press, leg lifts, leg curls, calf raises, squats, lunges, etc.

3- Keep Special Focus on Abs: Abdominal muscles should be worked three times per week. It is best to do four sets for the abdominal muscles, 20-40 repetitions per set. Suggested exercises include rotary torso, abdominal flexor machine, abdominal crunches, leg lifts from roman chair, leg scissors (while flat on back), leg lifts (while flat on back), etc.

4- Complete The Circuit: Taking a small rest in between upper and lower body workouts is known as a circuit. Initially, you need to move from one muscle group to another without any rest. However, having worked all the upper body muscles, you should take 30 seconds of rest. Likewise, with lower body muscles, you need 60 seconds of rest. This circuit should be repeated 3-4 times.

5- Keep Stretching: Just as the rest is of vital significance in between the workouts, stretching of the muscles is equally important. Therefore, some stretching should always be done at the end of a weight-lifting workout, because this is when your muscles need to be elongated and relaxed.

6- Gender-Based Tip: Experience shows that woman should generally lift a weight that is approximately 60% of the absolute maximum they could handle for a particular number of repetitions. Similarly, men should do at least 75% of their maximum.

Conclusion
As you plan and implement your workout sessions for weight lifting, do keep in mind that it’s always better to have a proper expert advise, especially if you’re a beginner. That’s how you will be able to take advantage of all of the benefits completely and safely. After all, building muscles by lifting weights does more than make you look and feel better. It speeds up your metabolism, strengthens your will power and also gives you more energy. Wishing you all the best!