Exercising Power for All Ages, Men and Women

Weight-bearing or strength training exercise is vital for optimal health for all ages, and well into old age. Other than obviously keeping you strong, it has proved to be a preventative measure for osteoporosis, as weight-bearing exercise serves to improve bone density, thus making them stronger and less brittle.

Lifting weights also helps fat loss (although only in conjunction with proper nutrition and aerobic exercise). It does this indirectly, by increasing lean body mass. The number of calories you burn at rest is directly proportional to the amount of lean tissue you have. So increasing lean body mass speeds up your metabolic rate, with the result that you burn more calories at rest.

To put it another way, muscle is a metabolically active tissue that burns fat, and lifting weights builds muscle, therefore weight training helps lose fat. Bear in mind, though, that the increase in resting metabolism that comes from weight training is not enough to get maximum fat loss for most body types. The main fat-burning effect of weight training comes after the workout from the increase in your post-exercise metabolic rate (though of course you do burn calories during any exercise). This is different from aerobic training, where you burn a high number of calories while you are exercising (remember, to burn fat you need oxygen – which aerobic exercise uses).

The basics of weight training

Hundreds of books have been written about weight training. For instance, Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote a book on weight training called “The Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding” which is over 700 pages long! The basics I give here are enough to start anyone on a weight lifting program, and perhaps give you a few extra tips if you currently lift weights.

Where to train?

Weight-lifting can be done in your own home – all you need initially is a basic set of dumbbells. You can do hundreds of different exercises with these alone. As you advance, you can add a bench, cable-pulley machine and a power rack to your equipment.

Many people prefer to train in a gym because of the larger number of choices you have in variety of machines and exercises you can do. It also helps keep you motivated and a gym always has people there to assist you. As you progress in your weight lifting, you will probably want to join a gym.

When and how long to train?

When you train is not as important as making the time to do so, and to keep it up consistently. You can do weight training in the same session as cardio, but it is better to split them – just because whichever one you do last, may be compromised because you are tired.

Each workout should last between 30-60 minutes. Again, it depends on your personal health goals. If you are maintaining, 30-45 minutes of weights 2-3 times a week is enough. For building or for better fat loss, 45-60 minute sessions will serve you better, up to 4 times a week.

Guidelines:

Beginners: train your entire body, 2-3 times a week. The body parts you will train are listed in the table below The Exercises; and also here. Choose the type of exercise you would like to do from the table.

Intermediate: because of the higher number of reps and sets you will be doing, you will need to split your routine. This means training half your muscle groups at one session, and the other half at the following session. Aim for 3-4 times a week, alternating between the suggested exercises for Day 1 and Day 2 (see below). Although this is termed ‘intermediate’, you could remain on this program indefinitely if you are achieving the results you want. This is an excellent program that gives great results, with only 3 days of training a week.

Train large muscle groups together with small ones for the best effect and least exhaustion.

Guideline for 2-day split:

Day 1: chest, shoulders, triceps, abs

Day 2: legs (quads, hamstrings, calves), back, biceps

Advanced: as you progress, you will need additional exercises to work each muscle group effectively. Some muscles have 3 heads and for overall muscle development, you will need to work all 3. As you add more exercises, your routine gets longer. A split routine is the solution. Always leave at least 1 day between exercising the same muscles, for recovery. This is essential to continue building. Train 4-5 times a week, alternating the splits. This is really only for advanced bodybuilders at competition level.

Guideline for 3-day split:

Day 1: chest, back, abs

Day 2: quads, hamstrings, calves

Day 3: shoulders, biceps, triceps

How often to train?

Don’t train the same muscle groups more than 2 days in a row without taking a break. Your muscles don’t grow during workouts; they grow after the workout, and need time to rest and repair. If you don’t give them enough time to recover, you risk over-training and injury.

Sets, reps and exercises – terminology

A rep is one repetition of a particular exercise.

A set is a number of repetitions – usually 6-12 reps in a set.

When a book refers to an exercise, it means a specific exercise for a muscle. So you might have 3 different exercises for 1 muscle group.

For example, you may do 2 different types of exercise for the quads, 3 sets of 12 reps each. This would be 2 different exercises, of 3x12 reps – 36 reps, x2 is 72 reps in total.

Number of sets

Research has shown time and time again that multiple sets are the most effective in transforming physique. A common formula used by many top performers is 2-3 exercises for 3 sets per exercise, with 6-12 reps per set. Beginners will work up to this – do only 1 set the first week, 2 the second and 3 the third week, one exercise per muscle group.

Larger muscle groups such as the legs and back can handle more than this. You could get up to four sets per exercise, and up to 3 different exercises (a total of 12 sets), in one session (this would be fairly advanced).

Guidelines:

Intermediate:

Large muscle groups: 6-8 sets per body part (2-3 different exercises)

Small muscle groups: 5-6 sets per body part (2-3 different exercises)

Advanced:

Large muscle groups: 9-12 sets per body part (3-4 different exercises)

Small muscle groups: 6-9 sets per body part (3-4 different exercises)

Number of reps

As with all exercise, this depends on your goals. A general rule of thumb is low reps, high weight for strength; moderate reps, moderate weights for size. For overall muscle development and fat loss, the majority of your reps should be performed in the 6-12 reps range. The basic rule is: if you cannot do at least 6 reps, the weight is too heavy. If you can do 12 reps easily, increase the weight.

Guidelines:

Strength/power 2-5 reps (very heavy weights)

Size (some strength) 6-12 reps (moderate weights)

Endurance 12-20 reps

Abdominals, calves, quads 10-25 reps

Number of exercises

You can base this on your level of experience and the time you have available. If your sessions are 30-60 minutes long, do as much as you can in that time. So 2 or 3 exercises per muscle is more than adequate. 3 or 4 exercises per muscle is usually the upper limit, and more suitable for advanced trainers. Beginners should start with only one exercise per muscle group. Intermediates will do 2 and advanced, 3-4.

Warming up

Always warm up by doing 10 minutes of cardio, or enough to work up a light sweat. Then always do the first set of each muscle group (not every exercise) with a lighter weight to warm it up. This set does not count as one of the sets.

Rest interval

A general guideline is to rest for 1 minute between sets, slightly longer for large muscle groups (legs, back) in order to recover and catch your breath. Again it depends on your goals. For general fitness, you can rest 2 minutes between sets. For strength and power, 2-4 minutes is good. To decrease body fat, you can reduce your rest period to 20-45 seconds, as this adds an aerobic effect to the workout and increases growth hormone release.

Timing

All reps should be performed slowly and under control. Don’t swing the weights – this uses momentum instead of muscle to lift them! Take 2-3 seconds to raise the weight and 3-4 seconds to lower it. Never use a fast, jerky or uncontrolled movement.

Progression

We don’t all aim to become a body builder or fitness model, but even so, progression is the single most important part of any weight-training program. Progression means challenging yourself to improve at every workout. There are 2 reasons for this:

• you will grow stronger and increase your lean body mass;
• you will make your training a lot more exciting and easier to stick to.

It makes you look forward to your workouts with an aggressive ‘I want to’ attitude instead of a dragging your heels ‘I have to’ attitude.

The biggest mistake you could ever make (and it is a common one) is to repeat the same workout over and over again. This will maintain your current condition, not improve it – and you will eventually stagnate.

Progression must be approached in a slow, steady and cyclical fashion. It occurs very slowly and is often only done one rep at a time. Sometimes progression even follows a pattern of 2 steps forward, 1 step back. The biggest stumbling blocks to progression are impatience, and not keeping a log sheet (Exercise Chart).

There are 3 ways to progress: adding reps (even only one at a time); lifting more weight; and shortening the time – doing the same amount of reps at the same weight in less time. Your log sheets will help you and serve as a motivation to keep you progressing.

Some days, you may only be able to squeeze out one more rep per set. Other days when you are feeling strong, you can increase the weight (in small increments – the idea is not to overstrain yourself!). It can take 8-9 weeks to move up 20 lbs.

This is also not a scientific process and don’t get caught up in trying to pre-plan it too much. It doesn’t have to be complicated if you just observe the overall principle: make your body do something, anything, that it’s not used to doing and you will grow stronger.

Intensity

If you have selected the correct weight, and you are training hard enough, the last 2-3 reps in the set should be difficult. You may feel the pain of lactic acid buildup, also known as ‘the burn’ (this is not the same as the pain of injury!). If you complete your set of 6-12 reps and it felt easy, then the weight is too light. You are babying yourself.

If you’ve selected the right weight, you should reach a point where you momentarily can’t do another rep. This point is known as the ‘point of failure’. Whether you should push yourself this hard is a topic of great controversy. However, among champion bodybuilders, there’s no question – every set is taken to failure, or at least close to it. The idea is to push yourself – but safely. Oh, and just because you haven’t gone to failure in a workout, doesn’t mean it was unproductive! What’s more important is progression, as discussed above.

The exercises

There are so many types and variations of exercises that they can (and do!) fill books. Most exercises, however, are simply variations on a few basics, and it’s the basics that are the most effective. These are also the ones that tend to be the most difficult, so many people shy away from them and gravitate toward the easier exercises such as machines and ‘isolation’ cable movements. The difference between beginning and advanced training is the number of exercises, sets and reps – not the choice of exercises. It is a good idea to vary your exercises regularly. Below is a chart of the 5 best basic exercises for each muscle group.

Quads	Hamstrings	Calves	Abs	Back
Squats	Lying leg curl	Standing calf raise	Barbells	Crunch
Leg Press	Stiff leg deadlift	Seated calf raise	Reverse crunch	Dumbbell rows
Lunges	Seated leg curl	Calf press	Hip lift	Chin-ups
Hack squat	Single leg curl	Donkey calf raise	Hanging knee-up	Pull downs
Leg extension	Hyper extension	One leg calf raise	Cable crunch	Cable rows

 

Chest	Shoulder	Biceps	Triceps	Forearms
Barbell bench press	Military barbell press	Barbell curl	Lying tricep extension	Barbell wrist curl
Dumbbell bench press	Dumbbell press	Dumbbell curl	Close grip bench	Reverse wrist curl
Dumbbell flys	Dumbbell laterals	Preacher curl	Tricep pushdown	Reverse curl
Wide grip dips	Dumbbell rear laterals	Concentration curl	Parallel bar dips	Hammer curl
Cable cross-overs	Dumbbell front raise	Cable/machine curl	French press	Dumbbell wrist curl

 Program variations

Change your routine the minute it stops working, whether it takes 3 weeks or 3 months. Your goal should be noticeable, visible results on a weekly basis. When you stop seeing results, it’s time to change. You don’t have to change your entire routine. You can change the types of exercises you are doing, or change the order in which you do them. Change keeps things interesting. The more advanced you get, the more quickly your muscles adapt. When you are a beginner, you can make progress on the same workout routine for a long time.

You also don’t want to change too often because this fails to provide any continuity. Milk every routine for all it’s worth!

Weight-training myths

Weight training will make me bulky

This is a common misconception, and often a concern of women. It’s obvious that many people think that building muscle mass is easy! But it is anything but easy – it’s a long, difficult process for everyone except the most genetically gifted. The perception comes from bodybuilding magazines that show professional body builders at competitions. Almost all bodybuilders, however, take steroids and anabolic drugs to get this abnormally large muscle mass. They also take salt before competitions to reduce the water content in their cells, making them look even more ripped and bulky. So chances are, you are not going to get too bulky from weight training. Oh, and of course, you are the one in charge of your body and the way you look. You are not going to wake up one morning and notice a sudden growth of new muscles. If you ever reach the point where you have all the muscles you want, it’s easy to adjust your program to maintenance.

Muscle turns to fat

If you stop training, your muscles will shrink, but they will not turn into fat. This is impossible as muscle and fat are completely different types of tissue. If, however, you stop training and carry on consuming as many calories as you did before, you will gain fat, as you are not burning up the calories you consume with exercise. Hopefully, this will never have to concern you, as the intention is to exercise for the rest of your life.

High reps burn more fat

The actual performance of a rep is not what burns fat. Calories are burned with every rep of course, but as we have seen, the fat burning effect from weight training comes into play after the exercise from the increase in post-workout calorie expenditure, and the ability of lean muscle to burn more calories at rest. The more muscle you have, the more your body burns fat at rest – so use the repetition range that builds the most muscle.

Train your abs every day to get them ripped

Abdominal training develops your muscles but if they are covered in a layer of fat, you won’t be able to see them! Training abs doesn’t burn more fat. Proper nutrition and cardio exercise do. Getting ripped abs is a combination of working the muscle and lowering your overall body fat percentage.

Men and women need different training programs

For the most part, men and women should train the same. You will often see books or programs about special types of training for women that use words like ‘sculpting’, ‘shaping’ and ‘toning’. It’s great for marketing to women, but technically, there is no such thing as ‘toning’. Muscle development is muscle development and it takes place in exactly the same way for women as for men. The adjustments you make to your program have more to do with your body type and goals than with gender.