Tuesday, October 16, 2007

My Weight Lifting Advice

This page is for anybody who needs a couple pointers on how to lift weights. First off, if you are a beginner do not be afraid to step into the weight room. I know some guys you feel embarrassed because they cannot lift a lot, and they feel more advanced lifters will look down on them. Most of the time people are more then welcome to give advice or help you out with a lift, and besides everybody has to start somewhere.

Before you attempt lifting any weight you need to get a proper stretch in. This is a must or otherwise you are more than likely going to hurt yourself. Now most experts would advise getting in a long, deep stretch, and that is definitely the best way to go. But I must admit that I only take about a minute or two and get in a light stretch and that usually works for me. You just got to know how your body feels, and certain factors like age, can determine if you need to stretch longer. Never skip this step!

Once you are done stretching you can get! to the good part, lifting. Depending on how many days you lift you are going to be working different muscles a different day. I personally work out five days a week, Monday through Friday, so I will be going through a week of lifting for me. For some people five days might be a little too much for them, and it might be a good idea to take a day off in the middle of the week to get some rest. Once you start lifting consistently you will be able to get a feel for how much and how long you can lift. I would say that an hour is a good estimate, but some workouts will take longer and some will be shorter.

Mondays I work the triceps and chest muscle groups, and repeat that again on Thursday. Tuesday I work the biceps and back muscles, and then repeat them again on Friday. Wednesday I work my shoulders and sometimes I will work my legs. Each day I also try to get a run in, and do an ab workout. Now I have heard different views on whether you should work triceps and chest to! gether, and biceps and back together, or you should work trice! ps and b ack together, and biceps and chest together. Im not sure if it really makes that big a difference either way, but the way I see it is when you work your chest you usually are working your triceps, and the same with biceps and back, so you might as well work them together on the same day. I am not going to go through specific exercises here, you can learn about exercises through my newsletter.

As with any lift you want to go through the exercises with the right motions, otherwise you can seriously hurt yourself. I will give you a few tips on how the correct lift should be. First, anytime you are performing the lift you want to take the correct breaths. You should exhale when pushing or pulling, and inhale when you are relaxing. Oxygen needs to be brought to the muscles so if you are not breathing correctly you are going to tire easy. Second, you should extend your arms and bring them back as far as you can when doing exercises such as pull-downs or dumb-bell rows. For b! ench you should push the bar all the way till the arms are extended and bring the bar down til you touch your chest. When performing a lift on a bench you never want your butt to lift off the bench, and if you can try to keep your lower back down as well. When you touch your chest with the bar do not bounce if off your chest. You want to slowly bring it down to the point you barely touch your chest. Bouncing the bar off your chest can seriously injure you. With any lift you want to do it in a nice slow, and steady motion. Doing the exercise fast and wild can injure you, and it is not the best way to gain muscle.

Now everyone has different goals when you step into the weight room. Most of them consist of getting stronger, bigger, or more toned. There are different reps and sets you need to do depending on what your goal is. If you want to get stronger you want to do less reps, but more weight. For example, when you are bench pressing your sets might look like this: 10 ! reps, 8 reps, 6 reps, 4 reps, and finally 2 reps. Each time yo! ur weigh t should be increasing, and on the last set you should struggle to get it twice otherwise you need to move up. If you want to get bigger you can do a set such as 4 X 6 reps ( each example is for the bench press). Each set around the same weight, but you can move up the weight each time if you like. And if you want to get more toned do high reps, low weight. The set can be 15 reps, 12 reps, and 10 reps, but you can switch it up to however you like such as 3 X 12 reps. Personally, I will switch up between all three different combinations. Usually I will work out a month of each different set before switching.

My name is Mike Kleinick, I am 21 years old and I currently go to Illinois State University.

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