
WEIGHTLIFTING 101
If you’re new to the gym, the weights room can be an intimidating place. But it doesn’t need to be.
Here are my top tips.
‘Weightlifting 101', if you will…
Remember that everyone has to start somewhere
Even that big dude in the corner benching what appears to be ten times your body weight. Yup, even him.
Everyone was a newbie at some point so don’t let ANYONE intimidate you or stop you from giving weightlifting a go if that’s what you want to do.
Or perhaps more accurately, don’t let your perceptions of anyone stop you. It’s what you build people up to be in your mind that can be intimidating and prevent you from getting stuck in. Most people remember exactly what it was like to be new and will be more than welcoming and supportive of your efforts.
But beware the infamous ‘bro-science’ that can sometimes be thrown about on the gym floor. That way, injury lies. When you need help, ask one of the trainers in your gym.
Be lazy
By which I mean, do ‘just enough’ to progress.
If you’re new to training, it won’t take much of a stimulus to trigger gains in strength and muscle (or ‘gainz’, bro). This means that you can make good progress training only once or twice a week with moderate weight. So why do more?
As your body adapts to training, you will need to do more to continue to progress (more on this later). Go too heavy too soon and you not only risk injury, you will make it harder for yourself later on as you leave yourself with nowhere to go.
Pump up the volume
In this context, volume = sets x reps x load
Sets are groups of a particular exercise, reps are the number of times you repeat that exercise within the set and load is the weight you lift.
This is important because, to continue to progress over time you need to…
Pump up the volume… some more
As your body adapts, if you want to continue to get bigger and stronger you need to apply the principle of ‘progressive overload’.
This means increasing your training volume or intensity over time. Gradually though… remember what I said about doing ‘just enough’, right?
To increase volume, you can either increase your reps, increase the number of sets you do, or increase the load (weight) you lift. This can be within a particular workout or, in due time, you might want to add workouts to your week.
Never fail – or at least, don’t fail often
So if volume is the name of the game, it should be all the volume all the time, right? Push myself until I can’t do another rep, grind out that last lift, or ‘train to failure’?
Nope. Think of the bigger picture. If you train to failure, grinding out the reps until you can’t do any more, yes you will maximise volume in that set. But by doing so you will be inflicting unseen damage on your muscles, which they will need time to recover from. And if that means that you can’t perform as many sets and reps in the rest of your workout, and potentially even in your NEXT workout, then you’re sacrificing volume in the long term.
Training to failure has it’s place but it will rarely be the aim, particularly if you’re new to training.
No pain, no gain?
Sod that. Kinda.
I’m not gonna lie, training is probably going to hurt sometimes.
What I mean here is that you should never try to train through an injury. If you’re hurt, take a couple of days off and give yourself time to recover. Whilst this might seem like common sense, you’d be surprised how tempting it can be to ‘push through’ an injury once you’re bitten by the training bug. I made this mistake in my foolish youth (well, my 30s) and certainly learned from my mistake.
It’s better to miss two or three sessions (the horror!) rather than ending up exacerbating the problem and being laid up for weeks.
So there we have it, just a few of my top tips for newbies at the gym. More to come on this blog, but for regular fitness content follow me on social media at the links below.
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