Last week we shared the first 9 of these tips for beginners. Check them out here: Top Tips For Beginning Weight Lifting. This week we finish up with another 10 must-know items before beginning your weight training regimen.
10. Intensity Is Underrated
Whatever your routine is, do it hard. (After you’ve gotten the form down.) When I say hard, I mean hard. Other than your exercise-specific warmup, you should feel like you couldn’t get another rep out of your set. (This is different from “train to failure” which means you go past the last rep you can do – that’s not something I recommend for beginners.) Oh, and if you can do 2 more reps than your plan calls for, then you need to increase your weight.
And heavy weight helps your progress. To get the proper hormonal response from weight training for building muscle, losing fat, and gaining strength you have to really push yourself.
This also means that you don’t skip workouts. I realize that life happens, and you might have to miss a day. But with your 3x per week schedule, you can miss a day and make it up to stick to 3x/week. If you do get to the gym and “don’t feel too motivated”, you need to psyche yourself up. A short intense workout is far better than a long half-effort one.
11. Rest
There are two types or rest: in between sets and in between workouts. For rest in between workouts, that’s taken care of by only going 3x a week (see previous point). Muscle doesn’t grow during the exercise. It grows AFTER the exercise and if (more…)
Looking to burn fat with weight training? Tired of typical routines?
Get my metabolic routine here: Fat Burn Furnace!
Continue reading about The 19 Weight Training Must-Dos For Beginners – Part 2 of 2
Tired of your current physique? Looking to build some muscle? Burn fat? Gain Strength?
Done properly, weight lifting is the best exercise for all three goals. Wanna lose fat while you sleep? The more muscle you have the more calories your body burns at rest. Wanna look good in a t-shirt and shorts? Build some curves by adding muscle. Looking for extra power in your favorite sport? Strength training with weights helps almost every sport.
But if you’re just starting out (or if you’ve been just toying around at the gym and need to get your butt into a serious routine), you need to remember these 19 things.
1. Don’t Read The Muscle Mags
Ok. You’re fired up like a George Forman Grill, and ready to become Arnold Junior. So where do most guys like you turn for advice? The muscle mags. But 50% of the muscle mags are pure ads. And another 30% are ads disguised as articles. And another 15% is either flat out bad advice or advice inappropriate for beginners. That leaves 5% of goodness. And the sad truth: as a beginner, you won’t know the difference. Skip the magazines and go for a serious book (see below).
2. Only Full Body, Compound Exercises For Your First 3 Months (No Curls!)
I know you want to do curls. It’s ok to admit it. Guys think big biceps are the sign of a real man. Stop. If you can’t do 15 chin-ups, you have no business doing curls. What you want to do – exclusively – for the first 3 months are compound movements. Compound movements are those that involve more than one joint (and thus, recruit more than one muscle group). Why? You’ll burn more (more…)
Continue reading about The 19 Weight Training Must-Dos For Beginners – Part 1 of 2
[Before we get into this very short piece, I'm making the replay of last week's free training teleseminar available for the next 3 days only. So if you want to listen to it, go to http://www.worldfitnessnetwork.com/more/maycallreplay.html right now.]
Who Are You Calling A Beginner?
Are you a beginner? Or an advanced lifter? Or an intermediate? How do you know? Let’s take a moment and define these stages as far as I’m concerned. It’s important for several upcoming articles I’ll be sharing on (more…)
The key to any beginner routine is to build a base of strength and to learn good training technique.
To maximize your results, I highly recommend that you pick up one or all of the Official WorldFitnessNetwork lifting programs. They go into great detail about routines for full-body results, strength, fat loss, hypertrophy (gaining muscle size) and cover every ability level short of competition-level. They include subtle issues that are really important.
But in case you still don’t have those, I’ve decided to give you a brief outline of a sample beginner program. Just to get you started. This routine was designed to use the best exercises available to produce maximal results in the shortest time.
The beginner routine is meant to be adjusted progressively so that it helps you to smoothly transition into an intermediate routine. If you have prior experience and are already working out, you might be able to jump past this chapter.
This routine will help you to do the following:
- Build a base of muscle and strength as quickly as possible
- Lose fat through an increased metabolism
- See results by training 3 times per week
- Avoid overtraining
Continue reading about WFN Beginner to Intermediate Training Program
Weight Lifting 101 is a series of posts for those who are just starting their journey with weight training. If you are thinking about getting started in a gym or training at home, this reading is for you.
For the sake of these postings, I’m going to assume that you have never touched a dumbbell in your entire life. I’m not going to make any guesses about what you do or don’t know, so we will start from the very beginning and build up from the basics. If you are already at the intermediate or advanced levels, stay tuned… more is on the way.
A Time for Change
If you are just getting started, this is a very exciting time! Never again will you experience such a dramatic change in the way you look as in these upcoming months. I say never again because the changes you are about to make should be lifelong changes with principles that you will never abandon.
Thus, you are currently standing at the inflection point in your life. It is this very moment when you can decide to make a change, and the rest of your life can be altered as a result of this decision. Since this is the precise moment that you are changing to a new direction, the following months will show you more results than any other time in your life. After your initial transformation, you will simply continue further and further down this new path that you are starting on today. (more…)
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