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…)
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 1 of 2
If you’ve ever been to a commercial gym for a month or longer, you know how it feels to share a gym with other people. A commercial gym is a lot like a community – we all have to share and learn to get along.
If you’re one of those people who has a nice setup in your own home gym, then go ahead and feel free to pass gas wherever you want to, and do whatever you want with your own equipment. For the rest of us who have to share a gym, there are a few unspoken rules.
Here they are:
1. Don’t forget to wipe when you’re done: You might not have heard this one for a very long time. But if you’re one of those guys that sweats profusely all over everything you touch, give it a little wipe with a towel when you’re done. There’s nothing wrong (more…)
I’ve been preparing an e-book over the last 5-6 weeks to help the readers of World Fitness Network achieve their goals. The e-book is entitled “3 Months to New You”. It’s a 90 day program to help you change your body type. It will help you do the following:
- Change the way you look and feel
- Become stronger/ build muscle
- Lose fat
- Strengthen your bones and joints
- Get you eating back on track
- Find new energy in your life through lifting weights and eating right
In addition, 3 Months to a New You provides you with a workout plan and schedule that you can fit into your normal life without having to spend your whole life (more…)
Continue reading about Free E-book About Changing Your Body Type: 3 Months to a New You
Image Credit: Alexindigo
There is a commonly held phobia that weight lifting will make a woman look like a man. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Weight lifting can make a man look more like a man, but it also makes a woman look more like a woman. The idea that women should look like nothing but skin and bones is absolutely wrong, and weight lifting will not make a woman become massively muscular either. Weight lifting helps to shape a woman and give her a better figure.
It’s sad that these kinds of ideas and rumors have become so prevalent in the world today. It’s as if society has dictated that women must become unhealthily skinny to be attractive.
The truth is that most women are suffering from a lack of muscle. Many of them suffer from the pains of having a weak body, lack of energy, and difficulty lifting moderately heavy objects in every day life.
Building muscle helps women to keep fat levels down without having to starve themselves skinny. All of the benefits of weight lifting that I mention throughout this site apply just as much to women as they do to men.
If you’re a woman and afraid that lifting will make you look like a man, here are 5 reasons why you don’t need to worry:
- First off, you’re not a man: Plain and simple. You won’t look like a man (more…)
How long should you let your muscles rest before working them again? You may have heard that your muscles are ready to be trained again after 48 hours of rest.
Editor’s Note: This is Jason’s take. To read Darrin’s take, click here.
I’d like to set the record straight on that number. If you’re one of those genetic supermen with incredible recovery abilities, 48 hours is probably right for you. For the rest of us human beings, a little more recovery time is probably needed.
Very few people out there have the stamina and experience to be able to handle training every body part 3+ times a week with heavy loads. Think about it, that’s exactly how many times you would train each muscle group in a week if you’re only giving them 48 hours of rest on a consistent basis.
So let’s talk about some numbers that are more down to earth for most of us. In actuality, most people will need somewhere between 48-96 hours of rest for each muscle group. This means that you will need 2 days at the very least, while 3-4 days is probably a better fit for most people out there. (more…)
Continue reading about Setting the Record Straight on Muscle Recovery Time
I saw something interesting the other day at the gym.
I saw an average-sized guy in his mid 20’s who was obviously trying to build up some muscle. He looked like he had some padding (weight) on him, but he didn’t look too out of shape. The thing that caught my eye is what I saw him doing.
He was using the cables to do cable crossover flyes. I watched as his arms wildly flapped up and down in an uneven way. His upper body lurched forward and downward with each rep as he strained to move the weight at all costs. I watched him move on to other exercises and perform them with a similar style.
Who knows, maybe he really didn’t know how to lift weights. But then again, like a lot of other people out there, maybe he was just too embarrassed to lift the proper amount of weight for his strength level.
If his goal was to avoid looking silly in the gym, he certainly didn’t achieve it. Honestly, I thought he looked a lot more like a monkey trying to figure out how to fly than someone who’s serious about getting in shape. (more…)
Continue reading about I Respect the Little Guy with Good Form
Anybody new to the gym knows how difficult it can be to make sense of all of the machines and equipment that fill the workout room. Instead of trying to analyze each of the different machines in the gym, get to know the free weights first. The free weights will give you the greatest returns for the effort you put in.
Barbells are probably the most basic instrument for lifting free weights. They can come in many sizes, but the most standard is called the Olympic barbell (the top bar in the picture above).
The Olympic barbell weighs either 45 pounds or 20 kilograms (44.5 lbs) depending on which part of the world you live in. It’s usually used for the heavier exercises such as squats, bench presses, deadlifts, shoulder presses, etc.
The smaller straight bar shown just below the Olympic bar is great for many upper body exercises where having the weight closer to your body is beneficial. For example, if you were doing standing bicep curls, you may find that having the weights closer to their center of gravity (and closer to you) makes them easier to control. (more…)
Continue reading about Barbells, Dumbbells, Weights and Plates
We will continue our series of Weight Lifting 101 posts here by introducing some new terms that you will have to become familiar with if you are going to succeed in changing the way you look. As you may have already guessed, working out with free weights is a little bit more complicated than doing steady cardio. It’s not as easy as just hopping on a treadmill for 30 minutes.
Since weight lifting is a form of anaerobic exercise, your muscles will not be able to maintain such a high level of intensity for long periods of time. Instead, you will break your exercises into a series of sets that comprise a certain number of repetitions. Let me explain what this means by defining the terms you’ll need to know. (more…)
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