Weight Training For Beginners
Weight Training is an effective way to build muscle mass and tone your body. It also burns calories, which can help you maintain a healthy weight or lose extra fat. Regular strength training can prevent the natural loss of lean muscle mass that occurs with aging (the medical term for this is sarcopenia). It can improve the health of your joints, and may even reverse some symptoms of chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease. It can also lower your risk of falls in the elderly, by strengthening your leg and arm muscles.
Incorporating weight lifting into your exercise routine can be a bit challenging for beginners, but it’s well worth the effort. A personal trainer or fitness coach can work with you to design a safe and effective weight lifting program that suits your specific needs and goals.
The goal of weight lifting is to overload your muscles to make them stronger, and you do this by increasing the amount of weight you lift over time. For most people, this means starting with a few light weights and gradually working up to higher weights, but not so much weight that you can’t lift it without compromising your safety or ability to do your workout.
When you lift a weight, the muscles contract in two ways: eccentrically and concentricly. An eccentric muscle contraction shortens the muscle and generates a force greater than the weight, allowing you to lift it. Then the muscle slowly elongates, or straightens, to return to its starting position. For example, when you do an arm curl, you are performing a concentric muscle contraction on your biceps.
Weight training also builds bone density and strength. When you lift a weight, it tugs on the bones of your arms, and this stimulates the bone cells to create new tissue that strengthens your bones. This is particularly important for post-menopausal women, who are at an increased risk of osteoporosis.
A good strength training program should include exercises that target all major muscle groups. It should focus on both the “big” muscles (chest, back and biceps) and the “smaller” muscles (triceps, calves, shoulders and abdomen). It should be performed on non-consecutive days, and a typical recommendation is three to five days per week for beginners, with one day of rest between each session. As your strength increases, you can increase the frequency of weight training sessions to four to five days a week, but always listen to your body and avoid overtraining. You can also split your body parts into different sessions, such as chest, back and triceps in session one, and the legs in session two. This can make it easier to manage time and equipment constraints, as well as prevent injuries. It’s best to use a spotter on high-impact or very heavy exercises. It’s also important to wear proper clothing for weight lifting, including closed-toe shoes and a supportive brace if you need it. You should also never hold your breath while doing weight lifting, and stop the workout immediately if you feel sharp, stabbing pain that doesn’t go away when you stop. Styrketräning