Weight Lifting
Weight Lifting Exercise for Beginners
lifting weights
Beginner routine
Do the following routine Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For the first two weeks, use light weight and concentrate on learning proper form. After that, increase to your working weight. You will be doing three sets of 10 for each exercise, and your working weight will be one that makes the last couple of reps difficult, if not impossible. Do the exercises in the following order: Squats, Deadlifts, Bench Presses, Chin-ups, Military Presses, Barbell Curls, Weighted Sit-Ups.
Proper form is absolutely essential on these exercises. If your gym has personal trainers, pay for a session and get a professional to watch your form. If not, try to get an experienced lifter to make sure you’re doing the exercises correctly. This routine is highly effective, but if not done with proper form, several of these exercises can become very dangerous.
If you cannot do chin-ups, do one negative chin-up (grabbing the bar with your chin already over it and lowering yourself as slowly as possible) followed by a set of lat pulldowns. If you can do chin-ups, you have graduated to the point where the lat pulldown is a foo-foo exercise.
Nutrition and rest are just as important as a training routine. As far as rest goes, make sure you get at least seven hours of sleep per night. More is better, to the point where several pro bodybuilders sleep 12 hours a day or more. This is impractical for people with real jobs, but there is no excuse for getting less than 7 hours a night. Remember, you build muscle when you rest, not when you train. Training tears your muscles down and provides them with a stimulus for rebuilding and growth.
In order to gain muscle, you have to eat. You will want to take in a gram of protein for every pound of lean body mass. For example, if you weigh 200 pounds and have 15% body fat, you will want to get at least 170 grams of protein a day. You also need carbohydrates and fat. Ignore the popular trend toward “fat-free” products and strive to take in roughly 30% of your calories from fat. Try to get 30% from protein (never dropping below 1 gram per pound of lean body mass) and 40% from carbohydrates. To help in your calculations, a gram of carbs has 4 calories, a gram of protein has 4 calories, and a gram of fat has 9 calories.
I also have a few words to say about supplements. If you’re on this routine, the only supplement you should even consider is whey protein. Creatine and andro have their places in the routines of more advanced lifters, but it is pointless to take them until you have been lifting for at least a year and have hit an unbreakable plateau. In fact, there is no point in taking andro if you are under 25.
Finally, I would suggest avoiding both alcohol and overtraining. Alcohol will impede your progress, dehydrating you, making you feel bloated, and sapping your motivation to lift (as anyone who has ever worked out with a hangover can attest). A drink with dinner is fine, but any more is to be avoided like the plague. Overtraining is the other thing that can kill an otherwise solid effort at lifting. If you follow this routine, you should see some excellent gains. Do not allow this to give you a more-is-better mentality. When it comes to training, less is definitely more. Once again, remember that you grow when you rest, not when you train. Even at an advanced level, you should be going to the gym for no more than an hour and a half (an hour is better), no more than four times a week (three is arguably better). Lifting for longer saps your testosterone production, and lifting more often tires out your nervous system, making you far more susceptible to illness.
Good intermediate routine focused on general strength and size gains
After a couple of months on the beginner routine, you should be ready for a 3 day intermediate split based around the big three (squat/bench/deadlift). Try something like the following:
Monday:
Deadlifts
Chins (vary the grip)
Barbell or dumbbell rows
Standing EZ curl bar curls
Hammer curls
Wed:
Flat barbell bench press
Incline dumbbell press
Shoulder press or military press
Lat DB raises
External Rotator work or rear delt work
Skullcrushers
Dips
Friday:
Squats (deep and heavy)
SLDL (or Romanian deadlifts)
Calves (standing and seated)
You need to up the intensity on these. Take your sets to failure. Try to keep around 3 sets per exercise and pick a weight that allows you to get your desired rep range (which should vary from time to time).
The “big three” recommend as a part of all routines
Squat/Bench/Deadlift. The big three are recommended as a part of all routines due to the fact that they are the best three exercises as far as compound exercises go. A compound exercise is one that requires significant involvement from multiple muscle groups in order to complete the movement. Obviously, this is going to be the best sort of a movement. Consider the fact that a deadlift will directly work the following – glutes/hamstrings/quads/spinal erectors/obliques/traps/lats/forearms/grip. To hit the same amount of muscles using isolation work would take considerably longer. A lifter generally should try to build his/her routine around a core of compound exercises, and add isolation exercises as necessary to complement the workout. The “big three” are by far the most effective three compound exercises (using a compound of the three, once can directly stimulate most all muscles in the body very effectively). Thus the reason you will see the “big three” mentioned so much.
How to do a conventional style deadlift
Set up in the deadlift position, looking up, back straight [for me, about 45 degrees straight with respect to my thighs], in a quasi-squat position with thighs slightly above parallel, my arms outside my thighs [not too far outside -- just so that they would 'brush' the outer part of my thighs], feet shoulder width apart. I think that the optimum place to put the bar is where your arms are extended downwards, in a straight, vertical line [as straight as you can]. Whenever I have my arms bent too far forward or back [from having them straight], I don’t get as enough of an explosive pull as with having them perfectly straight [which I think helps your forearms, triceps, and shoulders work optimally together in the pull]. By having your arms in a straight line, I mean having your arms parallel with the wall [straight up and down], by the way.
All of this translates into having the bar about 2.5-3 inches away from the front of my chins. I like to have the bar as close as I need it to be so that when I pull it, it just goes in a straight line up until I’m standing erect. It has been suggested that I need to have the bar at my toes and then roll it close towards me [and then pull!], but this really, really takes away from the explosiveness of my lift [which I like to think as a one-step and not two-step deal!].
I arch my back when I’m trying to reach the bar with my hands for set up — and my back is only extended as far down as I need to in order to grab the bar with my arms straight, calves straight; with my legs bent. I keep my back straight, in a horizontal position, not upright of course. I then take a good breath in and while I’m trying to lift the bar up, I’m forcefully exhaling throughout the explosive movement. Do the movement from the setup position to the standing erect position in one explosive, very quick, movement. I push with my legs [quads and hams] until my knees are just slightly bent, then I straighten myself [my back and my knees] out by thrusting my hips forward so that I’m perfectly straight — butt, knees, and back — completing the movement. When you’re lifting the bar up, have the bar close to your legs, etc., but not totally riding up your legs — maybe have the bar a half inch away from your body. You’ll be able to be more explosive this way than brushing it against your body.
The correct form for a squat?
First off, the proper form implies the following.
- No rounding of the lower back!
- Abdominal muscles tight throughout entire duration of lift
- Foot stance is up to the individual.
To activate more quad involvement, squat with a somewhat narrow stance
To activate more glute/ham/hip involvement, squat with a wider stance
It would be a good idea to switch stances from time to time
Toes should stay pointed in the same direction as the tracking of the knee to prevent rotation about the knee
Try to keep shins as close to perpendicular with the ground as is possible
Weight should be resting on the heels and not on the balls of the feet or on the toes
Knees should never jut out past the plane made by the toes
The knees should not bow in or out during the movement (very destructive to the ligaments and tendons)
The movement should be started by breaking at the hips and the squatter should visualize sitting back onto a box
The chest should be out, the head looking slightly up
The movement initiated from the bottom should start with the head
The squat depth should be at least to parallel. For better muscle recruitment, squat below parallel.
Now, keeping the above in mind, the lifter should always make use of a spotter and/or a power cage with the safety pins set to catch the weight if the lifter fails. Then, the lifter needs to set up under the bar, tighten the abdominal muscles, situate the bar on the shoulders and step back into the proper stance (again, it depends on what muscles you are wishing to stimulate … normally, shoulder width is good). Then, with the chest out, the head slightly up (it helps to focus on a point on the wall that is slightly above eye level), take a breath and hold it (remember to keep the abdominal muscles tight and the lower back slightly arched). Begin the movement by breaking at the hips and sticking the butt back (much like if you were going to sit down into a chair). Using a controlled descent, you will squat down to the desired depth (at least to parallel), then reverse the movement and stand up (make sure not to bounce at the bottom).
The correct form for bench press?
First, make sure that you have a spotter to watch you at all times. Simply grab the bar at slightly wider than shoulder width with the thumb completely around the bar. Lift the bar off the safety pins and hold it at full extension. Then, keeping you elbows slightly in (to protect the shoulder socket), lower the bar in a controlled fashion to the chest in a straight line. Most lower the bar to the nipples. Do not bounce the bar off of the chest and do not raise the butt up off the bench. You will then press the bar back up to the beginning of the movement in a straight line to finish off the movement. You should try to squeeze the shoulder blades together for the duration of the movement in order to protect the shoulders.
