Weight Training For Dummies
Overview
Tone up, burn calories, stay strong
Weight Training For Dummies makes it easy to get started with weight training by offering trusted and straightforward guidance on the latest circuit and resistance training, and all-new information on the highly popular bodyweight and High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). Whether you're working with dumbbells, free weight sets, or machines, you'll find out how to combine weight training with other exercise to properly strength train and get in the best shape of your life.
Along with aerobic exercise and flexibility, body weight training is an integral part of a complete physical activity program. But with all the different equipment and techniques available, getting started can feel overwhelming. Want to get pumped about weight training? Consider these facts: strength training, whether via free weights or a machine, builds muscle. And the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism and the less prone you are to injuries—in and out of the gym. Plus, strength training promotes bone strength, which can significantly reduce your odds of developing osteoporosis. If that's not enough, strength training—unlike cardio workouts like running—reaps benefits almost immediately. So what are you waiting for? Weight Training For Dummies has everything you need to get started.
- Provides examples and directions for powerful 20-minute weight training routines for the time challenged
- Features advice to help you choose a weight training system that you enjoy and that fits into your lifestyle
- Includes new coverage devoted to warm-ups and the hottest and most beneficial stretches
- Introduces using weight training to address specific health or orthopedic conditions
Whether you're already in the gym several times a week or are just starting out with a fitness routine, Weight Training For Dummies shows you how to use free weights or weight machines to get results—fast.
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About The Author
LaReine Chabut is a distinguished lifestyle and fitness expert, bestselling author, model, and mom. As the on-camera host of MSN’s hit web series Focus on Feeling Better, LaReine helped everyday people across America fit in exercise daily. She is most recognized as the lead instructor of The Firm, a series of popular workout videos and her blog losethatbabyfat.com.
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weight training for dummies
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If you want to get into weight training, start by sorting fact from fiction. Don’t let stories you’ve heard about weight lifting keep you from the gym. You'll reach your fitness goals sooner by getting some simple home equipment and finding a qualified personal trainer. Follow some basic etiquette when working with a trainer and using the gym, and learn some muscle terminology so you’re comfortable with weight training.
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Strength Training
You can really hurt your body while lifting weights if you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing. Here are ten common weight-lifting mistakes to avoid:
Yanking your head and neck when you do crunches: Many people complain that crunches cause neck pain. They do — but only if you yank your head and neck instead of lifting your torso by the power of your abdominals.
Strength Training
Use your ball exercises as part of your weekly strength-training routine or rotate ball exercises in and out of your regular workouts. The variety challenges your muscles in different ways and also keeps your workouts fresh and fun.
As with all other resistance exercises, perform 8 to 15 repetitions per set and at least one set per muscle group, unless indicated otherwise in the specific exercise.
Strength Training
Bands and tubing can’t provide as much resistance as free weights or machines, but you can develop a surprising amount of strength, muscle tone, and flexibility. Here are ten band exercises and offer tips for using bands safely.
Note: The photos accompanying the exercises show bands, but tubing can just as easily be used instead of the bands to supply the required resistance.
Strength Training
When it comes to chest exercises, you want to find a happy medium between strengthening and toning your pecs. The technical name for chest muscles is the pectorals, but you can shorten the term to pecs. You have two pec muscles:
Pectoralis major: The pec major is a skeletal muscle that draws the arm inward and rotates it.
Strength Training
When you do a pullover, your arms move up and down in an arc, similar to when you pull an ax overhead to chop wood. Pullovers rely mainly on your lats, but they also call upon your chest, shoulders, and abdominal muscles.
Like the other upper-back exercises, pullovers help with posture. A pullover is an ideal transition exercise from a back workout to a chest workout.
Strength Training
With a pull-down, you grab a bar attached to an overhead pulley and pull it down; with a pull-up, you grasp a bar above you and pull yourself up. If you exercise at home, use an exercise band to mimic the pulley machine and do the band lat pull-down.
Pull-downs and pull-ups are grouped in one category because they work your back in the same way.
If you’re in the market for dumbbells for your weight training exercises and want to save money and/or space, here are a few inventive gadgets that might suit your needs.PlateMateThis product is like an oversized refrigerator magnet that you stick on both ends of a dumbbell to increase the weight. Plate mates come in four weights: 5⁄8 pound, 1-1/4 pounds, 1-7/8 pounds, and 2-1/2 pounds.
Strength Training
You can change the feel and focus of many chest exercises by adjusting the angle of the bench you use. Performing chest exercises on a flat bench emphasizes those fibers in the center of your chest. When you adjust the bench a few degrees to an incline position, you shift the focus of the exercise to the fibers in your upper chest and shoulder muscles.
When you move your arms in virtually any direction — up, down, backward, forward, sideways, diagonally, or in circles — your shoulders are in charge or at least involved. The ingenious design of your shoulder joint makes the shoulders one of the most mobile, versatile muscle groups in your body.
Unfortunately, their amazing capacity for movement also makes the shoulders, along with a nearby muscle group called the rotator cuff, particularly vulnerable to injury.
Strength Training
Rowing exercises are similar to the motion of rowing a boat. You may perform rows with a barbell or dumbbell, a set of machine handles, a bar attached to a low cable pulley, or an exercise band. Rowing exercises use the same muscles as pull-downs and pull-ups, except that they don’t involve your chest.
Rows are particularly helpful if you want to find out how to sit up straighter — to perform a row correctly on a machine, you have to sit up tall.
Your biceps muscle spans the front of your upper arm. Hang out in any gym, and you’ll see people flexing these muscles in the mirror, usually when they think that nobody’s watching. The main job of your biceps (nicknamed your bis or your guns) is to bend your arm; in gymspeak, this motion is called curling or flexing.
Your triceps, located directly opposite your biceps, spans the rear of your upper arm. The biceps and triceps, like many muscle groups, work together in pairs. When you squeeze your biceps, your triceps relaxes and your arm bends, and when you squeeze your triceps, your biceps relaxes and your arm straightens.
Strength Training
Not all machines use a cam. A class of equipment called cable machines uses a typical round pulley. A cable machine is a vertical metal beam, called a tower, with a pulley attached. You can adjust the height of the pulley to move it close to the floor, up over your head, or anywhere in between.
Some cable machines have two towers.
Countless ways exist to put the various elements of weight machines together. Here’s a look at six different types of weight machines you could come across when weight training.
Weight-stack machines
Traditional weight-stack machines have a stack of rectangular weight plates, each weighing 5 to 20 pounds. Each plate has a hole in it; to lift 50 pounds, you stick a metal pin in the hole of the weight plate marked 50.
The Weight Training For Dummies video shows you how to easily incorporate dumbbells into your workout. The exercises are used in a circuit to help you get a total-body workout in just 20 minutes. After a short warm-up, you progress through a series of exercises to help build strength in your arms, shoulders, chest, back, butt, and legs before ending with a cool-down stretch.
When you’re working with a personal trainer, take an active role in your weight-training sessions, aligning your behaviors with a willing participant that trainers can easily work with. Keep these things in mind to ensure you have the best trainer-client relationship possible:
Show up on time. Trainers are professional people with busy schedules and bills to pay, so show them some courtesy.
When people recruit you as a spotter, you have a big responsibility to perform your job correctly. Be realistic. If you weigh 90 pounds soaking wet, don’t attempt to spot someone doing a 350-pound bench press. If you have any doubt you can pull it off, don’t take on the assignment. The moment that the lifter’s arms give out isn’t the moment to realize you’re out of your league.
Your shoulders do a fair amount of work whenever you perform back and chest exercises, but performing exercises that single out your delts are also important for the following reasons:
Real-life benefits: Strong shoulders make most arm movements easier, whether you’re throwing a baseball, passing food across the table, or lifting a suitcase that’s a little too heavy.
Weight training equipment can be intimidating. Fortunately, you don’t need much or have to spend much money. Be on the lookout for the following basic training equipment to help you in your weight training routine:
An adjustable weight bench: Although you can perform dozens of exercises with dumbbells alone, a weight bench gives you far more versatility.
In fitness magazines, health clubs, and DVDs, you often hear weight equipment referred to as resistance equipment. Resistance is a word you need to know. Resistance is an opposing force, like a weight or gravity; in order for your muscles to get stronger, you must work against resistance. Resistance equipment is actually a more accurate term than weight equipment because you can build muscle without using weights at all.
Accidents happen, even to careful weight lifters. So, here’s a primer on weight-training injuries in case you do run into one. When you strain or pull a muscle, you actually overstretch or tear the tendon, the tough, cordlike tissue at the end of the muscle where the muscle tapers off and attaches to the bone.
Don’t let a few things you may have heard about weight training keep you away from the gym. Look at these common weight training myths and the facts that debunk them so you can arm yourself with the knowledge and confidence to hit the weights head on:
Myth
Reality
You’ll get huge unless you lift light weights.
To design an effective abdominal program, you need to separate the hype from the truth. Forget everything you may have found out from TV infomercials. What follows are the remarkably persistent myths about abdominal training, debunked.
Myth #1: Abdominal exercises get rid of your muffin top.
Reality: Ab exercises can’t help you “go from flab to abs,” as many infomercials claim, because flab and abs are separate entities.
You can perform many movements with both dumbbells and barbells. For example, while sitting on a bench, you can either press a bar overhead (the bench press) or press up two dumbbells (the dumbbell shoulder press). Which is the better option? Actually, both have their benefits.
Dumbbells and barbells both pose a bit more risk than weight machines because you need to stabilize your own body while performing the exercise, instead of relying on the machine to keep your body in the correct position.
Strength Training
Knowing how you stack up against others who’ve taken similar fitness tests can motivate you to work hard when weight training. Plus, it can serve as a great measure of how you’re progressing as you work out. Here are some tests you can do to measure your strength and endurance.
Keep track of your results in a workout log, and retest yourself ever month or so, to see how you’re doing.
Personal training instruction is valuable for anyone who lifts weights; even hiring a trainer for a few beginner sessions is beneficial. This list of qualifications shows what to look for when hiring a personal trainer:
Certification: Your trainer should have a credential from a professional organization.
A personality that’s compatible with yours: Do you prefer a cheerleader or a drill sergeant?
Most lower-back exercises — particularly those appropriate for beginners — don’t involve free weights or machines. Usually, it’s just you and the floor. Here’s what you can accomplish without any equipment at all:
Real-life benefits: Sitting puts your spine under a lot of pressure, much more pressure than if you stood all day, and it particularly compresses your lower spine.
You can strengthen your shoulder muscles through four main types of shoulder movements (although dozen of ways exist). Perform the following exercises in the order that they’re listed. In general, you lift the heaviest weights while pressing and the lightest weights while doing back-fly movements.
Press: Straighten your arms up over your head.
Strength Training
A reliable remedy for most minor sprains and strains is RICE, an acronym for Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. RICE is most effective if you begin the process within 48 hours of injuring yourself. RICE includes the following four components:
Rest: Stop performing activities that aggravate your injury. (Don't stop all activity — that’s rarely the solution.
To get an effective ball workout, you must use a quality ball that is the correct size for your body. When you stand next to an exercise ball, it should be even or slightly above your knee level.
The best way to size up your ball is by sitting on it. When you sit on the ball, you should feel the same way you do when you sit on a chair.
Strength Training
Before you begin any weight-training exercises, it helps to get a sense of your fitness level. Here are some key questions you should ask yourself:
When was the last time you did a sit-up? Have you been consistently exercising for the past 6 to 12 months, or can you not remember the last time you worked out? If you do work out currently, how many times a week do you exercise?
Obviously, it’s not practical to put an entire line of weight machines in your home, unless you’re willing to take out a second mortgage to pay for the weights and for the new wing of the house you’ll need to build. A more reasonable alternative is a multigym, which combines several weight-lifting stations into one frame.
Like every machine ever invented, from the Cuisinart to the iPhone, weight machines provide advantages over the low-tech contraptions that came before. Here are some of the ways that weight machines can top dumbbells and barbells:
Weight machines are safe. Your movement range is limited and the intended pattern is preset, so you need less instruction and supervision than you do with free weights.
Strength Training
For many avid weight lifters, shoulder injuries don’t happen overnight. Countless people have lifted for years, sometimes ignoring minor shoulder pain, and then — pop! — they’re finished. But what they perceive as a sudden injury is actually the result of years of overuse and poor form.
Avoid these common mistakes to keep your shoulders strong and healthy.
At the gym, rules of weight training etiquette should be followed by everyone. After you know what’s expected of you, you’ll feel more comfortable. Adopt these rules to ensure good manners when lifting weights:
Share the equipment. Don’t take a nap on a machine you’re not using.
Keep the grunting to a minimum.
Bands are particularly helpful if you want to keep up your strength and work out when you travel. You can’t very well lug around a complete set of dumbbells in your suitcase.
Bring along your training tools: band, tube, and stretch strap. Even if you’re booked into a hotel that has a gym, you’ll be happy to have carry-on “weights” and something to help you stretch.
Strength Training
A spotter is someone who stands close by you when you’re lifting weights. This person is ready to grab your weights in case your muscles give out. The spotter can be a lifting partner with whom you go to the gym or a stranger in the gym whom you enlist for one or two exercises.
If you don’t know anyone to be a spotter for you, you can usually ask a staff person who is working on the weight-training floor.
If you’re looking for an excuse to skip your weight-training workout, vacations and business trips won’t cut it. You can keep your muscles strong no matter where you go, whether your destination is Caribou, Maine, or the Mongolian desert.
Although you may not always find a health club with 16 shoulder machines and aromatherapy baths, strength training on the road is well worth the effort.
Your shoulder muscles are officially called the deltoids or delts. These muscles rest like a cap on top of the shoulder (the best way to see this is to hold your arm out horizontally). The delts are made up of three sections:
Center: The top or medial deltoid is on top of the shoulder. When this muscle contracts, your arm moves up.
Strength Training
The number of repetitions, or reps, you perform of weight training exercises matters a lot. In general, if your goal is to build the largest, strongest muscles that your genetic makeup allows, perform relatively few repetitions, about four to six (perhaps even as few as one or two).
This refers to lifting a heavy enough weight so that by the end of the last repetition, you can’t do another one with good form.
If you think you’ll need at-home workouts from time to time to keep up your conditioning, streamlining your home gym is essential. If you have only ten minutes to exercise, you don’t want to spend six of those minutes trying to find your exercise bands. Management of your home-gym space is critical for successful workouts.
You don’t need to be fluent in the language of bodybuilding competitions to design an effective workout, but you do need to familiarize yourself with common weight-training lingo. Know the following terms to describe your body’s muscles so you better understand your trainer or training materials for weight lifting.
You use your upper-back muscles whenever you pull anything toward you, whether it’s a piece of furniture, a stubborn Golden Retriever on a leash, or the mountain of chips you won at your Thursday-night poker game.
Your upper back consists of several muscles:
Credit: Illustration by Kathryn Born, MA
Latissimus dorsi (lats): The largest muscles in your back run from just behind each armpit to the center of your lower back.
Using the exercise ball to work out is one of the most fun ways to tone your body. Because of their shape, balls are unstable and challenge your balance. The exercise ball makes you use your abdominal muscles just to sit on it. And if you don’t keep your feet firmly planted on the floor, you’ll fall off. This is where your balance really comes into play!
You aren’t helpless against back pain. What you do daily makes a powerful difference. Small changes can go a long way toward preventing debilitating pain. Observe the following basic tips for a lifetime of back health.
Exercise regularly. Following a consistent, balanced exercise program will go a long way toward keeping you fit and strong.
Weight training is safe, and you can go a lifetime without a minor injury, but with that said, you may feel occasional muscle soreness — especially if you’re new to the game or haven’t worked out in a while.
A little bit of post-workout soreness is okay; chances are, you’ll feel tightness or achiness 24 to 48 hours after your workout, rather than right away.
Weight lifting is a safe activity that involves a risk of injury. You can minimize your risk of hurting yourself by following the basic common sense tips: Always respect the equipment, stay alert, and focus on your task at hand. You should be able to enjoy a lifetime of training.
Free-weight safety tips
One police officer arched his back so severely over years of bench pressing that he finally was forced to retire.
If you want to get into weight training, start by sorting fact from fiction. Don’t let stories you’ve heard about weight lifting keep you from the gym. You'll reach your fitness goals sooner by getting some simple home equipment and finding a qualified personal trainer. Follow some basic etiquette when working with a trainer and using the gym, and learn some muscle terminology so you’re comfortable with weight training.
Modern living provides every convenience except one: a lot of natural physical activity. Many activities that required people to get up out of the chair and use their muscles no longer exist. The result: People need to add weight training to stimulate their bodies and brains to keep them healthy and strong.
People of all ages — kids, teens, young adults, pregnant women, and older adults — benefit from weight training.
People carry a variety of items in their gym bags. Even if you never set foot in a health club, these weight-lifting accessories can make your workouts more comfortable and safe.
Belts: The controversy in the fitness community rages on: to wear a belt or not to wear a belt? Proponents of weight-lifting belts maintain that belts protect your lower back.
Weight training certainly has its fair share of confusing jargon. You don’t need to be fluent in the language spoken at bodybuilding competitions and physiology conferences, but to design an effective workout, you do need to know the basics to better understand your trainer or training materials.
In the following list, key strength-training terminology and training principles are defined:
Endurance: Muscular endurance refers to how many times you can lift a sub-maximal weight over a period of time.
Strength Training
Some people thrive on one-on-one instruction. Others really respond to the atmosphere of a class, even if they can afford a private trainer. If you’re uncomfortable with someone scrutinizing your every move, as a personal trainer does, then taking a class is a good way for you to discover weight-training techniques while still blending into the crowd.
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