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It’s Strength Training vocab
time
Remember when you were
in junior high school and the teacher popped
a surprise vocab quiz on you? At the time
you probably had little interest in
memorizing word spellings and meanings.
Let’s face it that cute little Brad-Pitt
look-a-like, two rows over did more to
stimulate your mind than such spelling rules
as “I before E except after C.” It probably
wasn’t until high school or college that the
subtleties of English vocabulary began to
make some sense.
Strength
Training is like most forms of
physical activity in that it has its own
distinct vocabulary. In fact the words
bodybuilding, body shaping, weightlifting,
and strength training can be considered your
first lesson in this regard. We are going to
use the term strength training to refer to
any type of training that involves the use
of weights to strengthen and tone your
muscles. Initially many of the
following words and phrases will seem like a
foreign language, but trust us, it won’t be
long before you’ll become “fluent” in the
ways of “body building.”
Reps and Sets
Reps and Sets are the two
most basic terms needed for any
strength-training workout. They are
comparable to bogies and pars in golf,
touchdowns in football, and serving in
tennis. The word “rep” is just shorthand
for “repetition” and means the completion
of one lift of an exercise. When you
first begin training it is recommend that
you perform 10 to 12 non-stop reps for
each exercise. As you might expect
bodybuilders have come up with another
term to designate a group of continuous
reps and it’s called a set. Sets and reps
form the nucleus of just about every
training technique that can be performed
in the gym.
For the first few weeks in
your new training routine it is
recommended that you only perform
2 sets of 10 to 12 reps of each exercise.
Around the third week you can increase
the number of sets to 3. Your first
temptation may be to start doing 3 sets
from day one, but we recommend against
this. At this stage your muscles are not
used to regular exercise. By subjecting
the muscles to excessive stress too
early, you run the risk of injury or at
the very least, intense soreness.
How Much Weight should I
lift?
The answer to this question
is, it all depends. Although there is no
specific answer etched in stone, there
are some general strength training
guidelines that you should follow. If you
cannot lift a certain weight at least 10
times using good technique - with no
cheating or swinging of the body - the
weight you are using is much too heavy.
Conversely, if you can easily perform 15
to 20 reps with a given weight, it’s
probably not heavy enough. To tone and
strengthen a muscle, you need sufficient
resistance to stimulate that muscle. One
way practical guide is to select a weight
that starts producing muscle fatigue
around the 7th or
8th rep. You then have to
really work hard to complete the last
couple of reps.
How Often should I work
out?
Since the average
person’s muscles need at least 48 hours to
recover from exercise, it is recommend that
you workout every second day. In other words
don’t train on consecutive days. Most people
train Monday, Wednesday, and Friday because
it fits perfectly into this thing we live
our lives around called a week. But the body
doesn’t know the difference and you could
just as easily train on Tuesday, Thursday,
and Saturday. Don’t make things complicated
for yourself. Workout on the days that suit
your weekly schedule.
Morning, evening, or night –
when to train?
Some strength
training experts maintain that the
best time to workout is immediately upon
waking up in the morning. Others argue
that the best time is later in the day
when your body is more alert and “awake”.
Just as with deciding how often to
workout, don’t make things more confusing
than they really are. The best time to
workout is – are you ready for it -
whenever you want to! Why force yourself
to train at 6 am in the morning when you
feel more comfortable working out later
in the day? Likewise, why wait till
lunchtime or after work if you like to
see the sunrise? The most important
question is not when you workout, but do
you workout? Consistency is far more
important than timing.
Following
orders?
Although not an absolute
must, there is an accepted sequence for
performing exercises. Start with the
largest muscle groups such as the legs,
chest, and back, and then progress to the
smaller arm and abdominal muscles. Some
people question whether it is wrong to do
the exercises out of order. It’s not
wrong and in fact you may be forced to do
this when there is a crowd at the gym.
Simply skip the exercise and go back to
it later. The most important thing is
that you perform all the exercises in
your routine. The order is
secondary.
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