"Oh, That Is Really Hard!"
December 6th 2006 10:55
A few days ago I was unobtrusively walking from the free weight area of the gym, when I passed a virtual Damascus road moment of gym enlightenment. A newby was climbing down from the weight stack assisted dipping bars. In a moment of exhaustion she summarized the dipping experience with "Oh, that is really hard!"
Yep, it is really hard to do dips-to lower and raise your body between two parallel bars high enough off the ground to prevent your feet from touching the floor at the bottom of the movement. The beginner had discovered via this unpleasant encounter with dips,nevertheless, an extremely useful piece of information about how to train your body and shape into something more to your liking.
If you have been following my posts you know that I believe that weight training does more for you than any exercise regimen.You also know that I advocate short workouts with maximum effort for no more than 30 minutes and that I don't try to fool you into thinking that weight loss can be achieved (without unwanted consequences) by any other means than diet. Most importantly, I preach the gospel of adaptation- that you should be systematically asking your body to do more and more and giving it the time to adapt to this increased demand.If you accede to the truthfulness of what I am encouraging,however, you are still far from knowing how to organize your workouts.
Our newcomer now instinctively understands another pillar in the knowledge it takes to use weights for fitness: the ladder of difficulty. When you understand this hierarchy you can make intelligent decisions about exercise selection.
There are four broad categories of movements that can comprise your weight workout: machines, barbells, dumbbells,and your body through space. They may be rated for general difficulty in this same order,machines being the easiest. That means that you as a rookie can get a huge amount of benefit from using machines. Modern gyms have machine which target every major muscle group in the body. When you are starting out and the whole proposition of lifting is uncomfortable, machines help ease your body into the kind of movements with which you can build money.
Machines, however, make many exercises easier because they eliminate the need for you to balance the weight. The downside of this is that motor learning(how to balance) contributes to muscle size and tone.In other words, as you learn how to properly do a movement you are training the balancing muscles as well as the lifting muscles to grow and that means bigger and better. Thus barbells are a step up the athleticism ladder from machines and you will want to move to barbell movements as soon as you feel ready for new challenges.
By the same logic dumbbells demand that the arms balance their loads independently of one another and that enhances motor learning more than barbells. So, always seek to try dumbbell movements instead of barbell for the same exercise, ex: dumbbell bench press rather than barbell. You see right away that two fifty lb dumbs are considerably harder to handle and thus heavier than a 100 lb barbell.
As you may have guessed, using body only movements-like chin ups and dips- is ultimately hardest of all. If you are doing seated pull downs on a machine you should be pointing toward a day when you can do chin ups. Wherever there is body through space movement available, aim at using it.
The progression of weight training should be that you eventually do two or more movements per body part in a workout. If you think you are at the stage where you can handle that, you should inventory your movements and try to add movements from a higher rung of the athletic ladder. If you are a beginner you may want to experiment with your capacity to do dumbbell and free movements right now. At any rate by using the ladder as a guide you will consistently challenge your body as you move up it. "Oh, It really has to be hard." Your servant, as always.
Yep, it is really hard to do dips-to lower and raise your body between two parallel bars high enough off the ground to prevent your feet from touching the floor at the bottom of the movement. The beginner had discovered via this unpleasant encounter with dips,nevertheless, an extremely useful piece of information about how to train your body and shape into something more to your liking.
If you have been following my posts you know that I believe that weight training does more for you than any exercise regimen.You also know that I advocate short workouts with maximum effort for no more than 30 minutes and that I don't try to fool you into thinking that weight loss can be achieved (without unwanted consequences) by any other means than diet. Most importantly, I preach the gospel of adaptation- that you should be systematically asking your body to do more and more and giving it the time to adapt to this increased demand.If you accede to the truthfulness of what I am encouraging,however, you are still far from knowing how to organize your workouts.
Our newcomer now instinctively understands another pillar in the knowledge it takes to use weights for fitness: the ladder of difficulty. When you understand this hierarchy you can make intelligent decisions about exercise selection.
There are four broad categories of movements that can comprise your weight workout: machines, barbells, dumbbells,and your body through space. They may be rated for general difficulty in this same order,machines being the easiest. That means that you as a rookie can get a huge amount of benefit from using machines. Modern gyms have machine which target every major muscle group in the body. When you are starting out and the whole proposition of lifting is uncomfortable, machines help ease your body into the kind of movements with which you can build money.
Machines, however, make many exercises easier because they eliminate the need for you to balance the weight. The downside of this is that motor learning(how to balance) contributes to muscle size and tone.In other words, as you learn how to properly do a movement you are training the balancing muscles as well as the lifting muscles to grow and that means bigger and better. Thus barbells are a step up the athleticism ladder from machines and you will want to move to barbell movements as soon as you feel ready for new challenges.
By the same logic dumbbells demand that the arms balance their loads independently of one another and that enhances motor learning more than barbells. So, always seek to try dumbbell movements instead of barbell for the same exercise, ex: dumbbell bench press rather than barbell. You see right away that two fifty lb dumbs are considerably harder to handle and thus heavier than a 100 lb barbell.
As you may have guessed, using body only movements-like chin ups and dips- is ultimately hardest of all. If you are doing seated pull downs on a machine you should be pointing toward a day when you can do chin ups. Wherever there is body through space movement available, aim at using it.
The progression of weight training should be that you eventually do two or more movements per body part in a workout. If you think you are at the stage where you can handle that, you should inventory your movements and try to add movements from a higher rung of the athletic ladder. If you are a beginner you may want to experiment with your capacity to do dumbbell and free movements right now. At any rate by using the ladder as a guide you will consistently challenge your body as you move up it. "Oh, It really has to be hard." Your servant, as always.
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