For Beginners
May 29th 2007 13:29
Much of what has been written in this blog in the past has to do with learning to use weights to improve fitness. Today, however, I wish to spend some paragraphs helping a novice understand how to approach weight training with the right attitudes.
If you are interested in taking up weight training, it is important to know what it will and will not do. It will not,for instance, tear fat from your body at a profoundly rapid pace. It will create muscle tissue which will give you increased capacity for all kinds of activities. It will not make changes in basic body structure, but it will cause your body to recast itself, increasing the size of areas that are being exercised.
If you are new to weights, it is important to make haste slowly and carefully. You must allow your body to adapt to new stress at its pace and that may not be as fast as your emotions would like. Launching yourself into as much lifting as you can manage is a certainty to cause your body to break down into injury or illness. The way to add weight training to your life is to plot out two or three months of training that will allow you to follow a defined schedule and give your body time to rise to the new challenge.
If you would like to learn to lift properly you need a trainer,who can set out for you a plan to follow at the beginning, when the equipment in the gym in a confusing jungle. If paying for a trainer is unappealing to you, it is possible to access any number of beginner workouts on the net. The net also has resources on how to do the various movements suggested by your workout. Just google the name of the exercise and search a little while and you will soon find a clip of someone who will show you how to do it properly.
When you go to the gym, forget the people around you. In fact, don't even look at them except to be polite. They are not you and what they are doing is not relevant to you. If you start watching them, you will soon be making foolish comparisons of yourself with them. You will get intimidated and be on your way home. The gym is for you. There are lots of normal people in a gym who are getting benefit out of the experience without becoming Arnold. If you let the local bodybuilder intimidate you, you will never get the benefits you are seeking.
If you are overweight and are using weights and cardio machines like treadmills etc. to try to accelerate your loss, I suggest that you lift weights first and add the cardio at the end. I also cannot emphasize enough that long term weight control cannot be predicated on using insane amounts of exercise to burn off calories in the absence of a good diet. Nor do I think that you can diet your way to the body you want without an exercise plan. Get a good diet going and then get an exercise plan.
Finally, the successful gym member is ultimately someone for whom the act of lifting weights is satisfying. If you start lifting and a couple of months go by and there is progress you will soon look forward to workouts. If you dread workouts even though you see progress, I think you should consider another avenue to the fitness you want. Weight training is a lifestyle and that means you have to love, or at least like, it. Your servant, as always.
If you are interested in taking up weight training, it is important to know what it will and will not do. It will not,for instance, tear fat from your body at a profoundly rapid pace. It will create muscle tissue which will give you increased capacity for all kinds of activities. It will not make changes in basic body structure, but it will cause your body to recast itself, increasing the size of areas that are being exercised.
If you are new to weights, it is important to make haste slowly and carefully. You must allow your body to adapt to new stress at its pace and that may not be as fast as your emotions would like. Launching yourself into as much lifting as you can manage is a certainty to cause your body to break down into injury or illness. The way to add weight training to your life is to plot out two or three months of training that will allow you to follow a defined schedule and give your body time to rise to the new challenge.
If you would like to learn to lift properly you need a trainer,who can set out for you a plan to follow at the beginning, when the equipment in the gym in a confusing jungle. If paying for a trainer is unappealing to you, it is possible to access any number of beginner workouts on the net. The net also has resources on how to do the various movements suggested by your workout. Just google the name of the exercise and search a little while and you will soon find a clip of someone who will show you how to do it properly.
When you go to the gym, forget the people around you. In fact, don't even look at them except to be polite. They are not you and what they are doing is not relevant to you. If you start watching them, you will soon be making foolish comparisons of yourself with them. You will get intimidated and be on your way home. The gym is for you. There are lots of normal people in a gym who are getting benefit out of the experience without becoming Arnold. If you let the local bodybuilder intimidate you, you will never get the benefits you are seeking.
If you are overweight and are using weights and cardio machines like treadmills etc. to try to accelerate your loss, I suggest that you lift weights first and add the cardio at the end. I also cannot emphasize enough that long term weight control cannot be predicated on using insane amounts of exercise to burn off calories in the absence of a good diet. Nor do I think that you can diet your way to the body you want without an exercise plan. Get a good diet going and then get an exercise plan.
Finally, the successful gym member is ultimately someone for whom the act of lifting weights is satisfying. If you start lifting and a couple of months go by and there is progress you will soon look forward to workouts. If you dread workouts even though you see progress, I think you should consider another avenue to the fitness you want. Weight training is a lifestyle and that means you have to love, or at least like, it. Your servant, as always.
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