Weight Training

It is important for both practical health and aesthetic reasons to train all muscle groups of your body. While there are hundreds of muscles in your body, they can be classified into the following groups, roughly from largest to smallest: legs, back, chest, shoulders, abdominals, and arms.

In turn, most of leg muscles can be classified into quads, hamstrings, and calves. Back muscles fall into lower back extensors and lats. Pecs are classified into upper and lower. Shoulder muscles include traps, anterior deltoids, medial deltoids, and posterior deltoids. Stomach muscles include obliques and abs. Finally, arm muscles include biceps, triceps and forearms.

There are numerous programs to train all these muscles to achieve different strength and physique goals. There is no one right program and any pre-defined program should be tailored to the needs of the individual.

You will be performing exercises split into several (typically 3-5) workout sessions per week. Each session will include several exercises. Each exercise will be performed for one or several sets. You will take 1-3 minutes to recover after a set before moving on to the next set. Each set will consist of several (typically between 6 and 15) repetitions or reps. One rep is one complete execution of the exercise with good form.

Good form means different things for different exercises. In general it can be defined as safe and effective exercise technique. With good form the only muscles stressed are the ones meant to be targeted by the exercise; the other muscles are either relaxed or provide a stable foundation for the working muscles. Common examples of bad form include swinging the weight up on the arm curl exercise (and many other "cheats" using body momentum instead of muscle strength), curving your back during the deadlift or squat exercises, pulling on your neck with the hands clasped behind it while doing sit-ups and many others. Your trainer will demonstrate good form for all exercises you will be performing. Failure to follow good form will rob you of optimal results and may lead to injuries.

A typical rep involves a one-second positive movement or the actual lift during which you will forcefully exhale. The positive will immediately be followed by a two-second negative or the lowering of the weight during which you will inhale. The negative will return the weight to its starting position. Do not hold your breath during exercise -- find your rhythm of inhaling on the negative and exhaling on the positive. It is important to perform the negative under control and, in fact, slower than the positive. Immediately after the negative the next positive will begin. As the result, a typical 10-rep set will take approximately 30 seconds to complete. After that you will take a 1-3 minute break before the next set. You will be taking longer breaks after heavy sets (ones with higher weight and fewer reps) for larger muscle groups and shorter breaks for light sets (low weight, high reps) for smaller muscle groups.

It is important to stretch both before and especially after lifting to prepare your muscles for work, minimize injury, and reduce muscle soreness (also called DOMS) which typically sets in 24 hours after the exercise. Though harmless in the long term, DOMS, especially in legs, can be quite debilitating for a day or two.

In most programs designed to build muscle and/or to cut fat you will be training to failure. That means you will execute the prescribed number of reps with such weight that you cannot do another rep in good form. Beginner trainees should not push themselves too much until they become comfortable with the exercises, so they may stop 1-2 reps short of failure. On the other hand, advanced trainees will often push past failure using a number of techniques such as decreasing the weight and immediately continuing the set, performing spotter-assistant reps, taking a short five-second pause before performing another rep, supersetting exercises (performing a set to failure and immediately doing another set of different exercise), and many others. There are some exercises for which to-failure training requires a trainer or an experienced spotter or you would be risking serious injury. These include barbell bench press and squats.

Strength development and muscle development are closely related and by training to build muscle (and lose fat), you will also improve your strength. But if strength is your primary goal, then you will follow somewhat different programs. Most of them will prescribe stopping your sets short of failure, and performing the same exercise often, so your muscles don't "forget" it from one session to the next. Even if you don't care about developing your strength, it is a good idea to do a month or two of strength-specific routine each year as a way to mix up your training and break out of plateaus.

No program will tell you how much weight to use because everybody's strengths are different. Instead, it will prescribe exercises, sets, and reps. If the program prescribes training to failure, you will pick such weight as to reach failure after specified number of reps. Generally, you will be able to perform about 4 reps of any exercise using 90% of one-rep max weight before hitting muscular failure, 8 reps with 80%, and 12 reps with 70%.

If you are following a strength program that does not prescribe to-failure training, then it will tell you how many reps to perform and how many reps short of failure to stop at. For example, you might be told to perform 5 reps and to stop 7 reps short of failure. That means that you should choose such a weight that would cause failure after 12 reps (5 + 7 = 12). Having determined the weight, you would only lift it 5 times in a set for this program before resting a couple of minutes before the next set. Under this program you would often only feel warmed up before the set is over. This may feel strange if you are used to to-failure training, but remember that this is a feature of strength-specific programs.

As you progress in your training you will continually get stronger and will need to increase weight to reach failure in the prescribed number of reps. This progress will be especially noticeable on compound exercises such as squat and deadlift early in your training. But remember to never sacrifice good form in order to increase weights!

2 Days/Week Full-Body Program, Low Volume

3 Days/Week Full-Body Program, Low Volume

3 Days/Week Split Program, Medium Volume

4 Days/Week Split Program, Medium Volume

5 Days/Week Split Program, High Volume

4 Days/Week Push/Pull Split Program

3 Days/Week Full-Body Program, Muscle/Strength Mix

3 Days/Week Strength Program

2-4 Days/Week No-Equipment Program

2-4 Days/Week Dumbbells-Only Program

1. "Weight training will make me bulky."
This is an especially widespread misconception among women. The truth is that becoming "bulky" or "lean" will depend entirely on nutrition. What weight training will accomplish is build strength, increase metabolism, and burn fat. But the amount and speed of muscle build-up will be determined by nutrition. Without a generous caloric intake, weight training alone will over time make you lean, not large or bulky. Of course, even if that is your target physique you can still achieve it many times faster if you follow the corresponding nutrition plan along with your weight training. Another thing to be said is that becoming excessively muscular, even with proper nutrition, is something that will take years and years for most men and can never happen at all for most women.

2. "Weight training will make me lose flexibility."
Another misconception that goes hand in hand with "it will make me bulky". The only way weight training can lead to loss of flexibility is if your physique becomes so muscular that muscle size begins to restrict your range of motion. Such physiques are unattainable for vast majority of people and the few that have them have dedicated many many years to building them. Of those few, a fair number have used illegal and potentially harmful substances to achieve their goal. Professional and olympic athletes across virtually all sports who need and have speed, agility, and flexibility far surpassing that of ordinary people all extensively participate in various weight training programs targeted towards their specific goals.

3. "Weight training is unhealthy."
Unsafe, unsupervised weight training can certainly lead to injury, much the same as any other physical activity. People with heart and certain other health conditions should also only participate in weight training with their doctor's consent and supervision. However these exceptional cases aside, weight training carries enormously wide range of physical and psychological health benefits including:

Increased muscle strength
Improved muscle endurance
Increased energy
Reduced body fat
Decresead LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels
Decreased risk of osteoporosis
Decreased blood pressure
Improved coordination, balance, and flexibility
Improved posture
Improved self-confidence and attitude towards everyday life

4. "For Only $99 You Can Have The Ultimate Training Program."
It's a lie, plain and simple. There is no one ultimate program. Any program when followed for too long will cease giving results -- variety is important! Sample programs given here are every bit as ultimate as anything you will pay money for. There are hundreds of other well known and freely available programs that will give you similar results. The way to build the ultimate program for yourself is to continuously monitor your progress and to work with your trainer to change and adjust your program to strengthen your weak points and to break through your plateaus.