Beginning Weight Lifting

When most people think about weight lifting, they envision a culture of steroid using freaks who spend the majority of their time lifting enormous weights over and over. This is about as far from the truth as possible. The average guy cant spend all day at the gym doing endless amounts of exercises, and even if you could the human body isn't a tank and would over-train almost instantly. I know for a fact when I first started weight lifting at the age of 14, I thought if i just worked out everyday, in no time I'd be one of those guys you see in the magazines. But in exchange for my hard work I received no gains, that's when I realized, I must have been doing something wrong.

The Human body like everything in nature responds to stimulus, in this case the stimulus is a weight being lifted to the point of exhaustion, and the response is muscle growth and adaption. This is the basic principle that all weight lifting is based on. Choosing the correct stimulus for your goal is key if you wish to receive satisfactory results. In this section I will discuss the basics of Weight Lifting, benefits, and typical reasons people begin weight lifting.

The first thing you need to know is some common terms...

Exercise: A set movement used to target muscle(s).

Barbell: A metal bar from 3 to 5 feet long with weights that are either permanently attached or can be added to increase the barbells weight, usually used for multiple join movements with both arms or legs.

Dumbbell: A short bar usually under a foot that also has permanent or temporary weight attached to the ends, usually used held by a single limb for isolation movements involving few muscles.

Rep: A single movement of raising and then lowering a weight, whichever comes first depending on the exercise to contract and then release the targeted muscle(s).

Set: A group of "reps" doing a certain exercise to exhaust the targeted muscles.

Split Routine: A weight lifting routine which splits parts of the body into different days. For example Monday-arms, Tuesday-chest, Wednesday, shoulders, etc.

Full Body Routine: All parts of the body are done every day that you work out. For example Monday-full body, Wednesday-full body, Friday-full body, etc.

Usually in the beginning of weight lifting people combine all three goals and therefore do a very basic routine such as a Full body routine this allows you to build up strength, and learn the form needed to accomplish the exercise correctly. Below I will give an example beginner routine.

This routine should be done three days a week (such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Beginner - Full body routine

Legs- Squats- 4 sets of 12 reps -
Back- Cable Pulldowns- 3 sets of 12 reps-
Chest- Barbell Flat Bench Press- 3 sets of 12 reps-
Abs- Inclined Crunch- 4 sets of 15-20 reps-
Shoulders- Shoulder press- 3 sets of 12 reps-
Arms- Triceps Extension-3 sets of 10 reps-
- Bicep Curls- 3 sets of 10 reps-

Anohter well known basic principle of any good routine is progressive overload this is used to force yoru body to continue growing and adapting so that you can transform your body. Sometimes this is acheived by increasing the reps but in the above workout its doen through increasing the weight used every week.

This is a very basic workout which anyone who wants to start weight training can do. Be careful doing every single exercise and dont overdo anything, follow form correctly and results will come.