Weight Lifting Tips
Following guidance and advice will not only help you to get the most benefit from your weight lifting but help you to avoid common pitfalls and injury too.
- Warm up properly before lifting a single weight, making sure you
thoroughly stretch all the muscles you will be working out. Warm ups should last
an absolute minimum of 10 minutes in order to increase cardiovascular activity
and ensure every cell has enough energy to start the work out.
Start with a weight you can manage at least 10 repetitions; this will help to build strength. You will notice over a number of sessions that you can manage more and more repetitions as your strength builds. Once that weight becomes easy you can add a little more weight and repeat the process to slowly build up you muscles.
Make sure you are comfortable before increasing the weight, lifting heavy weights prematurely can cause damage and injury as well as simply uncomfortable and counterproductive. Don’t lift any weight you aren’t comfortable with especially without a spotter present.
A spotter is essential once you move on to heavy weights that have the potential to cause serious injury if they were to fall. Spotters are also able to give advice and improve your technique, as they will often be experienced weight lifter or trainers themselves.
Never hold you breath, your muscles are working hard and so you body requires all the oxygen it can get. Withholding this vital oxygen damages muscle cells, so it is important you breath freely thought out the exercise.
When working on unilateral muscles (identical muscles on either side of the body) it is important to start with your weaker side, once you have done as many repetitions as you can do the same number on the other side but no more. This will prevent you from overworking your good side and making the imbalance even more strongly defined. Sometimes this imbalance can be due to the bones causing one side to look bigger as they are not 100% symmetrical but this technique should help to even the two sides out.
It is important to work out all of your body’s muscles rather than concentrating on just one part of the body, i.e. working the upper body and ignoring the legs. Concentrating on just one muscle group will make you body look unbalanced and unnatural.