| Get With the Program! Basics |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
| The healthiest vegetables are always green. Greens are undoubtedly healthy, but vegetables and fruits in other colors—red, orange, yellow, blue, and purple—all bring different nutrients to the table. You’ll get the most antioxidants, vitamins and minerals if you keep your plate colorful. |
|
|
|
Men and women have been weight training for years, but it’s only recently that we’ve come to truly understand how beneficial strength training can be. If for no other reason, you should strength-train because it combats two profound effects of aging: muscle loss and bone loss. But strength training also has significant weight loss and weight maintenance benefits. The strength you gain from working with weights makes you capable of doing aerobic exercise at a  higher level so that you ultimately burn more calories. Usually, lifting weights will also cause you to build muscle tissue, and since muscle requires a lot of energy to maintain, this will increase the amount of calories you burn. At the very least, just by helping you save muscle from age-related loss, strength training will keep you from losing any of your body’s natural calorie-burning ability.
When you strength-train, what you are essentially doing (or should be doing) is fatiguing your muscles to the point where they will rebuild themselves in order to handle the strain better next time around. That’s what strength training is. But it’s also very localized. Each exercise builds only certain muscle groups, so you need a regimen that includes exercises for all of the major muscle groups in the body.
It’s very important that no matter what weight-training exercises you perform, you perform them properly. Bad form can cause aches and pains and, in the worst cases, injury. Click here for an effective, easy-to-follow routine. You might also consider consulting a personal trainer or exercise specialist to teach you some weight-lifting basics. If you do, I recommend that this person be certified by either the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the American Council on Exercise (ACE) or the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).
How Often?
If you strength-train once a week, you’ll generally maintain your muscular strength, though your muscular endurance might decline some. Training two times a week will improve your muscular strength and more or less maintain your muscular endurance. Three times a week—the magic number for your purposes—will improve both your muscular strength and your muscular endurance. (If you want to work up to four times a week, great, but it’s not essential.)
How Many Sets and Repetitions?
A repetition (or rep) is one completion of a given exercise. For instance, if you’re doing a biceps curl, every time you raise the weight to your shoulder, then lower it back down to starting position, you’ve completed one rep. I want you to do between eight and ten repetitions per set. Sets are groupings of repetitions. Take a 15-to-30-second break between each set. When you allow too much time to elapse, your muscles recover too quickly, lessening the effects of training. Begin by performing one set of each exercise: after about a month, progress to two sets. After another month, consider progressing to three sets.
How Much Weight?
To have an effect, the weights you use must cause fairly intense fatigue in your muscles. But you don’t want your weights to be so heavy that you strain yourself attempting to lift them. My suggestion is that you begin using a light weight you can lift without much effort. Increase this weight gradually until you arrive at a weight that makes you fatigued (or gives you a slight burning sensation in your muscles) after eight or ten repetitions.
Before you go into your regular routine, do a warm-up set, which will help you avoid injury: Using half the amount of weight that you’ve selected for the exercise, do four or five repetitions. Then proceed with the actual set.
Which exercise?
The beauty of weight training is that it really doesn’t take very long, and you don’t have to do a million different exercises to get results. I’ve gotten great results with what I call the Essential Eight—basic exercises done with dumbbells that work all the major muscle groups and are relatively uncomplicated. Click here for the Essential Eight.
For more information on strength training check out my books Get With the Program! and The Get With the Program! Guide to Good Eating.
top |
