nawadi-roman:

gorgonology:

greenwire:

inquisitive-june:

Do any of y’all have tips for weight training?  Specifically for women if you have them because I might start weight training this summer and I don’t know where to start.

Not a trainer, etc. Just a person online with opinions. But this is my advice. First, I’d start with body weight exercises. Lunges, squats, pushups, step up, planks, situps, and glute bridges. You can google to find more, but I’d say pick five and start with those. Next, I’d move to resistance bands and very light weights (but only if you already own them). You can do modified bicep curls, tricep extensions, and hamstring stretches/curls with resistance bands. Either kind works, but the kind that look like a rubber jump rope are the ones I personally used in physical therapy so that’s what I purchased. I also have a stability ball for vestibular exercises, but those are also fairly cheap and you can use to assist with wall squats and sit ups if you need it. A pack of three resistance bands and a stability ball cost me less than $40 usd at target.

Once you get to the point that you’re adept at the motions, it’s time to add weight. Either free weights or machines work at this point, imo. Free weights are better because they don’t target muscles and you’re forced to stabilize them. Machines are better because they force your form to be more correct and it’s more difficult to injure yourself. Either way, I’d get a cheap membership to access either the weights or the machines.

For personal training, I’d recommend against the big box gyms. You’d want to look for a small, privately owned gym and interview the trainer. I personally have one of the cheap memberships at a big gym, but then I go once a month to a privately owned gym to get new exercises from a woman who is a trainer and has physical therapy training too. This was especially helpful for beginning because while it was a huge front-end cost, once I learned how to mix and match the different exercises, I could track on my own and split them up into upper and lower body workout days.

^ this is very comprehensive and great advice!! I think YouTube is a great resource for exercise ideas but also instagram. Also I will add that if you are just starting off, please perform your exercises in front of a mirror to make sure you’re using proper form. Also even if you are strength training, do not by pass a cardio warm up and dynamic stretching. Also just remember if you have “tight” muscles, stretching is great, but tightness usually indicates weakness, so those tight areas are good to focus on for strengthening too! HEP2go is free to use to a certain extent, where you can search by body part for different exercises (both mobility and strengthening exercises). This is a great place to start especially for body weight and resistance band exercises.

Once you start lifting free weight or machines follow the Wendler 531 program. For all the details download the book. It builds both strength and size and the book offers a variety of program structure for 2x to 6x workout/week. I’ve been following it for years and it’s both simple and effective. A very important thing to remember when you select any workout program is to know that it’s written for men, so to adjust it for women you’ll do the following:

1) Increase the weight at small gradual. They usually recommend 5lb increase in most programs but you can make it 1 lb or whatever weight less than 5lb. Many gyms don’t have small increases so it’s best to buy them yourself and use it when you need it. Men have more explosive power than women so they can lift more heavy weight at low repetition than us. Hence they can tolerate bigger jump increase than women.

2) when it comes to hypertrophy workouts i.e workouts with lots of repetition like 8 and above. Add 4 more reps to whatever rep it’s written. If the program says 8 reps for example make it 12 reps instead. Women have more stamina than men hence we can lift the same weight for higher repetition than men and that’s also the best way for us to workout.