Weight lifting is one of the most neglected portions of many weight loss programs.  It is true that cardiovascular exercise burns more calories while you are exercising, but resistance training burns more calories after.  It speeds up your metabolism, and therefore, you burn more calories all day long – even while you sleep.

Most people believe that resistance training will make their muscles much bigger and they don’t want to bulk up.  In reality, lifting weights will help you lose the fat layer that covers your muscles, and will leave them toned and defined.

The worst thing that you can do while losing fat, is lose muscle at the same time.  Muscle burns a lot of calories every day, even if you are not exercising.  If you lose muscle, your body will not burn as many calories as it used to, and it will be easier to gain the weight back later on.  You can think of weight training as insurance against muscle loss – even if you don’t gain muscle, you will be holding on to what you have. 

Building muscle is a long and hard process – especially for women. There is no need to worry about getting too muscular overnight.  It might be impossible to find a professional bodybuilder today who has not used a combination of steroids and other drugs at some point.  Even Arnold Schwarzenegger admits to using steroids in his youth.  If you feel that you are getting too muscular, you can simply modify your training to an easier maintenance level. 
 This is a recent picture of the current “Mr. Olympia” Jay Cutler and myself.  Notice that we are the same height, but he is 140 lbs heavier than me!  His bicep is almost 23″ around, my thigh is 23″.

I do not train to look like Jay Cutler.  I train to look like the male fitness models who are on the cover of a Men’s Health magazine.  Most women want to train to look like female fitness models who are on the cover of Shape or Oxygen.

All of these models, male and female, do resistance training to attain the bodies that they have.  If you want to look like them, you must eat and train like them.

There are literally hundreds of book that you can read on weight lifting and bodybuilding.  There are also hundreds of variations of workout routines and thousands of exercises that you can perform.

Here is a summary of the basics to get you started:

1.  You tear down muscle, to build up muscle
     When you lift weights, you actually cause microscopic tears in your muscles.  As your muscles heal these microscopic tears, they adapt to the strain of weight training and get larger as they become stronger.  It should not be painful to lift weights.  You will feel the “burn” of lactic acid building up near the end of a set, but you should never feel acute pain.  Acute pain is a sign of an injury.

     When you first start out, it is very common to experience muscle soreness that starts the day after (or even the second day after) and can last up to a week.  This is known as DOMS, or delayed onset muscle soreness.  This is caused by working out too hard at the start.  Your body needs some time to get used to this type of training.  It is better to train too lightly at the start, than to overdo it. 

2.  You need to use challenging weight
     A rule of thumb, is to choose a weight that is at least 60% of your maximum.  You need at least this amount of weight to challenge your muscles to grow.  If you can lift a 100 lb weight, you need to choose a weight that is at least 60 lbs.  You don’t need to test to see what your maximum really is, you can ballpark this by your effort.

     For general resistance training, you should be able to lift a weight at least 6 times.  If you can’t, lower the amount of weight.

3.  Sets and Repetitions
     If you lift very heavy weights only a few times (1-4), you will be training mainly for strength.  Olympic weight lifters train this way.  You will gain in strength, but you will not get large increases in muscle size.

     If you train with light weights and do many repetitions (20+) you will be working on muscle endurance.  Many women train this way, but this does not tend to burn a lot of calories or have much of an impact on the muscle.  Lifting a 5lb weight 100 times will not have the same impact on your muscles as lifting a 25 lb weight 8 times. 

     The standard for most programs is around 3 sets of 6 – 12 repetitions.  This is not the latest “trendy” routine, but is something that has been around for a long time.  Weight lifting fads come and go, but most people tend to come back to the basics.  If you can’t lift a weight at least 6 times, you would lower the weight.  If you find that you can lift a weight easily 12 times, it is time to increase the weight.

4.  Keep your sessions short
     The maximum time that you should spend lifting weights is 45-60 minutes.  After an hour, you will be too tired to get any more benefit out of your workout.  If you can’t get in all of the exercises that you want to, just split up your workout over 2 days.

     If you are going to combine some cardio exercise such as stair climbing or treadmill, do this after you weight train.  Doing cardio before you lift weights, will impact how much energy and strength you have.

5.  Keep your rest intervals short
     Don’t rest more than 60-90 seconds between sets.  This will keep your heart-rate elevated and keep your workouts short.  I have actually seen people who sit on machines and read books or magazines between each set!  If you are bored between sets, do something proactive such as stretching or do a lap around the gym.  

6.  Every workout need to be just a little harder
     This concept is known as overload and progression.  Your muscles will respond and adapt very quickly to whatever workout routine you throw at them.  The amount of weight that you lift today, may seem very light a year from now.

     You don’t have to increase the amount of weight that you lift every workout, you just need to increase the intensity.  Other ways to increase the intensity would be to shorten the time that you rest between sets, or increase the number of sets and reps. 

     For example, you could start by lifting 100 lbs for 3 sets of 6 repetitions and rest 90 seconds between each set.  You could gradually build up to lifting 100 lbs for 3 sets of 12 repetitions and rest 45 seconds between each set.  Now you could increase to 105 lbs and start the process over again.

7.  Do simple compound muscle exercises
     When you have a choice between two exercises for the same body part, choose the exercise that you can lift the most weight.  Most people choose the opposite and do the easier exercise that isolates a single muscle, but they don’t get the results.  This way you will actually be training more muscles at the same time, and get the most benefit out of it. 

     For example, using a seated leg extension machine works your quadriceps.  However, if you do barbell squats, you will actually work most of the muscles in your legs and torso at the same time. 

8.  Your muscles grow when you are resting
     This may not seem to make sense for many people, but someone who lifts weights every day will get very poor results compared to the person who only lifts a couple times a week.  This is classic overtraining.

     Remember that when you lift weights, you cause microscopic tears to the muscle.  If you don’t give the muscle time to recuperate, you will just keep tearing it so that it never has a chance to repair and grow.  As a beginner, you could work the same muscles every day.  As you become more advanced and lift heavier weights, your body will need more time to rest.  Most advanced bodybuilders exercise the same body part no more than every 6 or 7 days.

9.  There is no perfect training program
     I have been on some very excellent training programs.  The problem is, your body eventually adapts to any program and your results soon start to suffer.  Don’t get caught up in following a program that no longer gives you the results you want.  If you change around your workouts once and a while, your body can’t fully adapt to it,  and your results will continue.

     The more experience you have weight training, the quicker your body starts to adapt to any training program.  But don’t worry, if you really loved a certain training program, you can always cycle back to it later. 

Training Routines

Your body takes time to adjust to the demands of weight training.  It may take years of training for people to be able to handle an advanced program.  Here is the basic progression that bodybuilding routines follow.

Level 1 Beginner
     Most people start out by doing full body workouts.  Most gyms will have a variety of machines that will train all of the major muscles of the body.  Simply go to each of the machines and do 1 or 2 sets each.  You could train this way every second day if you wanted to.

Level 2 Beginner
     Split your upper and lower body parts.  This is known as a two day split.  One day only work your legs, and the next day work your upper body.  Most people use mainly weight machines.

Level 3 Intermediate
     Introduction of more free weights and perhaps new styles of routines.  This is usually still a two day split, but you may do more than one exercise per body part.  One of the best routines that I have ever used at this level was the Body For Life routine.  This uses a pyramid structure.  You start by lifting light weights for many reps.  For each following set, you lift more weight for less reps.  It did wonders for me!

Level 4 Intermediate
     A 3 day split may be introduced.  It now takes you three workouts to get through all of your body parts.  You now do more exercises per body part, and you also get more days off before you work the same body part again.  Many average recreational bodybuilders stay here.

Level 5 Advanced
     A 4 day split is now common.  Generally you will now have 6 or 7 days off between the same body part.  Workouts are very intense and you will need a week to recover.  Most serious recreational bodybuilders stay at this level.

Level 6 Super Advanced
     This is really for the professional bodybuilder who makes training their full time job.  They may train as little as one body part per workout.  They often train with weights 2 times a day, one body part in the morning, and one at night. 

Conclusion

You don’t have to do fancy routines to get a huge benefit out of weight training.  If you are new to weight training, I would suggest that you ask a trainer at a gym for a basic orientation.  Just by  following my simple advice, you should start to see positive changes to your body.  Of course, don’t forget the cardio and the nutrition.