Go To Fitness Home | Add to Favorites
7 Must Know Facts To Build Your Strength Training Routine
Copyright 2005 strength-training-woman.com
Building a strength training routine can be one of the trickiest parts of a fitness program. Ask 10 personal trainers what the best strength training routine is and you will get 10 different answers. Below are 7 must-know guidelines to use when building a strength training program. Each guideline provides the basic foundation that all strength training programs abide by. Learning the proper way to use free weights will greatly improve your strength, fitness, and health levels.
1) We cannot strength train a muscle today and tomorrow. We have to allow at least 24-36 hours of rest. Lifting on consecutive days leads to overtraining, muscle fatigue, and possible injury. All of our strength gains are made during the rest time!
2) We cannot spot reduce. This means if we want to lose weight in our stomach, doing 100 crunches a day will not make our stomach flab disappear. To reduce stomach fat, we need an overall reduction in body fat. Reducing overall body fat results from eating well, regular exercise, and proper rest.
3) We can spot tone. If we want bigger biceps, we can strength train for hypertrophy (fancy word for muscle growth). It is possible for us to focus on one specific muscle group. This is sometimes called targeted training. Studies have shown that machines isolate a muscle better than free weights.
4) Our strength training routines must be regular and consistent for results to take place. It took us years to put on the weight. We shouldn't expect it to all fall off in three weeks. The best outcome from your fitness and strength training program should be a lifestyle change. Replace bad habits with healthy ones and reap the rewards.
5) Realize that our strength training routine must be changed every 4-6 weeks. This will prevent our body from hitting a plateau and it will keep things interesting. We can change our method, our exercise or our intensity level. Not changing our routine on a regular basis will eventually stop producing results. We will continually grow stronger as we progress with our fitness program. Be sure your body is challenged on every workout.
6) Our strength training routines must be built according to our specific goals. Specific goals may be: fat loss, hypertrophy, maintaining weight or adding bulk. Each goal will have a different method that is best suited for optimal results. Someone who is interested in losing body fat will strength train differently than someone looking to increase muscle bulk. Knowing what your specific goals are will aid in creating the best strength training program possible.
7) Our strength training routines must work all of the major muscle groups in our body 1-3 times per week. This includes our biceps, triceps, shoulders, chest, back, abs, quads, glutes, hamstrings and calves. Leaving out muscle groups will create an imbalance.
By using these 7 guidelines, anyone should be able to build a decent and effective program. The idea is to develop a safe strength training routine that provides us with major health and fitness benefits. Strength training has certainly increased in popularity over the past few years. Knowing how to build a strength training routine for our specific goals will move us one step closer to a fit body.
About the author:
Lynn VanDyke is the proud owner of http://strength-training-woman.com You may receive your free strength training log and routines by visiting her site. Her newest ebook has been voted the ##1 fitness ebook on the net. Learn more about it by visiting
http://strength-training-woman.com/31-no-holds-barred-answers.html
Source: Article Directory
A Diet Made For You Will Make All The Difference
For the best diet results, you need a personalized diet that you can stick to.People diet for lots of reasons, and with lots of aims in mind. No matter what your aims are, the most effective diet to achieve them is a personalized one. A personalized diet which suits you is what you need, whether you want to improve your health, or just lose weight.Once you've decided to make a change for the better in your diet the next step is to seek advice from an expert. There are a myriad of fitness and diet plans to suit you available from your local gym or fitness center. There will usually be someone there you can talk to and discover what the best diet for you is. Alternatively you can take join up to one of the many fitness...
Defeating Back Pain Forever
By: Jim O'Connor - The Fitness Promoter August 21, 2005(c) Jim O'Connor / Wellness Word, LLC - All Rights ReservedBack pain, one of the most common physical, and debilitating ailments today, affects 70% - 80% of us at one time or another in our liv...
400,000 Reasons To Stop Smoking
from The Health and Fitness Information Networkhttp://www.health-and-fitness-information.comMost of us know that smoking is indeed a habit that can have many serious implications on our health, but there's a tendency to view the problem lightly. It's important though, that every smoker be aware of the facts concerning smoking. So here are some eye openers for you...The World Health Organization has been studying smoking trends and statistical patterns across the globe and has come up with the following statistics:A good deal of variation exists from one part of the world to another. Many more women smoke in Eastern Europe than in East Asia and the Pacific Region. Eastern Europe itself has a particularly high rate of smoking, with up to 59 percent of adult males smoking.<...
|
 |
|
|
Fitness - Build Muscles And Smash Plateau For Beginners
Five times a week, two hours each visit. You've been more faithful to your gym schedule than you've ever been to any girlfriend you've had. And for a while it paid off: those muscles started rippling and the girls started paying attention. |  |
| Fitness - Ten Excuses Why People Don’t Do Fitness Exercise.
Here’s a list of reasons that people give to get out of doing fitness exercises. Obviously you are not one of these people and you have put in to action a plan to regularly exercise and keep fit. 1) I am too busy right now, I’ll start next week.2) I’ve tried exercising for a few days, but I just need a rest for a week, just to get balanced.3) I haven’t got any suitable clothes a... | |
| Fitness - Easy Steps To Avoiding Gym Rage
Have you heard about this recently? Many of us go through this at our local gym or fitness centre on a regular basis and are become increasingly frustrated. It usually starts as a group of trainees chat away their experiences of the day on a bench or at a piece of equipment for fifteen minutes while you are waiting to use it. Or someone is standing directly in front of the barbell rack doing tiny lateral raises when you want to get at the really big weights. Or casuals using equipment favoured by the regulars and often looked at like pieces of personal furniture for their own use. All this builds up stress especially between the months o... | |
| Fitness - Heart Rate Exercise Training
is the zone which helps you to get strong and fit, while keeping a control over your Heart Rate. In the Heart Rate Training Zones, calculations are made by taking into consideration your Maximum Heart Rate and your Resting Heart Rate. Within each training zone subtle physiological effects take place to enhance your fitness.Exercising at the right intensity during Heart Rate Exerc... | |
| Fitness - Personal Training: 3 Powerful Ways To Position Yourself As An Expert
Regardless of what profession you are in, it is critical that people believe that you know what you are talking about! You won't find very many successful lawyers whose clients never win in court, or popular doctors whose patients are continually misdiagnosed. This concept obviously applies to personal trainers as well, and making sure you are viewed as an expert in your field is as important as having the knowledge to begin with.It is helpful t... | |
| Fitness - Muscle Building Workouts - Build Muscle And Fitness The Right Way
Does this sound familiar to you?You have goals for your muscle building workouts.You follow a regime that allows you to achieve thosegoals. You're doing everything right. But, you fallon your butt.Then you find that you get back up and start the wholeprocess working on your muscle building workouts allover again. Only to find that you keep falling down,getting back up again and repeating this over andover.You do this until you think that you are never goingto achieve anything here. You think that this traininglark isn't for you. So what do you do?Yep, you give up.Why does this happen and what can I do about it?You've probably asked yourself that ques... | |
| Fitness - Joseph Pilates: The Man Behind The Movement
Joseph Pilates : The Man behind the MovementJoseph Pilates was born in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1880. He was a frail young boy, who suffered from asthma, rickets, and rheumatic fever. In order to overcome his weakened state, he studied body building, skiing, diving, and gymnastics. In time, he developed his own series of exercises. He moved to England in 1912, and spent much of his time working as a circus performer and a boxer. Eventually, he started teaching self defense methods to a group of police detectives from Scotland Yard. In 1914, at the outset of World War I, he was ... | |
| Fitness - Where To Buy Hgh -
There are hundreds of new Human Growth Hormone (HGH) supplements on the market today due to their explosive popularity. A quick Internet search turns up thousands of sites offering "incredible deals" and "limited time offers" on everything from sprays to lozenges to effervescent tablets. However, because of the sudden market saturation of HGH supplements it can be difficult to know where to shop for the safest, most effective products.One helpful resource is a respected online directory, such as the Open D... | |
| Fitness - Eating The Australian Way
Australians are often divided into the haves, and the have-nots. But they're not always talking about money. These days, it's often the haves (too much body fat), versus the have-nots (not overweight). We can't seem to make up our minds whether to eat at McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut, Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, and All-You-Can-Eat fast food restaurants, or whether to grab a protein snack, a freshly-squeezed fruit juice with wheatgrass and go straight to the gym. Women's Magazines have the same problem. A sample magazine from this month featured diet and exercise routines from three TV personalities and movie stars. Yet the back section of the magazine featured recipes such as luscious mocha fudge cake. The incidence of obesity in Australia rose dramatically in ... | |
| Fitness - Avoid Common Fitness Pitfalls
While exercising isn’t complicated, it’s very easy to make mistakes. Often times the mistakes are made because of lack of proper technique training or simply due to rushing to get the workout completed. Regardless of the reason for the mistakes, they can lead to injuries or at the very least be counter-productive to your fitness goals.Of course it’s important to know specifically what to do to be... | |
|
|