One of the best activities you can add to your life is weightlifting. Weightlifting is good from any age, and just like compounding interest, the earlier you start the better. Does that mean that if you didn’t start young then you should not lift weights? Gladly, no, you can start at any age and condition. You will not gain as much as if you started young, and you may have to lift harder for some small gains, but the benefits far outweigh (hehe) not working out.
Myths about weightlifting
Weightlifting has had a bad reputation of creating injuries and injuring joints, however, it is not as dangerous as it is potrayed. It is harmful only if you don’t respect some basic rules. Here are some simple rules that work
1. Do not egolift
Ego lifting is trying to impress that girl next to you by taking as big a weight as possible. Weight maxxing will be temporary, pain maxxing will last a long after that girl went home. If you are starting up, the most important thing you will do in the first month is getting your form right. You start with either the load bar, or some light dumbbells and you follow instructions on how to perform an exercise with the proper form (youtube has lots of lifting instructors but if you have a trainer with you, all the better). My motto is take a weight that you can do 20 slow reps before fatigue, if you can’t control it, avoid it.
2. Don't progress too fast
You are not trying to win any awards (apart from winning in life). This is something you will be doing for a long time, so take your time, adjust slowly to it, make it count.
3. Don't try to make up for lost days.
Life happens, and sometimes, you may miss a day or two of your workout, you will not make it up by pushing yourself. Pushing yourself may only lead to injuries and that is a no no, injuries are the worst enemies of progress.
4. Stretch after your routine.
If there is one activity that is just as important as the lifting, it is the stretching. Stretching will restore your muscles’ flexibility while reducing the pressure from your joints caused by contracted muscles. Some knee pains from squats start as a result of the quads and hamstrings compressing the knee joint just because they remain tight and contracted.
5. Adequate rest and recovery period.
The rest and recovery period for weightlifting is typically 24 to 48 hours. Yes that one to two day rest ensures the body repairs the minor micro tears you introduced in the muscles, and probably tendons. Tendons typically take longer to recover, thus the best recovery time is 48 hours. That means you mostly can sustainably do two or three sessions a week.
Benefits
Many studies have shown that having more muscle mass leads to a better quality of life while reducing general all cause mortality (reduces the chances of fatal problems generally). I cannot emphasize enough the importance of being generally fit. All I can add is, you don’t have to be an elite level weightlifter to get the benefits. Just being overall fit is good enough to make weightlifting a worthwhile cause.
Equipment
Most gyms are well equipped for any and most workouts. However, if like me you find it too much of a hassle to prepare and get to a gym, I have some good news for you. You don’t need fancy equipment for most workouts. There are also alternative exercises for each muscle group you want to workout. Depending on the equipment you have, you will always have a workout alternative. What works for starting is dumbbells (5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 lbs), a bar and its weights, (you won’t start with too heavy so, standard bar (40lbs), two or three weight pairs (10, 20 and 30 lbs). With this combination, you have a minimum load bar weight of 40lbs a maximum of 160lbs. It will take a long time before you move beyond that weight, and if you are starting up and get to max this out, please contact me and let us celebrate together.
Routine
You ideally want to start with a full body routine. Full body routines target your calves, quads, hamstrings, glutes, back, core, arms and shoulders. They may be divided up but I find 6 exercises per session ensure to hit all the points by the end of the week. Some routines target lower vs upper days (leg day), but as a beginner, you don’t need to be too specific. Everytime you do a workout, it is so much easier to do a whole body routine. Getting a routine is also easy. Just google full body weightlifting workout, and start familiarizing yourself with some of them.
It is important to track your record. This will help you see your progress over time and also ensure you lock in the right weights for every exercise. You can create a small excel sheet, or in this digital age, some small apps can help. Some already come with a workout routine and some allow you to add your own.
Stretching
When ever you do a workout, always spare sometime for the stretching. Each stretch you do should be for a duration of about 1 minute, two sessions. Stretching ensures your muscles remain relaxed and flexible and works to protect your joints from compression damage. Many workout routines don’t pay attention to this and have no provision for this, so just make sure to add it in your routine.
While we are on this subject flexibility is very important in life. Some knee and ankle pains are brought about just as a result of increased wear and tear on a joint or tendon due to wrong movement of a limb brought about by reduced flexibility. There are some fundamental minimum ranges of motion for all our joints. Modern static lifestyle leads to loss of limb mobility, contributing immensely to this problem. If you have less than minimum range of motion, especially with the hips and ankles, it is very important to prioritize this range of motion before going seriously into doing squats. You may have to limit your range of squat while you work on your target flexibility.
Challenges
Now that you know, here is your next task
- identify two or three days of the week that you can work out.
- Look for a weekly body workout routine that you can do
- Study the exercises that you need to do, or do on the fly on your phone
- Create an excel sheet of workouts weights and weeks
- Try out your weights for every exercise and know your starting weights. Add that to your tracking sheet
- Lets go crazy.
I wish you all success in your gains