Why Weight?

Why Would You Weight Train?
There are several very good reasons why strength training (aka “weight-lifting”) is just as crucial to your fitness program as cardiovascular work (that is, aerobic exercise such as walking, jogging, bicycling, etc.):

Strength training, as its name suggests, builds muscle strength—this is different from, but just as important as, the endurance you develop in aerobic training.
Strength training helps build bone density. This is important for all of us as we age but particularly for women, who are at greater risk for osteoporosis than men are.
Strength training has very interesting psychological benefits, particularly for women. More than one study has shown that women who lift weights feel an increased sense of confidence and power. My own anecdotal evidence certainly bears that out, both with my personal-training clients and with myself. And several of you have already written to say the same thing.

The Right Advice for Starting Out
That said, how does one go about setting up a strength-training program?

A Women’s Book of Strength

One of my favorite strength-training books for women is A Woman’s Book of Strength. Author Karen Andes is very familiar with the intimidation women feel upon entering a gym for the first time. She addresses those issues and goes on to provide detailed descriptions of several exercises, along with photographs, as well as careful explanations of correct and incorrect form.

How Often Should You “Lift”?
There are a few different schools of thought here, but the conventional wisdom is that you should lift two to three times a week at the most. You must rest 48 hours between strength workouts (this does not apply to cardiovascular workouts, which you can do as often per week as you like). Why the 48 hours? Strength-training is essentially a process of doing controlled damage to your muscles, which stimulates them to grow stronger, but they need 48 hours to complete that process. If you allow less time than that, you just perpetuate the damage without allowing the muscle strengthening to occur. On the other hand, lifting only once a week, while providing some benefits, is not nearly as effective as twice a week.

Machines vs. Free Weights
So you walk into your gym and you see some people seated on what look like Spanish Inquisitorial instruments of torture, while others are just heaving dumbbells around. Why? What’s the difference?

Dumbbells and barbells are called “free weights” because they have no supporting structure. You pick them up; you put them down. Free weights are beneficial because they simulate the way our muscles function in the real world, unsupported by the artificial structure of a machine. Also, the joints of the body (elbows, shoulders, knees, etc.) can move along their own paths, not along the paths the machine forces them to follow.

Hiring the Right Trainer

How do you find a good personal trainer? First, make sure they’re certified—they should be ACE- or ACSM-certified at the very least. Lots of people with nice builds and a love of exercise go into business as trainers, but just because they look good doesn’t mean they know what’s best for you. Your trainer should be attentive to you throughout the session and should listen to you carefully. And finally, you should feel comfortable with them. If you don’t, don’t hire them. Feeling intimidated does not make you stronger. And after all, you’re paying them.

However, free weights can be less safe if used carelessly or incorrectly, and your joints’ freedom to move in any direction can be a disadvantage as well as an advantage. By contrast, strength-training machines such as Nautilus, Cybex, etc. give you more stabilization—that is, they hold you in the correct position. Thus, they can be safer. However, this means your muscles don’t have to do the stabilizing work that they would do in the real world, so machines are a little less effective. Also, some machines are biomechanically less accurate than others, forcing joints to move in somewhat unnatural ways.

The big picture? Machines and free weights both have their pros and cons. Careful attention to technique can offset most of the cons in both cases. The most important thing is to find a strength workout that you’re willing to do. If you like machines and are more motivated to work out on them, go for it!

Designing Your Workout
Here are a few guidelines for building a safe, effective strength-training program:

Work the large muscles first, then the smaller ones. In other words, work the lower body first, then the upper. The largest muscles in the body are those of the thighs and buttocks.
Start with light weights for the first few weeks. By so doing, you give your joints, tendons, and ligaments a chance to toughen up. If you’re not sure what weight to use, start light.
Do one to two “sets” of eight to fifteen repetitions (“reps”) of each exercise. That is, do an exercise eight to twelve times (= one “set”); rest 30 to 90 seconds; then do the exercise another eight to twelve times. There are a lot of different schools of thought about optimal numbers of reps and sets, but this is the middle-of-the road version that works safely and effectively for most of us.
Whenever you start to feel like you can’t maintain correct form in an exercise, stop. If you’re too tired to maintain correct form, it means you have finished the set. The quality of the exercise is far more important than the quantity; and you also run less risk of injury if you stop before your form gets sloppy.
Hire a personal trainer to show you some lower and upper exercises and how to do them correctly. In next week’s column, I’ll describe some basic exercises to give you a complete strength-training workout, but it’s no substitute for having someone watch you do them and give you feedback. Once you and your trainer are satisfied that your technique is correct and safe, of course you can continue lifting on your own.

One Last Thing...

Be just as careful picking up and putting down weights, or loading and unloading machines, as you are doing the actual exercises. More injuries occur before and after the set than during, because people don’t pay attention.
HYDRATE, HYDRATE, HYDRATE!!! Sedentary people need at least eight glasses of water a day; active people like you need up to twice that much.
Dress comfortably. Don’t wear clothes that are too tight. Layers are a good idea; you may start out feeling chilly but heat up quickly.

This is the “big picture” of how to lift; the principles that should be part of any well-designed strength program. If you can’t wait until next week for recommended exercises, that’s great—go to your local gym and have one of the trainers show you five or six strength-training exercises. As I said in last week’s column, all you really need are two leg exercises, one pushing exercise, one pulling exercise, one abdominal exercise, and one low-back exercise to hit all the major muscles. And most of us can’t remember how to do more than six new exercises correctly anyway (at least I can’t).