You don’t have to lose track of the maze when it comes to strength training. Instead, it’s an easy type of exercise using resistance with dumbbells, fixed weights like barbells, and weighted machines at the gym. But if you’re not sure how to set foot, you’re not alone.
If you’ve been hesitant to finally use that piece of home gym equipment that you just never used, because you don’t know how to use it, the weight-lifting part of the gym can be intimidating, too.
So to make things easier, we made the ultimate beginner’s strength training guide.
What is Strength Training?
Strength workouts are created to build lean and powerful muscles. It is achieved with various resistance through adding resistance with weights, resistance bands or simply how your body is.
What are the Key Benefits of Strength Training?
1. Increased Strength
Weight training straight up makes your muscles stronger. You overload your muscles by gradually increasing resistance, causing growth and development. It builds noticeable muscle mass over time because it is a progression that remains consistent.
2. Boosts Metabolism
The more lean muscle you get, the higher your basal metabolic rate becomes (more calories burned at rest). Not to mention, with strength training, the intensity of training causes your body to burn more oxygen and increases the need for your metabolism to work. It leaves you burning calories even after your workout is finished.
3. Reduces Risk of Injury
If you do strength training, it’s not just your major muscles you’re strengthening — you’re benefiting your tendons, ligaments, cartilage, fascia, and other connective tissues around your joints as well. The added support reduces the risk of injury and they make strength training an excellent additional form of exercise.
4. Supports Overall Health
Many health benefits come from strength training. It will also help strengthen your heart, regulate your blood pressure and may help manage blood sugar levels, lowering diabetes potential, too. Weight-bearing exercises also help increase bone density which is important for those who are at risk for osteoporosis and osteopenia.
5. It Boosts Self-Confidence and Self-esteem
Lifting weights positively is worth it! Measurable goals set you on a path to discovering how much you can do with your body. It works beyond physical strength, it uplifts your mood, improves your mental health, and gives you a nice stout shot to your confidence and self-esteem.
What Equipment Do You Need for Strength Training?
You don’t need loads of high-tech gear to begin a weight training routine. The basics like dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, and cables, all of which you’ll find in most gyms. If you like working out at home, you can get these and turn your own home into an at-home gym, wherever that may be your garage or your backyard.
When you move to heavier weights, it might make sense to look at a couple of extra tools. Weight-lifting shoes for a pair and a lifting belt to help support your back and brace your core during things like deadlifts can be a lot better than regular shoes, though. Then there are the weightlifting gloves which cover your palms give them extra cushion and allow for a better grip — critical to good form. This gives you a solid grip to prevent slips so your lifting technique doesn’t get off course.
How Do I Build Strength?
By exposing the muscles to a new challenge, strengthening is introduced and the muscles have to adapt and grow stronger to meet increased demand. For example, for those starting, bodyweight exercises like push-ups, planks and squats are solid starting points. When these exercises get easy, you need to make these exercises more intense by adding weights (resistance training).
For strength building, you’ll need to get your rep range down—less than 12 reps. It is a nice range to recruit as many muscle fibres as possible during each set. The point here should be that by the time you’ve reached your final rep, you should be struggling because that means you’re fatiguing the muscles. Fatigue is fundamental in telling the body to change, and to become stronger so you can handle the challenge better the next time around.
How Quickly Can I Build Strength Through Weight Training?
If you’ve been lifting for a while, you might be used to ‘newbie gains’ – a short window of time in which you simply see a surge in strength. It’s fairly easy to see progress as a beginner. With bodyweight exercises and a series of kettlebells, barbells and similar things for the gym. However, most of the improvements that you notice are probably in the first few weeks as your body adjusts to the new stress to which it is subjected.
Where Can I Do Strength Training and Do I Need a Lot of Equipment?
The thing I love about strength training is that it is so flexible, you can do it anywhere! By all means all you need is enough space to be able to move safely. Neither is the equipment required; you can get started with bodyweight exercises.
And if you’re seeking to raise the intensity of your workout, the addition of weights can now be ‘thrown’ into the mix. Kettlebells and dumbbells are great tools, but water bottles, tin cans, or resistance bands can also help—without bulky gym equipment.