Weight Training Exercises

One of the biggest challenges for a person new to weight training is learning an effective, efficient strategy to develop the desired muscle tone. Just throwing around random weights until you’re tired isn’t going to do it. Weight training requires a plan, and there’s a very simple strategy that will give beginners that hang of it in no time.

This training principle involves dividing your weight training exercises into two components: upper body workouts and lower body workouts. The muscles that comprise the upper body component are the shoulders, back, chest, triceps, and biceps. The lower body component is comprised of exercises for the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and calve muscles.

Each week you’ll alternate training these two major muscle groups. For example, in the first week you will train the upper body muscles twice, Monday and Friday, and the lower body muscle groups only once, on Wednesday. The following week, switch it and train lower body twice and upper body once. Keep repeating this alternating schedule.

When you perform your weight lifting exercises, select two exercises for each body part (shoulders, back, chest, etc.). It doesn’t matter what order you choose to do them in. You must complete three sets of repetitions for each weight lifting movement, being sure to lift moderate to heavy weight. How heavy is that? A moderate weight is one in which you’ll have trouble lifting around the tenth repetition. Rest for one minute between each set of ten repetitions.

There is one more small component to add to this simple, effective weight training strategy: always plan your training beforehand. Plan what time you’re going to exercise and which particular exercises you’ll be performing. Failing to plan is planning to fail!

Related Information

Weight Training
Weight training is best done two to three times per week.

Weight Training Routines
Varying weight training routines you perform will help keep your workout sessions exciting and motivating.