Strength Training: What, when and how much?

I would be interested to see responses on this as well...

Ladies.......Here are a few myths:

1. Lifting Weights Makes You Muscle-Bound
While strength training will help you build muscle, women simply don't have enough testosterone, a key hormone for building muscle, to become muscle-bound and appear masculine. The muscle you are able to build lifting weights will only improve your appearance and femininity.

2. If You Lift Weights, Do High Reps to "Tone" Your Muscles
Most strength training workouts for women prescribe 2-3 sets of 12 or more repetitions. While higher repetitions have their place in your workout, they do little to improve your appearance. If looking and feeling your best is your goal, most of your workouts should utilize sets of low to moderate repetitions (5-8) for multiple sets. Performing 3-5 sets of 5-8 reps is especially beneficial when dieting, as it is the best rep range to use to ensure you hold onto your muscle. The more muscle you can hold onto when dieting helps you burn fat faster and keep it off once you achieve your weight loss goals. Sets of 12-15 reps will only make you look and feel worse during your diet.

3. You Should Use Machines Instead of Dumbbells and Barbells
While training with machines has its place, such as helping you learn the basics of strength training, workouts using free weights (barbells and dumbbell) are the way to go. Free weight training produces greater benefits than machine only workouts for many reasons with the most important being the fact that it enables you to perform exercises that train many large muscle groups at once. This means you burn more calories for every set you perform and will get better results faster. The following example illustrates this, doing a set of barbell or dumbbell squats trains your calves, quads, hamstrings, glutes, lower back, and abs. Compare this to a popular machine exercise for legs such as leg extensions which targets only your quadriceps. Other benefits of barbell and dumbbell based workouts is that they are superior to machines for improving your strength, balance, and bone density. These benefits become especially important as you get older, since being stronger and maintaining balance will help you better perform daily tasks and decrease the risk of injury from falls. Increasing bone density will help decrease your risk of osteoperosis and its related complications.

4. You Must Lose Weight First Before You Lift Weights
Last but not least is the myth that you should lose weight before you start lifting weights. This myth exists because women often become discouraged when they diet and lift weights since the weight loss that occurs isn't reflected on the scale. This is because the weight lost is body fat, not the muscle you need to stay healthy. Lifting weights while dieting will help you keep the muscle you have ensuring the weight you lose is body fat. Studies confirm this showing that combining aerobic exercise, dieting, and strength training leads to greater losses of body fat and weight than when you only diet or diet and do aerobic exercise.

Getting Started
Below is a workout that will help you build the body you desire. It's a 3-day a week workout that should be performed on alternating days, Monday, Wednesday, Friday for example. Each workout includes exercises for the entire body, and uses sets of 8 reps to help you burn as many calories as possible at each workout while building, or at a minimum, holding onto your hard earned muscle when dieting. Combine this workout with 2-3 days of aerobic exercise and a proper diet and you will get the best results of your life.

Guidelines
1. Always use correct technique. If you need any of the exercises explained to you, consult with a qualified personal trainer. If one isn't available there are many web sites that give animated demonstrations of correct exercise technique. One good source is http://www.exrx.net.

2. Use a weight that you can perform for 2-3 more reps than what is prescribed. There is no need use a weight that causes you to 'fail' at the end of each set. You should leave the gym feeling energized, not exhausted.

3. Increase the weight used when you can do 2-3 more repetitions than the 8 prescribed on the last set of a given exercise. Only increase the weight used if you can do so without sacrificing proper technique.

4. Start a new routine after doing this one for 4-6 weeks. This will help keep your progress on track and keep your workouts enjoyable.

5. Lift weights before aerobics. If you want to do an aerobic workout on the same day you lift weights, that's fine. Just make sure to do it after you lift. This ensures you have ample energy to perform all of your exercises with correct form.

6. The exercises in the workout below are divided into groups (A1/A2, B1/B2, etc.). Each group is to be performed one after the other with about a minutes rest between sets for the total number of sets given. Once you have completed all of the prescribed sets for each exercise in a group, move on to the next group of exercises after 1-2 minutes rest. Doing the workout this way burns more calories, and you'll accomplish more in less time. Also, if you are just getting into shape you may need more than a minutes rest between sets and groups of exercise. If this is the case, rest for as long as you need in order to perform the exercises with proper form, decreasing the amount of rest as your conditioning improves until you reach 1 minute.

Below is an example of how this workout is to be performed.

* A1 Lunges: Set 1
* Rest 60 seconds
* A2 Dumbbell Bench Press: Set 1
* A1 Lunges: Set 2
* Rest 60 seconds
* A2 Dumbbell Bench Press: Set 2
* Rest 60 seconds
* A1 Lunges: Set 3
* Rest 60 seconds
* A2 Dumbbell Bench Press: Set 3
* Rest 60 seconds and move onto the next group of exercises.


The Workout
Monday
Exercise Sets Reps Rest Between Sets
A1 Lunges 3 8 60 sec
A2 DB Bench 2 8 60 sec
B1 Leg Curl 3 8 60 sec
B2 DB Row 2 8 60 sec
C1 Crunches 3 8 60 sec



Wednesday
Exercise Sets Reps Rest Between Sets
Seated Row 3 8 60 sec
Stiff Leg DL 2 8 60 sec
Inc DB Fly 3 8 60 sec
Dumbbell Squat 2 8 60 sec
Back Extension 3 8 60 sec



Friday
Exercise Sets Reps Rest Between Sets
DB Shldr Press 2 8 60 sec
DB Step-Ups 3 8 60 sec
Reverse Fly 2 8 60 sec
Calf Raise 3 8 60 sec
Reverse Crunch 3 8 60 sec

I would say start off with a reasonably light weight, something that you can do about 15 reps of and once you've got used to the exercise and can perform it with proper form you can increase the weight to something which you can do about 6-8 reps of. Make sure that you're pushing yourself on the last rep, if it feels to easy then you should increase the weight. It'll probably take a bit of trial and error at the start to find out what works best for you. Aim for 5 sets, but at the beginning you may want to stick to just 3 until you get in a routine or you might ache a bit too much the next day.

I train twice a week - anything between 2 and 4 times a week is good, but never train the same muscle group 2 days in a row as you need time to help them recover, this will especially be the case at the beginning when you wont be used to it. Time training can vary depending on what you plan on doing that day, usually I spend 1 - 1 1/2 hours.

As to what to do, pretty much anything will be good but core exercises such as bench press, squat and deadlift will probably be most useful. Have a look around your gym, see what others are doing but make sure you are performing the exercise properly, never risk proper form for anything. You can find videos/pictures online pretty easily for the correct technique for each exercise. Also don't believe anything about how you should stick to just the machine weights, free weights really are the best. They give you much more space to move in your own way without being restricted, plus they work out the smaller, surrounding muscles and not just the main ones that the machines will do. They do have their uses, such as lat pull down but certainly aren't the be all and end all.

Hope that's been helpful
Heidi

I am so not an expert at this, but I go by trial and error to find out what works for me. I started of doing basics like squats, lunges, push ups and crunches until my body was able to go a little further. All my strength and conditioning workout includes a great amount of cardio, but I still alternate those days. Like someone stated above, give the muscle group you worked atleast 24hr to recover. Sometimes I will do upper, lower and abs in one day, next day straight cardio, then rinse and repeat. One week I may mix and match, i.e. 1 day upper body/ cardio day 2 lower body/ cardio, etc. I hope this helps some. Like I said, I just find what works for me through trial and error. So far I seemed to have found a workable routine.