Female Free Weight Newbie

Personally, I love fitnessblender.com. They have many strength training videos, (all free) and they take time to demonstrate and walk you through proper form. You will need dumbells; it is good to lift as heavy as you can, still with good form. Whether you return to the gym, or not, you will have a better sense of what you are doing.

Find a good progressive program and follow it. I completed New Rules of Lifting for Women and loved it. I was a total newbie and it was a great intro to lifting and I got great results. Just started New Rules of Lifting Supercharged, but the mix and match template would have confused me 5 months ago--I liked just opening NROLFW and doing what it said.

Firstly to be afraid to lift heavy weights and get strong. To really get big youve gotta jave hogh volume and eat a big calorie surplus (typically).

Find a structured program that uses compound lifts (bench, deadlift, squats). And follow that program. One of the most common ones is stronglifts. Ive never done it but ive looked into it and to me its a great beginner program. It uses 5 compound lifts that are rotated so thats less lifts to learn. Or there are numerious other programs to do including body weight programs.

Find an established program tho, compound lifts are best, and youtube is a great resource on hoe to lift with proper form.

I started lifting by having someone that works at the gym show me some basics then I have used the body space app and body builder.com to track my lifts and find more programs. That site has videos to help you do them right.
Don't be afraid to go to the gym. I was once and now it's been 2 years and I hate when I miss too many days in a row

melissaschleier wrote: »

Hey all, I'm wanting to get started lifting free weights. But, I'm new to the whole thing and I get nervous going to the gym and potentially making a fool/hurting myself. Any suggestions? I'm not wanting to body build, I just want to add it to tone and shape my body.

Starting light and using some type of progressive program is going to help you the most. Most good beginners programs have a set progress system to help you figure out your working weight.

There's a lot of resources out there on HOW to actually lift properly. There's probably hundreds of youtube videos on every lift out there. The other advantage of progressive programs is it's much easier to get your form down, when the weight is light. If you're doing it wrong when it's light, you're almost certain to be doing it wrong when it gets heavy.

Lastly you can always get someone to "form check" you. It could be somebody at the gym, or having someone take a video of you doing some particular lift (and then posting it somewhere for a critique).

Interestingly there's a lot of "little" things that have a huge impact on your lifts.