Lifters and gainers, your advice please.

You want to do something that doesn't feel too easy, but you can actually complete with good form. The numbers don't mean anything. What matters is it's high enough to stress your muscles to grow.

Thank you! and as long as I keep increasing it should be alright right??, even if I'm starting at little girl levels! (my dumbbells are about 8,8lbs (4kg) now and my barbel is about 20 and 30 (10kg and 15kg) depending on the move.
So you can all have a giggle at my expense, I totally would!, you boys can probably easily lift me!

Meg

It is May 15, and you decide this year you are going to get a suntan - a glorious, beautiful, tropical suntan. So you decide to go out in the back yard (to spare the neighbors and innocent passerby) to lay out at lunchtime and catch a ray or two. You lie on your back for 15 minutes and flip over to lie on your belly for 15 minutes. Then you get up, come in and eat lunch and go back to work. That night, your skin is a little pink, so the next day you just eat your lunch, but the following day you're back outside for your 15-minutes-per-side sunbath. You are faithful to your schedule, spending 30 minutes outside every day that week, because that's the kind of disciplined determined person you are. At the end of the week, you have turned a more pleasant shade of brown and, heartened by your results, resolve to maintain your schedule for the rest of the month. So here is the critical question: what color is your skin at the end of the month?

If you ask a hundred people this question, ninety-five will tell you that it will be really, really dark. But in fact it will be exactly the same color as it was at the end of the first week. Why would it be any darker? Your skin adapts to the stress of the sun exposure by becoming dark enough to prevent itself from burning again. That's the ONLY reason it gets dark, and it adapts exactly and specifically to the stress that burned it. Your skin does not "know" that you want to get darker; it only "knows" what the sun tells it, and the sun only talked to it for 15 minutes. It can't get any darker than the 15 minutes makes it get, because 15 minutes is what it is adapting to.

How much you are lifting is not the important thing that will come with time. Just pick enough weight to challenge your current strength somewhere around 10 reps. If you can lift 8lbs 20 times that is too light. If you can only lifts it 5 then it is to heavy. Try to find the weight that gives you that window of 8-12 reps.

How much you are lifting is not the important thing that will come with time. Just pick enough weight to challenge your current strength somewhere around 10 reps. If you can lift 8lbs 20 times that is too light. If you can only lifts it 5 then it is to heavy. Try to find the weight that gives you that window of 8-12 reps.

That really depends on what program you're doing. Between 5-8 reps can give a combination of hyportrophy as well as strength and power.

Yup. The word "strength" is a very loose term and there's definitely different variations of it if you just checkout the force curve or some call the strength curve. 85%+ of your 1RM is actually maximal strength range which is typically 3-5 reps. As you lighten the load and increase volume past that you change the strength and hypertrophy benefit.