Strength Training - where to begin.
Deciding to add some form of strength training into your life is a real positive step. No matter what your goals are, whether body composition or health related, resistance training can have a profound impact on your health and fitness goals. However, knowing where to begin can be daunting. Never has there been more information available which can lead to confusion. Here are my 3 tips to getting started.
FOLLOW A PROGRAM
At the heart of progress when it comes to strength training is the law of adaption. That means your body will adapt to the demands placed upon it in your training. We need to allow the appropriate time for this to occur. If your sessions chop and change every day, you will not allow this adaptation to occur as efficiently as possible. With my clients, we will work with the same program from around 4-6 weeks depending on the ability to keep progressing in that program.
EXERCISE SELECTION
Simplicity works well here. Especially if time is limited (my sessions are 45 minutes), compound exercises are going to allow us to get the most out of our sessions. A compound exercise is going to involve multiple muscle groups and joints. For example a squat is a compound exercise as it challenged the quads, glutes, hamstrings and calves amongst others. It also involves the hip, knee and ankle meaning that you are utilising a lot of musculature in one exercise.
Depending on confidence, mobility and starting strength we can also regress this exercise significantly to allow safe and technically excellent completion. A barbell back squat can be regressed to a front squat, to a goblet squat, to a dumbbell squat making it a very versatile exercise.
VOLUME AND INTENSITY
Volume (the amount of reps, sets etc) and the intensity (weight you lift) have an inverse relationship. This means that the heavier you lift, the fewer amount of reps you will be able to complete. Strength is a learnable skill meaning that we can start our strength training generally with some lighter loads and as we progress through our program, these can become heavier. This will reduce your risk of injury and also allow you time to perfect your technique so when you get stronger, you are able to lift the heavier weights with great form.
