Starting off in weight training is always a challenge. Like me when I first started, many beginners have a lot of questions going in. Having worked as a personal trainer for both Anytime Fitness as well as World Gym I have encountered a number of commonly asked questions that my clients have when they first start out. In this page I have taken the most frequently asked questions and the answers I usually give clients. Because weight training is a little different for men and women, I have labled the questions as if I were speaking to a male and female client during a meeting.
Jullie: I have heard that weight training is important for women but shouldn't they just focus on loosing fat first and then do a little bit of lifting?
Trainer: No, generally what you would want to do is focus on both at the same time. I have met several women who have come in asking for advice because they have reached their target weight and still don't like the way they look. Having some muscle mass will help you maintain form and create more of an hour glass shape. In addition, increased muscle mass will help you keep the lost weight off. Muscle uses more calories to sustain and repair even when the body is asleep.
Jullie: Well I don't want to end up looking too bulky.
Trainer: That is totally understandable. Generally it will be hard for you to become bulky at all. Because women lack testosterone and have differently developed muscles it would be extremely hard to put on an undesirably large amount of muscle.. That said, most women want a routine that will assure them that they won't look really thick. A top personal trainer for high end Victoria Secret models would focus their routine on the two core exercises: dead lift and Leg press. This would keep the models looking feminine (ie, not forming a bunch of veins in their arms or a super buff upper body) but allow them to have low body-fat without their skin sagging or having them look emaciated.
Rick: Well just to be clear I would like to put on a lot of muscle and loose fat. I looked at Jay Cutler's routine in Muscle and Fitness and have been working with that but it doesn't seem to do anything.
Trainer: One of the problems that bodybuilding magazines have is that they take a workout that a high level pro bodybuilder does and they display it without explaining that it will only work for a trained weight lifter. Jay cutler has huge muscles. He will work out a muscle once a week and it will take a whole week for it to heal. You and I have much smaller muscles therefore we will have less damaged tissue that our bodies are trying to recover. We might be fully healed 3 days later as opposed to Jay Cutler's 6 days later. You should look at routines that are meant for beginners and only move on to more advanced routines after you stop seeing results.
Jullie: What about cardio? I've already been going to the gym a little bit and just doing half an hour on the treadmill, I'm not noticing that much of a difference though.
Trainer: Cardio is interesting because it is probably the one thing that most people do wrong. With cardio, the minimum you will want to do is 45 minutes at a time. Your spends the first twenty minutes that you are doing cardio burning up food that you have eaten that and the day before then your body switches to burning stored fat for energy. If you can go for an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes that would even be better. To put it into perspective: 30 minutes of cardio = 10 minutes your body is actually burning fat; 45 minutes of cardio = 25 minutes of fat burning; 1 hour of cardo = 40 minutes your body is burning fat; Obviously a little more time on cardio will go a long way.
Rick: I'm a little new to lifting weights, how much should I lift if I want to bulk up?
Trainer: On each exercise you do I would suggest doing your first set or two with a light weight for 20 to 30 repetitions. This will warm up the muscles and joints being used making the more playable and less prone to injury. Next I would do three working sets with a weight heavy enough that you fail before you get to twelve repetitions but not so heavy that you cannot do six. This will work your type 2-b fast twitch muscle fibers which hold the most potential for growth.
Jullie: What kind of diet should I do?
Trainer: You will want to try your best to eat healthy but I wouldn't suggest going on a strict diet. I personally suggest making minor modifications to your diet over time that way it doesn't hit you all at once. For example, breakfast is important to the body's ability to recover and function throughout the day. If you are not in the habit of eating breakfast spend the next three weeks trying to conquer that. Next look at cutting out a specific junk food. Spend the next three weeks cutting out pop. Master one thing at a time to improve your diet and eventually you will have the perfect diet for your body. In addition this you will avoid dieting pitfalls of vitamin deficiency and malnourishment. If you spend every week working on a new step in dieting, eventually you will have a diet that is very balanced that you can stick with for a long period of time.
One of the things people find when they are dieting is that eating is a much bigger and more fulfilling part of their life than they realize. By making minor changes instead of changing their whole diet at once they can avoid dieting pitfalls and maintain confidence. It is the easiest to become discouraged and give up when it comes to dieting and it is often because people choose an unrealistic extreme in their diet.
Jullie: What kind of things should I be eating? Should I stay away from carbs?
Trainer: As I said earlier you will want to take one thing at a time. You should try to have some kind of protein with every meal. Yogurt is good for this, so is milk. Egg whites are some of the best protein you can get but they spoil quickly. Also, a little bit of healthy fats are also beneficial. Olive oil, avocado, and almonds have very healthy fats and can be used to cook with a wide variety of foods. As for carbohydrates, don't stay away from them. Your brain needs carbs to function and, although Atkins style diets are very effective, they do carry some very negative side effects. You would be better off just making sure you get good carbs in. If you have a sweet tooth, fruits and fruit juices are good, especially right after workouts. Generally during the day, low glycemic carbs such as sweet potatoes, brown rice, black beans, and whole wheat serial are the best.
Jullie: What do you think about diet pills?
Traner: In the short run they are very effective. In the long run they are very counter effective. Diet pills combine appetite suppressants and stimulants to keep you from eating as much while at the same time increasing your resting heart rate and energy levels so that you will burn more calories. While this will help you lose weight at first, the body will adapt to the increased energy levels. When you go off of the pills your metabolism will slow down and you will most likely gain weight back.
Rick: What do you think about creatine? I've had some people tell me not to use it and a professor of mine even said that it was bad.
Trainer: Creatine isn't bad at all, in fact it's great. One of the first things I did when I found out that I had access to medical and health science journals was look up as much as I could on creatine monohydrate. Every experiment on it ran seem to conclude that it was totally safe. The only possible side effect is dehydration.
Rick: To be honest, I'm not sure what creatine does.
Trainer: Creatine is a combination of naturally occurring amino acids. The human body produces it naturally and uses it as energy for motions where a muscle goes from a sedentary state to an active state for example jumping when your scared or hitting a baseball or the first few heavy reps in an exercise. Taking powdered creatine increases the amount of creatine in muscle cells which will allow you to push a rep or two more than you would be able to without it. That, though, is not the most important benefit. Creatine sits in the muscles. It is highly water soluble and when it is in the muscle it requires the muscles to have much more fluid. The fluid that is in the muscles is obviously blood. The increased amount of blood in the muscle feeds the muscle more oxygen and other nutrients allowing the muscle to heal more rapidly. If you go off creatine, the fluid in your muscles will lower and they will seem to shrink but you will keep all of your actual gains.
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