When people make the decision to try and get stronger, lose weight and builder muscle, it can be a bit confusing on what exactly it is you should do.
Especially with all the information that is out there. There’s almost too much that it can be very overwhelming.
If you go on social media you’ll see things like “Best Exercises For A Massive Back” or “How To Get Abs Of Steel”. But for most people, they just want to get an idea of the sort of training that they should be doing to get the results they want.
You don’t need fancy work outs or complex movements or to be semi professional gymnast or athlete. All you need is pointed in the right direction to get what you want.
Most people are looking to build strength, build muscle, increase power, improve endurance and lose weight.
One of the questions I get asked a lot as a personal trainer is “what
sort of training should I do to lose weight?”
The truth is, there is no specific training for losing weight. People put a lot if focus on cardio. But weight training is just as, if not more, important. You don’t just want to lose weight, you want to lose fat. Weight training will build muscle and burn fat.
So you can do basically any type of training you like for weight loss, as long as you have your diet sorted out. If you’re not in a calorie deficit or doing some type of fasting, your training isn’t gonna be the issue. Your diet is.
So when people want to begin training, the first thing they need to decide is the type of training they want to do. What do you want the outcome of their training to be?
I’m gonna give a quick breakdown of the:
1. Load
2. Reps
3. Sets
4. Rest
5. Training frequency
6. Set length
Strength
A lot of the times when clients come to me they mainly want to lose weight, but they usually also
want to get stronger. I am a massive believer in that your body should be strong and be able to deal with heavy loads. Now I’m not saying that you need to training like a powerlifter or strong man. But I get every client at some point to go through a phase of heavy squats and deadlifts.
So what should you do to build strength?
· Load/Weight – 80-100% of 1 rep max
· Reps – 2-5
· Sets – 4-6
· Rest – 2-5mins
· Training frequency – 3-5 days per week
· Set length – 5-10secs
Hypertrophy
One of the most common things when people want to lose weight is that they want to have muscle come through when their body fat goes down. This is very common for men and women to want this. Obviously this doesn’t just apply to weight loss. The principles of building muscles are the same if you want to maintain weight or gain weight.
As I touched on before, there a lot of “hardcore” ways to get build muscle and “get jacked”. But it’s maybe not clear on what the thinking behind some of the thinking is if you’re new to this.
Don’t worry about that just yet and focus on getting the basic principles right and then you can look at more advanced way of building muscle.
· Load – 60-80% of 1 rep max
· Reps – 8-15
· Sets – 4-8
· Rest – 2-3mins
· Training frequency – 4-6 days a week
· Set length – 20-60sec
Endurance
Some people take a lot of convincing that cardio isn’t the answer for weight loss and that they should be more weight training.
This is especially true women because they “don’t want to get big and muscley.” So doing a lighter weight and doing higher reps is bit of a compromise.
If improving muscle endurance is your goal then great. But what should you do to improve endurance? It obviously implies doing high volume but how much? That’s what I’m gonna clear up now.
· Load – 40-60% of 1 rep max
· Reps – 20-60
. Sets – 2-5
· Rest – 1-2mins
· Training frequency – 7-12 times per week
· Set length – 60-150secs
Power
Developing power probably isn’t for you if you’re new to all this. I would advise spending time building the other three training methods so that you have a good base to work off. Power training focuses on fast explosive movements that you would see a lot of athletes doing. But sometimes if you wanna look like an athlete you’ve got to train like one.
· Load – 70-100% 1 rep max
· Reps – 1-5
· Sets – 3-5
· Rest - 2-6mins
· Training frequency – 3-5 times per week
· Set length – 3-8
Now obviously there is more to all of these training methods. But if you’re new to training or just unsure on what to do, this will give you a base to work off. Once you’ve got a grip on this, then you can try to do challenging workouts and push the boundaries. In fact I encourage you to do so. But first make sure you have a decent understanding of what you need to do to build muscle or strength before trying to conquer the fitness world.