Adding Strength Training To Your Work-Out Regiment

I always emphasize the importance doing aerobic/endurance exercise to reduce risk of heart disease,  cancer,  prevent and manage diabetes, reduce body fat and for general well being. It is an essential part of maintaining a highly functioning body for as long as possible. In addition to aerobic exercise it is a good idea to add a resistance training program to your overall weekly fitness plan. Resistance training will give you beautiful, sleek, muscle tone and definition. It is simply the best and most efficient way to sculpt your body, giving you cut, highly-shaped muscles and sex appeal. This kind of training also gives you more strength and will raise your resting metabolic rate, enabling your body to burn more fat calories while you are at rest. In turn, this helps keep your body fat down, and reverses many aspect of the aging process. Also, muscles are more metabolically active than fat tissues, so they consume large amounts of energy even when they are resting. You will have a faster metabolic rate if you will adhere to a resistance training program.

Resistance training also helps you gain bone mass, which prevents osteoporosis later in life. Resistance training, performed properly, also improves your posture and helps prevent sprains, strains, and injuries to your muscle and joint systems. It is the perfect complement to aerobic training, interval training, and sports-specific training programs for many sports. Today, even competitor golfers lift weights to add more power to their swing and greater longevity to their ability to play the game at a competitive level. And the sooner you start performing strength training properly, the better. When you are younger muscles adapt faster, and muscle memory gets established. This means that when you are older, if you have gone through a period of no resistance training, you will be able to recover your muscle tone and strength faster than someone who did not train this way when they were younger.

In my view strength training should be a lifelong endeavor, beginning at age 14-16 years old. It’s a crucial element in having a strong, good-looking, highly functional body throughout your entire life, and has important anti-aging benefits especially once you leave your 40’s and head into the subsequent decades.

How Many Sets And Reps Should You Do

Designing a resistance-training program involves the number of sets to be done with each exercise, the number of repetitions performed in each set and the amount of resistance you're going to work against

To gain improvements in muscle definition, body sculpting, strength and power, which will give you a high performance body, I have seen fast and outstanding improvement in patients when they followed through with my advice to start by choosing a weight you can lift 8-10 times. (This means that it’s too heavy to lift more than 10 times). Then perform 3-5 sets of 8-10 repetitions with this weight. I have most patients start with just 3 sets, which will provide very good results. As I stated, the weight must be heavy enough that you are unable to do more than 10 (maximum 12) repetitions in a set. While performing the exercise, contract the muscle as fast as you can when working against the resistance and then lower the weight in a slower, controlled manner so you don't sprain any joint structures.

With this style of training, you will experience an increase in muscle size and it will provide the speed and power to enhance many athletic endeavors. Once you can lift the weight 10 times in each of the 3 or 4 sets at that station, make the weight heavier in your next visit to the gym. Continue to make the weight heavier as your muscles become stronger over time, always performing 8-10 repetitions in each set. This is known as the overload principle of resistance training, which enables muscle strength gains, body sculpting and definition to keep improving over time. 

Other Critical Factors To Maximize Weight Training Results 

1. It is most ideal to perform at least 2-3 different exercises for each body part (i.e. For your chest--Bench Press, Incline Press, Flies)
2. Perform 3-5 sets at each exercise station. 3 sets will result in significant improvement if you do it the way I have outlined above.
3. Work each body part at least 2X per week (allow 48-72 hours for recovery for each body part)
   1. If you want to focus on greater strength gains - use heavier weight that permits you to  perform only 4-7 repetitions per set, before reaching muscular failure
   2. For power training to enhance many sports - focus on moderate weights, as is also recommended for body sculpting, and general anti-aging purposes, using 8-10 repetitions per set to muscular failure
   3. Remember that to gain muscle size and definition you must ingest at least 0.5- .07 grams of protein for every pound you weight (or about 1.25-1.5 grams of protein for every kilogram you weigh). Some elite athletes require up to 2.2 grams of protein per kg, if they may spend three or more hours per day training. As an example, if you weigh 80 kilograms, you should consider ingesting at least 100 -120 gms of protein each day to build your muscles, depending on the intensity, duration and frequency of your workouts.

    Note that your weight in pounds can be converted into kilograms by dividing your weight in pounds by 2.2.