The Basics of Weight-Lifting

This is for all the people in gyms around the world who have no realistic idea of what they're doing. This includes people who have just walked into a gym as well as those people who have been lifting for a while but still see no results or minimal ones. This article will explain how you can make yourself physically stronger. This may be why you're in the gym, maybe not. If you're trying to get bigger, read this anyway because although getting stronger and getting bigger are often not the same thing, a lot of the principles here are useful for both.

There are three things you need to understand in order to get stronger, three simple things that's it! They are weight lifting, eating correctly, and getting adequate rest. You need no supplements, no drugs, no machines, no personal trainer, no special clothes, and no special equipment aside from weights and bars. What you need you have already; food/lots of protein, a place to sleep, testosterone, intelligence enough to do basic math, and some aggression and dedication. The simplicity of this can be deceptive. It is so common for someone to go to a gym and hear people talk about all sorts of ridiculous things like "lifting for the pump", "feeling the burn" or some other bull-shit and second-guess themselves. There are so many self-proclaimed gurus that it's impossible not to fall into someone's trap/ego. This being so, Im going to lay down the basics (and in truth that's all you need), starting with the weightlifting component and covering diet and rest in the future.

There are five things you need to know:

1. Have a plan:
   Whenever you lift a weight, you dont just pick up a random weight and throw it around until you get tired or hurt yourself/someone else. Weightlifting is a methodical, even scientific practice. Whenever you are in the gym you should know what you're doing and how this day fits into attaining your goals, whatever they may be. This brings up the most important point: you need a plan. Look around next time you're in the gym, there are a few different types of people, socializers, people who have no clue what they're doing, and serious trainees. Two of the above don't have a plan and will probably never see significant gains. Your plan is easy to describe but harder to construct. However, by the end of this article you should have a really good idea of how to make it.
   
2. Lift Heavy:
   Most of weightlifting is logical and makes sense. The most logical of which is if you want to get stronger, you need to lift heavy weights. That's not to say that you should load as many 45s on the bar as you can. Beginners can lift as little as 60% of their 1RM, some say even less,and see results. (For those of you who dont know, 1RM means "One Repetition Max", or the most amount of weight you can lift once). For those of you who would consider themselves more advanced lifters, this number is roughly 80% and higher.
   The question that follows from this is how many times? How many sets? The answer is that it depends. It depends on your genetics, specifically your muscle composition. However, if you want to get stronger, you shouldnt be lifting the weight anymore than 6, some suggest 8, times max. If you can lift +80% of your 1RM much more than this you probably hit the wrong key on the calculator.
   You also have to determine how many sets to do. What can you get gains from, yet still recover from? Do too many sets and you'll be in so much pain you wont want to come back....ever! Do too little and you wont see anything. For a beginner, do 3 to 4 sets per bodypart.
   
3. Don't always go to failure:
   What this means is that you shouldn't lift the weight until your muscles can't lift it again. This is good occasionally, however do this everytime and you'll see yourself get weaker. Dont listen to the loud guy who screams whenever he lifts. Going to failure every set is counter-productive. What this does is trains your muscles for what is called strength-endurance and this will really decrease how fast you get stronger.
   You may see bodybuilders doing this, however the weights they use are much lower than the 80% 1RM and higher you should use for strength gains. When lifting above 80%, going to failure is a sure way to kill your gains. Besides, the mass that bodybuilders put on is for the most part non-functional. What this means is that the size comes from an increase in the cellular fluids and mitochondria and not from an increase in the amount of contractile tissue. If you don't understand that its okay, you dont have to. However, you want to stop a full 1, maybe 2, reps before failure.
   
4. Pick the right excercises:
   Another extremely important factor that relates to strength is excercise selection. The fact is that most people dont understand (or dont want to for other reasons) that isolation excercises, like doing bicep curls or chest fly's, do little to nothing by themselves. Sure they work the muscle, but they are severly deficient in two ways. First, when was the last time you needed a lot of strength from just one muscle, for instance your left pec? Very rarely. Your muscles are designed to work together. Second, the amount of hormones your body releases to make muscle and make you stronger is directly correlated to the amount of muscle tissue you heavily stimulate at once. What this means for you is that what are called compound movements, those utilising more than one joint are the most productive excercises for strength production!
   So if you have a choice between doing a bench press or a chest fly, or perhaps a squat versus a leg extension, picking the leg extension is bullshit because it doesnt translate into real world strength and doesnt trigger the flood of anabolic hormones that you want! Most people dont make this choice however because compound excercises are harder...much harder. However the extra effort you put in is an investment that pays back big! Here are some examples of good excercises:
   

        Legs/ Lower Body: Squats, Deadlifts, Lunges
        Back:             Hyperextensions, Pull-Ups, Rows, Shrugs
        Chest:            Bench Press, Dumb Bell Presses, Flys
        Triceps:          Dips, Close Grip Bench Press, Tri-Pushdowns
        Biceps:           Preacher Curls, BarBell Curls, 
   

5. Cycle Intensities and Excercises:
   The last important detail is the concept of cycling/periodization. Your body gets stronger/bigger as part of an adaptive process. This is what you want. However you dont want to ever let your body stop the adaptation process. For instance, if you bench press with the same weight for 4 sets of 6 twice a week, at first you'll feel and look stronger, but after awhile you'll stop getting stronger. You can add more weight to the bar and this will force your body to adapt further. However, you cant simply add more and more weight to the bar. If you add bench 135 lbs and add 1 pounds per week, that would be 183lbs in a year. That's really good for a beginner. However in a few years you'd be lifting ridiculous amounts of weight. It isnt as simple as that . Your body simply wont continuously get stronger, after awhile adding more weight just doesnt work. So what's the answer?
   The answer to this lies in the simple principle of cycling. Every couple of weeks you throw in a week where you do the same excercises, but at a lower % of your 1RM and for higher reps, for instance instead of doing the 4 sets of 6 @ 80% of your max, you do 3 or 4 sets of 10-12 reps @ 60-70% of your max (again not going to failure). This allows your body a chance to rest and regenerate as well as "forget" that it had been lifting heavy, but also keeps your new found strength from disappearing.
   
   This sort of cycling can also be accompanied by changing your excercises. If you were bench pressing before, you can do dumb-bell bench presses, close-grip bench presses, or some other variation for the next couple weeks. This has a similar effect to cycling the intensities and should be done as often as you incorporate the 60% 1RM week.
   
   
   If you follow these rules, train hard and smart along with plenty of food/protein and sleep, you will get stronger. You will also get bigger, not as big as the pro bodybuilders, but your muscles will get larger and denser.
   But it comes down to these five basic points: have a plan, lift heavy, dont lift to failure, do compound excercises and occasionally cycle your weights to let your body have a rest. You do these and dont do anything stupid and there should be no realistic strength goals you cant attain. If you're still unclear, look for my routine on this web site. It has a 22 day routine, lists all the percentages and so on, you will probably find it useful.