Weight Training Workouts
Weight Training Advice
to improve a little bit in weight or reps. This won't happen during every single weight training workout, but as long as you can make incremental increases you'll eventually get bigger and stronger.
No matter what muscles you're working during a weight training workout you need to start them off by warming up and stretching. To get the blood flowing it's a good idea to jump on a treadmill or elliptical machine and do some low intensity cardio for 5 - 10 minutes. After that you'll want to do some stretching for the muscles you're going to be training that day. You don't have to spend much time doing this, another 5 to 10 minutes should be good unless you're feeling really tight. Once you get to your first exercise during your weight training workout you'll want to do some warm-up sets before you do your all-out sets.
When you get to the point where you are done warming up and are starting the real lifting you'll want to try to finish in about an hour or less. It's been shown that your testosterone levels will start falling after working out for more than 45 minutes. If your weight training workouts last too long you'll lose your pump and probably won't be doing yourself much good if you train for 2 hours at a time. To avoid overtraining you shouldn't do too many sets and exercises anyway so weight training for between 45 minutes and an hour should be optimal. Working out for this long is especially important for the natural weight trainer.
When you get to the working sets of your weight training workouts you'll want to start with exercises for the largest muscle group you'll be training that day. If you're doing chest, shoulders, and triceps, start with chest, followed by shoulders, and do the triceps last. Training a smaller muscle that assists on a larger muscles exercises first will make you weaker on the major compound exercises. If you do opposing muscle groups like the chest and upper back or biceps and triceps during the same workout you can try doing a set for one of the muscles followed by a set for the other. Training this way can save time and actually make you stronger on certain exercises (a good upper back pump may allow you to bench press more, a good biceps pump can act as a cushion when you do tricep exercises). You'll also need to start your workouts for any muscle group with major compound exercises.
As you get closer to end of a weight training workout for any muscle group you can do more isolation exercises. At this point you'll already have a nice pump and can concentrate on getting a strong contraction on your isolation exercises.
A great way to finish off a weight training workout is to do some drop sets or supersets. Find exercises that you can quickly drop the weight on to do drop sets. Cable exercises are great for this. If you do supersets try exercises that you can move quickly between like lying triceps extensions and close grip bench presses. Doing drop sets or supersets will allow you to end your workouts with a good pump.
If you're trying to build some muscle mass and strength it's necessary to do weight training workouts. To get your muscles to grow you need to go into your workouts with the mindset that you're going to try
