Guide to Weight Training at Home
Posted by Paul on 01 January 2010 in Exercises | 0 Comments
Any effective weight loss program includes improving both your diet and exercise. You simply can’t achieve healthy weight loss by just doing one or the other. To lose weight, your at home weight loss program should include cardio workouts and weight training.
Let’s bust a few myths about weight training before getting into the specifics.
First, like what was previously stated, this workout can be done at home, with minimal equipment. You don’t need to go to a gym or hire a personal trainer for effective weight loss. Weight training also improves your overall fitness, but you need not worry about it giving you bulging muscles. All weight training will do is strengthen your muscles. This increases your stamina, so you can do more exercises and achieve quick weight loss. It also speeds up your metabolism, making you burn fat and lose weight even when you’re not exercising!
Another myth about weight training is spot reduction that is, you can just lose fat from one specific area by doing a certain exercise. Let’s get this straight: spot reduction is a lie. What weight training will do for you, however, is make you lose fat from all over your body, giving you a healthy, lean, toned look overall which is even better than what spot reduction promises!
Now, let’s go to what you need to know about weight training.
How often should you do weight training?
You might think that the more often you do it, the better after all, more exercise means more weight loss, right? However, doing weight training too often will stress and injure your body, making you less able to do exercises as time goes by. You’ll find yourself doing less exercise later on if you overdo it at the beginning. A good rule of thumb is to do weight training every other day, or even every two days. This gives your muscles a chance to rest and this keeps you from straining yourself. On the days you’re not doing weight training, do aerobic exercises or cardio workouts.
How much weight should you use?
When doing exercises that require a dumbbell or some other weight, you should start feeling tired after repeating the exercise around 12 times. If you feel like you can still keep on going just fine after 15 repetitions, the weights you’re using aren’t heavy enough. You won’t effectively lose weight and improve your fitness if your weights are too light. If, after weight training for some time, you find it easier to do your exercises, it’s time to increase the weights.
You should be able to get to 12 repetitions without feeling like you’re about to collapse! If you can’t make it to 12 repetitions, the weights you’re using are too heavy you’re more likely to injure yourself and may end up quitting your exercise program altogether.
What equipment do you need?
Well, a pair of dumbbells or a resistance band will provide the weight you need to work against. But you can still do some weight training exercises at home without any equipment at all! Crunches work out your abdominal muscles. Push-ups are a great way to burn fat as well as exercise your arms, shoulders, and chest. Lunges and squats are effective exercises for working out your lower body.
Weight training at home easily be done at home to lose weight, and so you’ll look and feel great!