Weight Training Tips and Articles

Lower Your Carbohydrate Intake To Lose Body Fat

  Low carbohydrate diets have been hugely popular over the last decade or so. Many people have gotten great results at losing body fat while on these lower carb diets. However, they don’t always work well for everybody because some don’t take enough advantage of an exercises routine to help get rid of the extra fat on their bodies and some of the popular low carb diets call for you to eat an extremely low amount of carbohydrates, which is just too much for some people.

  If you’re into weight training you need to take in some carbs for energy and to fill your muscles with glycogen. Of course many weight trainers want a defined appearance so they need to lose or keep fat off. Weight training itself will help give you a higher resting metabolism and burn the carbohydrates stored in your muscles. This is good because if do your cardio workouts after weight training you’ll be burning more fat because your body won’t have to burn as much glycogen (which the body will use before it starts burning fat).

  Weight trainers and bodybuilders who are ectomorphic (tend to hold extra body fat) need to watch their carb intake more than those with other body types. Try eating most of your carbohydrates earlier in the day and avoid taking in very many later in the day. If you do cardio first thing in the morning or after weight training you’ll also burn more fat. Your carbohydrates should come from wheat bread or pasta, fruits, vegetables, and other quality sources. Avoiding junk food carbs should start you on your way to getting shredded.

High Rep Squats

  How much intensity you train with is one of the most important factors in how much muscle size and strength you gain from weight training. If you just go through the motions without pushing yourself to lift more weight or do more reps per set than you did at your last workout you’ll maintain what you have, but won’t gain more size and strength. Beginner weight trainers especially need to do intense workouts and hit every muscle group regularly.

  One of the most intense weight training workouts you can do is one involving high rep squats. If you’ve hit a plateau in your leg workouts or just want to try something that’ll boost your weight training intensity, a couple of sets of high rep squats may be right up your alley. 1 or 2 sets of squats for 25 to 50 reps will give you a great boost in testosterone and help you build more muscle in the quadriceps and hamtrings. In fact, after doing a couple of sets of high rep squats you may not need to do much more for your legs during that training session. Use a weight you know you can handle for a good 20 to 25 reps and once you hit that many reps rest and breathe between reps to crank out as many more reps as you can. You’ll be surprised at how much you may be able to do. This will cause you to breathe a lot and your hands may even get a bit numb from all of the blood rushing to your legs.

  Another great trick you can do with high rep squats is to do a set of dumbbell pullovers immediately after your squat set. Since you’ll be breathing so hard from the squats doing a set of pullovers will help stretch the rib cage out and help give you a larger upper body appearance.

  If you decide to try high rep squat sets during your leg and hamstring workouts you’ll likely need up to 10 minutes of rest after completing a set or superset with pullovers. If you don’t give yourself enough rest you could end up vomiting. Yes, that’s how intense high rep squats can be if you go all out.

Switch Your Rep Ranges Regularly

  If you’ve been weight training for a while, there’s a good chance that at some point you’ve hit a wall, or plateau, in your size and strength gains. This is something that happens to every weight trainer because you can’t get bigger and stronger all of the time. If you could powerlifting records would constantly be broken and bodybuilders would weigh 400 pounds of pure muscle. Hitting a plateau can make your workouts much less enjoyable if you can’t do any more weight or reps than you have before.

  The best way to break through a weight training plateau is to make a change in your routine. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use a different rep range on your sets of weight training exercises regularly. If your body gets used to doing the same amount of reps for every set you’ll certainly hit a plateau. Doing a different amount of reps per set way be just what you need to get past it.

  One great way to keep your muscle size and strength gains coming is to try a weight training routine where you do a light day, medium day, and heavy day for each muscle group. On the light day do sets with higher reps (15-20), on the medium day do sets of 10-15 reps, and on the heavy day do sets of 5-10 reps. If you do this you’ll hit both your fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers and give yourself a better chance of continual gains.