Weight Training Tips and Articles

Best Weight Training Tips

Many people who are new to lifting weights are looking for the best weight training tips. There are certainly some things you can do to help you succeed quicker in your efforts to building muscle size and strength.

One of the best weight training tips when you first start out is to set up and follow a routine. For the first few weeks or so, you may want to train your whole body during every workout with a few sets per muscle group to get your body used to lifting. Make sure to train larger muscle groups first, and the smaller muscles later. Don’t waste your time with too many isolation exercises - focus mostly on the major compound ones like squats, bench presses, and deadlifts.

Another one of the best weight training tips is to learn proper lifting form on all the major exercises. If you start out by using poor exercise form, you’ll develop bad habits that will be tough to break later on. You can’t try to lift too much weight too soon and be forced to cheat all of the time, as it will likely lead to injury. If you do your exercises the right way, you’ll eventually build the size and strength you’re looking for.

After you’ve learned proper exercise form and want to do more training for each muscle group, you should split up your routine. The best weight training tip for this is to try a 3 way push-pull split routine. This routine looks like this:
Day 1 - chest, shoulders, and triceps (upper body muscles that “push” weight)
Day 2 - back and biceps (upper body muscles that “pull” weight)
Day 3 - legs
When you follow a routine like this, one of the best weight training tips is to take a day off in between each workout. You can also do some abdominal training at each workout.

Avoiding overtraining is another one of the best weight training tips. Your body needs a chance to recover from your workouts to grow bigger and stronger. If you do too many sets and exercises during each workout or train too often, your body won’t have the chance to rebuild after the breakdown it gets from intense weight training. Try to get your weight training sessions done in one hour or less and don’t lift more than 4 days per week.

The best weight training tip to avoid hitting a plateau in your gains is to make changes in your routine regularly. If you do the same thing every time you weight train, you will hit a wall at some point. Switch up some of the exercises you do or change your rep range per set to keep your body guessing.

Another one of the best weight training tips is to train with high intensity. Do reps until you are sure you can’t get one more. You should have a spotter watch you on some exercises just in case. If you don’t try to get an extra rep or lift a little bit more weight you’re not going to build strength and size as quickly as you could.

If you follow the best weight training tips and stick with a routine, you’ll succeed in getting a bigger and stronger physique.

Deadlift Techniques

Though the deadlift is known mostly as a lower back exercise many other muscle groups such as the quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, and even the upper back assist in lifting the weight. Since you have to hold a lot of weight in your hands when you’re deadlifting you’ll also build grip and forearm strength.

How you grip the bar is very important when you’re doing deadlifts. The best way to do it is to use an overhand grip with one hand and an underhand grip with the other hand. If you try to deadlift with both hands in an overhand grip you won’t be able to hold near as much weight and you won’t get the full muscle building benefits of the exercise.

To deadlift heavy you’ll also want to assist your grip with wrist straps or chalk. This will greatly increase the amount of weight you can handle when you deadlift. If you’re planning on competing in a powerlifting competition you’ll have to use chalk instead of straps, so you’re better off training with chalk assisting your grip. On your first few warm up sets of the deadlift, do the exercise without any grip assistance to help improve your natural grip strength.

When you deadlift you can either place your hands on the bar either inside or outside of where your legs are. Placing your grip outside of the legs is the preferred way of doing the exercise. Some weight trainers prefer to place their grip inside with a wide legged stance, which is known as the “sumo style” deadlift. Do whichever style you’re comfortable with.

When you start a deadlift rep you’ll want use your leg muscles as much as possible to get the weight off of the floor. Using too much of your lower back to get the weight started upward could cause an injury. You’ll want to keep your lower back arched instead of bent as much as posible.

Once you get the weight off the floor when you’re doing a deadlift rep you’ll want to straighten your body as you lift the weight. This is the part of the lift where you’ll use more of your lower back strength. Some powerlifters will put baby powder on their thighs to “slide” the weight up their upper legs when they are maxing out on the deadlift. This can be messy, and you don’t really need to do it unless you are a competitive powerlifter testing out your strength.

At the top of a deadlift you should lean back a bit and contract your back muscles. Try to not drop the weight or let it fall too fast when you lower it back to the starting position.

The deadlift is one of the best weight training exercises for the entire body. Using all of those different muscle will give you a nice boost in testosterone. If you follow these deadlift techniques you’ll be able to take full advantage of this great strength and muscle building exercise.

Best Exercises For The Abs

  When you were young, you were told that sit-ups are the best exercise for the abdominals. However, they tend to work your hip flexors more than the abs and can be bad for your lower back. Now, most people know that crunches are a superior exercise for actually targeting the ab muscles. When you do crunches you’ll want to just lift your upper body a short distance off the floor or bench and concentrate on contracting the ab muscles hard. Keep your arms folded over your chest or put your hands at the sides of your head - not behind it, which may cause a neck injury.
  To get a nice stretch while doing crunches you should dothem on a core ball. Performing abdominal crunch exercises on a core ball will allow you to lower your upper body more without a bench or the floor stopping you. You can also do crunches with a medicine ball held in your hands for some added resistance.
  Another popular abdominal exercise is the leg raise. You can do them while hanging from a bar, though you’re probably better off using arm harnesses so that your grip doesn’t give out before your abs. Many weight trainers will only raise their legs up until they are parellel to the floor. However, you’ll get more out of this ab exercise if you raise your legs higher and round the lower back some.
  Decline twisting sit-ups are a great ab exercise for hitting the abs and obliques. Lie on a declined bench and use your abs to pull your upper body upwards while twisting to each side on alternating reps. Again, don’t put your hands behind your head and pull on the neck.
  You can also do abdominal exercises using an ab roller. The ab roller will give you some variety in targeting your abdominals. Get down on your knees and, with your hands on the ab roller, roll it forward until your upper body and arms are straight out and close to the floor. Then return to the starting position, making sure to focus the resistance on your midsection.
  If you want to try an incredible program that includes advice on dieting, weight training, and ab workouts you should check out The Truth About Six Pack Abs e-book.