Whether you are just starting with weightlifting or have been pumping iron for a while, I have some great tips to help you get the most out of your lifting sessions in today’s episode. Many folks have the best intentions and putting in the time, but often aren’t getting the most out of their workouts.
Today I have some tips that will help you get the most out of your weightlifting workouts. There are lots of misconceptions out there about lifting weights and I’m here to help you get the most out of those workouts. Today I am covering:
- When to workout
- Work every muscle group, every week
- Lift heavy
- Execute proper form
- Breathe
- Progress with each workout
- Rotate your workouts regularly
- Track your workouts
I started lifting weights over 20 years ago. I had a lot of misconceptions about it when I started, like many of us do. For example, I avoided weightlifting for years, because I thought I would end up looking bulky. I thought I should just focus on the areas of my body I wanted to change, like crunching my way to flat abs without doing any other strength training. I thought there was something magical about certain types of workouts; as if following that one person’s exercise video was the key to changing my body. I thought it was better to lift light weights and do a million reps, to tone my muscles without bulking up.
When I finally started studying about it and got serious about changing my body, I learned everything I thought about weightlifting was wrong. It didn’t take long for weightlifting to become one of my favorite things and the reasons for that have nothing to do with the aesthetic benefits, but that’s for a different episode. I have learned a lot over the past two plus decades of weightlifting, and I’ve taken all that and laid it out into eight tips for weightlifting that I hope you will find helpful in your fitness journey. So, let’s dive in.
- When to workout
Whenever you can get in your full workout without interruption! That said, when it comes to optimizing your workouts for muscle growth, it is ideal to workout first thing in the morning. By hitting the weights first thing in the morning, you tap into a unique opportunity to supercharge your muscle-building potential. There are several reasons for this, which I won’t go into in depth today, but I will list them.
You are in a fasted state first thing in the morning. Working out in this fasted state has a number of benefits as counterintuitive as it may seem:
- Enhanced fat utilization by leveraging your body’s depleted glycogen stores, increasing fat oxidation.
- Maximize glycogen stores and improve performance. Consistently doing fasted training helps your body maximize glycogen stores over time, making it more efficient at replenishing glycogen post-workout.
- Improved insulin sensitivity. You improve your body’s ability to use glucose by working out in a fasted state, which improves insulin sensitivity.
- Hormone benefits. You can amplify certain hormones that are key in functions like fat burning, metabolism, and muscle growth.
- Mental clarity and focus. You tend to be sharper and more focused when working out in a fasted state, which improves cognitive function during the workout, resulting in better form and technique, which means better results.
- Work every muscle group, every week
Despite what some messaging out there may lead you to believe, you cannot spot reduce fat. If you want to get the most from your weightlifting, you need to workout every muscle group, at least once a week. You can find a schedule that fits your schedule best. For example, you can do full body workouts 2-3 times a week, or you can do 4-day, 5-day, or 6-day splits to ensure you’re getting every muscle group in. Just make sure you don’t work the same muscle groups back-to-back so you can give them rest between workouts. - Lift heavy
Ladies, despite what you may think, heavy lifting does not result in bulky muscles. The reverse is actually true. Weightlifting grows muscles and helps us burn fat. Muscle takes up less space on our bodies than fat does, so as you increase your muscle mass and decrease your body fat, you will look leaner and smaller, not bulkier. Therefore, you need to lift heavy in order to grow muscle. - Execute proper form
Without good and proper form, you aren’t going to get good results. Not to mention the increased risk of injury from bad form. Executing proper form is more important than the amount you are lifting. You need to be able to manage the weight to execute the exercise using good form for at least 6-8 reps, for most exercises. Once your form starts to fail, meaning you can no longer perform the exercise without going out of good form, then you have reached failure. In weightlifting failure is good, because it means you have pushed your muscles to the point of failure, which will result in muscle growth. - Breathe
It sounds so obvious but so many of us tend to want to hold our breath when we are lifting. Don’t do that! Remember to use your breath to support the movement. When you are in the lifting portion of the exercise breathe out, and when you are in the releasing portion of the exercise inhale. Think of breathing in as gassing up to execute the movement. - Progress with each workout
Make sure you are progressing with each workout you do. If you did 6 reps last time, try to get in another rep this time. If you did 5 pushups on your toes last time, got for 6 on your toes this time. The idea is to keep striving to do more each workout than the previous workout. You will not get good results if you do the same exercises, at the same weight, and the same number of reps week after week. - Rotate your workouts regularly
There’s a saying in data analytics and program evaluation: what you measure you improve and it’s true. Tracking your workouts is probably one of the most important things to do to get the most out of your efforts. You can’t consistently progress if you aren’t keeping track of your workouts. All you need is a tracker or a notebook and pen to do this. Write your workouts each week and track what you lift for each set and how many reps. Make any additional notes related to whether the weight seemed too heavy or too light, so you know what to adjust the next time you do the workout. - Track your workouts
Monotony will kill your enthusiasm about as quickly as it will kill your progress. A good way to keep progressing as well as keep yourself from getting bored with your workouts is to rotate your workouts regularly. This means change it up! Just not too often, otherwise you won’t get the full benefit your workouts. A good rule of thumb I like to follow is to write new workouts every 4-6 weeks. You can keep the same schedule in terms of your lifting days, just change out some of the exercises and/or the order of the exercises in your workouts.
So, those are eight tips I have for you today that are going to help you maximize your results from your weightlifting workouts. Check out these links here in the episode description or in the video description on You Tube to grab one of my trackers. These are great to support your efforts. They include trackers for your weight and measurements, your weightlifting and cardio workouts, food logs, and water trackers for each day.
Alright, friends, those are my eight tips to maximize your weightlifting workouts. Grab one of these fitness trackers to help you track and progress toward your goals:
I Can and I Will Fitness Tracker
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Thanks for stopping by! I hope to see you in the comments and on the socials!