7 Must Know Facts to Build Your Strength Training Routine

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Home Page > Sports and Fitness > Fitness > 7 Must Know Facts to Build Your Strength Training Routine

7 Must Know Facts to Build Your Strength Training Routine

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Posted: Nov 12, 2005 |Comments: 0
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Building a strength training routine can be one of the trickiest parts of a fitness program. Ask 10 personal trainers what the best strength training routine is and you will get 10 different answers. Below are 7 must-know guidelines to use when building a strength training program. Each guideline provides the basic foundation that all strength training programs abide by. Learning the proper way to use free weights will greatly improve your strength, fitness, and health levels.

1) We cannot strength train a muscle today and tomorrow. We have to allow at least 24-36 hours of rest. Lifting on consecutive days leads to overtraining, muscle fatigue, and possible injury. All of our strength gains are made during the rest time!

2) We cannot spot reduce. This means if we want to lose weight in our stomach, doing 100 crunches a day will not make our stomach flab disappear. To reduce stomach fat, we need an overall reduction in body fat. Reducing overall body fat results from eating well, regular exercise, and proper rest.

3) We can spot tone. If we want bigger biceps, we can strength train for hypertrophy (fancy word for muscle growth). It is possible for us to focus on one specific muscle group. This is sometimes called targeted training. Studies have shown that machines isolate a muscle better than free weights.

4) Our strength training routines must be regular and consistent for results to take place. It took us years to put on the weight. We shouldn’t expect it to all fall off in three weeks. The best outcome from your fitness and strength training program should be a lifestyle change. Replace bad habits with healthy ones and reap the rewards.

5) Realize that our strength training routine must be changed every 4-6 weeks. This will prevent our body from hitting a plateau and it will keep things interesting. We can change our method, our exercise or our intensity level. Not changing our routine on a regular basis will eventually stop producing results. We will continually grow stronger as we progress with our fitness program. Be sure your body is challenged on every workout.

6) Our strength training routines must be built according to our specific goals. Specific goals may be: fat loss, hypertrophy, maintaining weight or adding bulk. Each goal will have a different method that is best suited for optimal results. Someone who is interested in losing body fat will strength train differently than someone looking to increase muscle bulk. Knowing what your specific goals are will aid in creating the best strength training program possible.

7) Our strength training routines must work all of the major muscle groups in our body 1-3 times per week. This includes our biceps, triceps, shoulders, chest, back, abs, quads, glutes, hamstrings and calves. Leaving out muscle groups will create an imbalance.

By using these 7 guidelines, anyone should be able to build a decent and effective program. The idea is to develop a safe strength training routine that provides us with major health and fitness benefits. Strength training has certainly increased in popularity over the past few years. Knowing how to build a strength training routine for our specific goals will move us one step closer to a fit body.

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Lynn Vandyke -
About the Author:

Lynn VanDyke is the proud owner of http://www.strength-training-woman.com/.  She is a certified personal trainer, yoga instructor and nutritionist. Her site is quickly becoming an essential strength training destination.

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Preferably one that does not require a gym weight room. I honestly do not have the time, with dancing, work, and school and my existing exersize routine. (Mostly cardio and Abs)

I can purchase dumbells and other weights and do what i need to at home. But please do not suggest diet pills or any of that crap. Thanks for the help.

Best answer:

Answer by Shaz001
Hi, Free weight exercises are more effective for building muscle then machine exercises at home. Machines make the exercises easier to perform. How ever You will get less muscle stimulation from machine exercises because they do not require the same concentration or effort as free weight exercises. Free weights have a greater ability to involve stabilizer muscles than machines. Free weights put you in a natural, 3 dimensional environment for exercise.

The majority of your exercises should be compound free weight exercises. This does not mean that you should avoid machine exercises or isolation exercises. They are easy to learn and there is a low risk of injury, which is great for people who are just starting out or for rehabilitation purposes. And there are some good machine exercises that cannot be duplicated with free weights such as various cable pulley exercises. However, the majority of lifters should always base their workouts around compound, free weight exercises and supplement their workouts with machine and isolation exercises.

What do you think? Answer below!

It is no secret that interval fitness training is the best form of cardio. It is like combining a cardio routine with a strength training routine. By doing this you get the best of both worlds, high quality calorie burning along with muscle building.

So instead of jumping on the treadmill or elliptical machine anymore try out something a bit more intense. Try out interval fitness training, and give your body what it really needs to improve.

Try out a couple of these interval routines, they will get your heart rate up while hitting all the muscles in your body. Remember dont take any rest in between exercises, instead rest at the end of the full routine. Use this time to get your breath back and get ready to start it again.

Sprint Interval Training – 15 min

5 Min Warm up
6 Sprint Intervals – 30 Seconds each
6 Rest Intervals – 60 Seconds each
5 Min Warm Down
Do the routine 3 times in the week with a rest day in between each workout

Bodyweight Interval Strength Routine

5 Min warm up

15-20 Push ups
15-20 Dips
20 Bodyweight Squats
20 Burpee Jumps
20 Jumping Jacks

Rest and Repeat – For a real challange try adding 10-20 chinups into the routine. This will blast your arms and back.

Weight Training With Cardio Routine

Back: Bent Over Barbell Rows or Seated Cable Rows – 6 sets of 6-8 reps. Be sure to keep your lower back arched and tight when performing either of these exercises.
Cardio: Take no rest as you move between 40 seconds of cardio work
Chest: Flat Barbell or Dumbbell Bench Press – 6 sets of 6-8 reps. Don’t bounce the bar off your chest as you lower it down. As well, don’t bang the dumbbells together at the top.
Cardio: Take no rest as you move between 40 seconds of cardio work
Biceps: Standing Barbell Curls or Dumbbell Curls – 4 sets of 6-8 reps. Squeeze your biceps hard at the top and don’t swing the weight. Use a shoulder-width grip on the bar for best biceps contraction.
Cardio: Take no rest as you move between 40 seconds of cardio work
Calves: Standing Calf Raises or Seated Calf Raises – 4 sets of 10-12 reps. Perform this movement under control. Don’t bounce out of the bottom and be sure to give your calves a good squeeze at the top.

Rest and Repeat 3 Times

One of the main points that I wanted to get across is the fact that there is no perfect interval routine. They can be sculpted and changed to fit your needs. If you can find out what you are really interested in working and then form a interval routine around that it is a great idea. For more great examples of interval fitness training please check out www.internethealthandfitnessdatabase.com 

One thing that interval training works great for is full body workout, as each muscle will be tired from the last workout and it will have to work to preform the task. Just be careful of the order, you dont want to do bench press or heavy squats at the end unless you are a seasoned vet. If you do do these kind of exercises at the end of the workout be careful, because you need to ensure that you can control the weight.

Try this weight training routine and get as sculpted as possible and as soon as possible. To push your body to the next level, you have to change your weight training program and avoid getting stuck in the rut. Many people actually are in a plateau phase which they did not know of and in the end of the day, they would not get the sculpted body that they wanted because their muscles are just not responding to their weight training plan anymore.

For muscles to respond and get optimum results, they need to be exercised extra hard and kept on guessing. There for, for change, it is recommended that high intensity technique is applied once a while to give the muscle a shock.

One of the best ways to shock the muscle is by using this weight training routine, which uses a technique, called superset. Superset is a method where by 2 exercises for 2 opposing body part is done back to back without rest. Two exercises for one body part done back to back can also be used as a superset.

The purpose of using this technique is to actually keep the intensity high and to keep the heart rate high as well. For example, if we use a chest and back superset exercise, the back muscle is at rest while the chest muscle is worked. When its time to work the back muscle, the chest muscle is at rest and have time to recover and by the time the chest muscle is worked again, it would already recovered.

For superset with the same muscle group, the purpose is to really exhaust the muscle group and kick the stubborn muscle so that it will grow! A good example is to do a bench press followed by a chest dumbbell flyes. Chest dumbbell flyes is an isolation exercise and it will really compliment the bench press, which is a compound exercise. Again, this will keep your heart rate high in the fat burning mode and shock the muscle.

Check Out This Free Weight Training Routine To Get A Sculpted Body For Chest And Back

1. Chin ups superset with Bench Press

2. Bent over barbell rows superset with push ups till failure

3. Seated cable rows superset with chest cable flyes

4. Close grip pull downs superset with dips till failure

Check Out This Free Weight Training Routine To Get A Sculpted Body For Biceps And Triceps

1. Standing bicep curls with close grip push ups

2. Seated 45 degree dumbbell biceps curls with standing triceps push down

3. Standing cable bicep curls with standing triceps rope extensions

4. Standing bicep hammer curls with bent over triceps kickback

Check Out This Free Weight Training Routine To Get A Sculpted Body For Quads And Hamstrings

1. Seated leg extensions with seated hamstrings curls

2. Leg press with straight leg dead lifts.

Check Out This Free Weight Training Routine To Get A Sculpted Body For Shoulders

1. Dumbbell shoulder press with standing lateral raises.

2. Bent over rear delt reverse raises with barbell upright rows

3. Standing dumbbell front raises and shrugs

The repetition range you should be doing is around ten to twelve. If you go above that chances are you may puke because its so intense! Choose moderate heavy weights and include this workout at least once to twice a month.

Day 4 of this complete workout routine – for the rest of this free workout plan and all of Zuzana’s exercise, diet and fitness videos visit her site: www.BodyRock.Tv
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For more free fitness videos, workout routines and diet and exercise plans visit Zuzana’s fitness site: www.BodyRock.Tv