Strength training is a great way to build muscle and burn fat. It can help you retain existing muscle and boost your metabolism in the process. It helps to boost the metabolism by increasing your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). Your RMR is the rate at which your body burns energy at a complete rest. For every pound of muscle you gain, your RMR increases by 30-50 calories, meaning your body must use more calories to maintain muscle than it does to maintain fat.
In addition to boosting your metabolism, strength training is a great way to boost your mood, relieve anxiety, decrease stress, improve cholesterol levels, and improve overall blood flow. This is enticing to a lot of people, but some people get intimidated or don’t know where to start. We have several workout routines in our Articles section that can help ease you into strength training, so you aren’t going from zero to sixty and setting yourself up for failure.
Have You Done Workout Training?
If you have never done any of the exercises that you come across, always start out with your bodyweight. Let’s say you encounter an exercise that requires dumbbells. Hold two water bottles or two things that are very lightweight to take the place of dumbbells. The idea behind not using any additional weight is to focus on form. Maintaining correct form is more important than lifting heavy. Doing exercises improperly can increase your risk of injury.
Adding Weight
Dumbbells are great strength training tools. While most gyms have an array of dumbbells, you may only need a couple sets or an adjustable dumbbell set at home. Additionally, dumbbells are less intimidating than barbell training, e.g. bench presses, squats, or deadlifts. They also help you work harder at balancing during the exercise.
What Are Reps & Sets?
A rep, or repetition, is a single movement through a range of motion and back again. A full movement, from start to finish, of a squat, push-up, dip, or pull-up is considered to be a single rep. A group of reps is called a set. If the exercise calls for two sets of ten reps, you will do ten consecutive reps, rest, and repeat ten reps.
Combos
Most of our workouts are combo exercises, especially if you are using our second and third exercise guides. By using combo workouts, you don’t have to exercise for long periods of time. Additionally, you exercise various muscle groups when you do combo exercises, as opposed to doing exercises that focus on a specific area of the body. The important thing to remember is to not rest between combos.
We hope you enjoyed these strength training tips and wish you well on sculpting your body.
