Health & Fitness: Weight Training

So maybe you never want to be considered a typical gym rat, and you don't have to, even if you do want to flex during Beach Week. To smash the myth, weight training is not just a man's activity; ladies can and should do it, too.

In fact, it is beneficial for both men and women to tone and tighten. If weights are not your cup of tea, try Pilates, difficult forms of yoga and calisthenics to weight train.

These exercises allow you to work out using your own body weight as leverage and can also stress the muscles in the same way as traditional weight training.

What is weight training?

Weight training is a form of strength training exercise that takes advantage of weights in order to increase muscle size, burn fat and get a toned appearance.

When you weight train you are actually tearing and ripping the muscle fibers. Rest and recovery become important. About 48 hours, as recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine, is needed to heal rips and tears.

After tearing and ripping, the muscles grow and repair becoming larger and stronger. Every time you weight train you give your muscles the opportunity to re-grow and become bigger, but that is only if you provide sufficient rest and recovery time so that the muscles are built.

Why weight train?

Weight training improves your muscular strength, allowing you to look toned, solid and feel stronger.

Weight training helps with injury prevention and maximizes the effects of weight loss efforts by maintaining lean muscle while fat is lost as a result of exercise and regulated food intake.

Weight training strengthens the bones, which prevents osteoporosis. It can also minimize the impact incurred by falls, specifically in older people.

Weight training raises the metabolism as muscles burn more calories than fat. More muscle equals more fat burn. Weight training improves body coordination, raises energy and raises self-esteem.

How to weight train?

Weight training typically uses various equipment to target and isolate different muscle groups.

Varying repetitions of sets are used for different fitness outcomes such as increased endurance, size or muscle shape.

Types of weight training equipment include barbells, dumbbells and weight machines that can be manually loaded. In the case of calisthenics workouts, muscular strength and endurance are gained through repetitions of moving your body weight through the exercise, for example, push-ups, tricep dips and chin-ups.

How heavy is too heavy?

The American College of Sports Medicine advises that a good weight is one that can fatigue the muscles after about 12-15 reps, and in doing so, the last rep should be hard to finish.

How often should I weight train?

The American College of Sports Medicine suggests weight training a muscle group about two to three times per week with rest and recovery days for that muscle group.

Typically, specific muscle group weight training is rotated in a cycle so that a person may weight train the body nearly every day, while targeting different muscle groups each time to allow for muscle recovery to see the results of stronger, more solid muscles.

So, for example, if you lift and work on the upper body today, then tomorrow, work the lower body. This gives the upper body a chance to rest and you still get to weight train.

Injury Prevention:

Avoid injury in weight training by maintaining proper form, using the right amount of weight and targeting the intended muscle, rather than folding under the pressure of the weight and then harmfully transferring the weight around to other parts of the body. This weight transfer is considered "cheating" and can put you at risk for straining your muscles and getting injured.

To further prevent injury, take full advantage of muscle rest and recovery days. These are just as important as the actual working days.

Rest days make the muscles appear toned or larger, so be sure not to overwork the same muscle groups for consecutive days.

For questions or support contact: Tenaj "T-Pain" Ferguson tenajferguson@gmail.com