Category Archives: Weight Training For Women

The Importance Of Proper Form

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Proper-form


Prevents injuries

One of the most important reasons for maintaining proper form is to prevent injuries. If you are lifting a lot of weight, your body is likely to become slightly misaligned, which can place your muscles, joints and tendons in awkward positions that could potentially cause strains or tears. It is best to ease up on the weight if it means you are better able to maintain proper form.

Ensures correct muscle targeting

Since many weightlifting exercises are targeted toward specific muscle groups, a lack of good form can cause you to work out a completely different muscle or to strain the muscle you were targeting. Proper form, on the other hand, ensures optimal results in the correct muscle group.

Helps maintain proper breathing

Proper breathing is essential in resistance training exercises because it helps you generate more force and reduces the chance of heart problems or severe increases in blood pressure. When you use correct form, you will find it easier to move the air in and out of your lungs, which will also help you focus your attention on the task at hand.

Enables you to lift more weight

In order for you to lift the maximum possible weight, your muscles need to be in the ideal position to generate force. When you begin to move out of alignment, you place your muscles at unnatural angles, decreasing their functional capability. By maintain proper form, you will be able to lift a larger amount of weight, which will translate into more visible results in a shorter period of time.

Reduces unnecessary stabilizing actions

When you use bad form, a number of muscles — predominately those in your core — must work overtime to stabilize your body and try to prevent an injury from occurring. All these actions eat up available energy and significantly reduce the effectiveness of your exercises. That means more work with less results — not and ideal situation.

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Complex Training

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Stromer-Complex-Training

Complex training is a type of weight lifting that is meant to replace your traditional cardio sessions. Because the body often shows adaptation to repetitive endurance activities, complexes allow you to overcome this barrier so you are consistently getting results from your workout. Additionally, because complexes are done using strength training exercises, there will be a better transfer to your lifting workouts as well.

Due to the manner in which complex training is performed you will be primarily focusing on the cardiovascular side of your conditioning, rather than the pure strength side. This means that while they are definitely a good addition to your lift training, complexes are by no means a replacement.

 
How do you perform complex training?

Complex training involves a number of exercises performed in succession. During this time you will need to keep the weight exactly the same so that you can move fluidly from one exercise to the next. Because of this lack of a break period, you will increase your metabolism sufficiently so that the routine is more comparable with a high intensity interval training cardio session.

After choosing the exercises that you will perform, you will want to complete all of your specified reps for one exercise and then move to the next immediately afterward. It is not an alternating type of protocol where you would perform a squat movement, then an overhead press movement, followed by another squat movement then an overhead press and so on. Rather, you would do all of your squats, then move directly into your overhead press reps.

This type of workout is incredibly demanding on the body in terms of metabolic processes and recovery, so you will definitely need to keep that in mind. The weight you are using will need to be reduced drastically from the amount you would normally lift, particularly as you are reaching the end of the complex series when both your muscular and nervous system are likely to be extremely fatigued. Don’t try and be macho for these exercises — less really is more when it comes to complexes.

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Muscular Endurance

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BJSept
Muscular endurance can be defined as the ability of muscles to endure over a period of time when they are in active use. Put another way, muscular endurance is the ability of muscles to be put through repeated contractions without weakening.

Examples of muscular endurance can be found on all fitness levels, from jogging and weight lifting to crossfit and even some strength-based Pilates programs. Muscular endurance can also be found in everyday life, such as walking numerous flights of stairs to your office or carrying your toddler through the store while grocery shopping.

Muscular endurance is different than muscular strength. Muscular strength is the amount of force put into a particular move (or contraction). The two together, muscular strength and endurance, go hand in hand in order for anyone to achieve any type of mid to high activity level every day. Muscular endurance does more than just get you through an intense workout, though it certainly does help with that.

4 ways Muscular endurance helps

1. Stamina

Those with muscular endurance find an ability to press though and keep going, no matter what they are doing. It may be an intense workout program, but it also may be a hike with friends, shoveling the snow or hoeing the garden. Muscles that are used repeatedly and have a high level of endurance do not tire easily when day-to-day demands require that they be used.

2. Increased Metabolism

Muscles do not have endurance unless they are toned and firm. Bodies that contain toned muscle, though not completely without excess fat, usually have less fat on them. Because muscles burn calories more efficiently and quickly than fat does, those with muscular endurance find themselves with quicker metabolisms, which in turn, can lead to healthy weight levels.

3. Fewer Injuries

Muscles that have endurance are not as prone to muscle strains and tears as muscles that do not have endurance to them. That is because these muscles are used to the actions they are being put through, and instead of being unduly strained, are able to respond properly to the demands being put on them.

4. Extended Workout Times

Muscles that have built up their endurance are able to keep being put through the same actions repeatedly, thereby allowing a person to extend and intensify workout sessions. This results in a full-circle type of situation, in that a person who is able to extend his workout time is able to build up more muscular endurance, which in turn allows for a longer workout time, continuing the cycle.

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