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Do you want to improve your fitness levels? Do you want to tone up? Strength training is a great way to tone your body and help lower body fat. The advice in the following article can help you use strength training to become healthier, lose weight, and look better. Consider enlisting the aid of a personal trainer or a friend who frequently engages in weight training. It is very important to do the exercises correctly in order to avoid injury. When starting out, work out with light weights. This will get your body acclimated to the exercises and help you do them correctly. Be sure to test out any equipment before you start working out on it. Forexample, if you are going to workout on a bench, push down on the bench with your thumb to assure there is enough padding to support your weight. If you feel wood or metal, its not a good bench and you should search for another one. Don't focus on one body part. Often, someone will just workout one body part, like biceps, because these muscles are visible to all. In order to achieve overall fitness, all body parts must be worked. When doing overhead presses, try and flex the muscles in your butt or gluteal muscles. This will give your glutes a great workout as well as decrease the odds of injury. Flexing these muscles provide the spine with more stability thus decreasing the chance of injury. Do calf raises. This is a simple exercise that can be done with or without the assistance of a friend. When doing them alone, place the ball of your feet on a step while leaving the heels free of the step. Hold on to something if balance is an issue. Then raise and lower your body on the balls of your feet. YOu should feel the muscles in the calf being worked. If you have a friend to assist you, lean on a table on your elbows while your friend climbs onto your back. Lift yourself on the balls of your feet and lower yourself. Try to do as many repetitions as you can. The recommended amount of repetitions when engaging in strength training is from 8 to 10. Try using a weight that allows you to do anywhere from 5 to 6 repetitions. This is a way you can vary your workouts and get stronger. Word of advice though, don't train this way frequently because you can tire your body out and this can result in overtraining. When in the gym you may see some people wearing weight belts. Although they have their merits, they are not good to use all the time. If worn all the time they can result in lowering the amount of work that the back has to do. This results in weaker back muscles. Weight belts have their place, but are best utilized when lifting heavier weights. If you don't have time to get to a gym and workout with dumbbells and barbells, don't let that stop you. There are exercises that can be done without this equipment. Push-ups and dips are body weight exercises that have been used for years to help men and women tone up. Grab a gallon of water in each hand and do biceps curls or do lunges while holding them. Pull-ups are an extremely effectice form of exercise as well. Push-ups, pull-ups and dips are compound exercises (exercises which target more than one muscle) and have been used for many years to help people get super fit. Always try to vary your workout. There are different types of body splits that can be used when working with weights. You can choose to work out a seperate body part each day, for example, back on monday, chest on tuesday, legs on wednesday etc. Alternatively you can do upper and lower body workouts. Monday you could work out chest, back, biceps and triceps and Tuesday you could do Legs. Varying workouts assures that each body part get both adequate rest and training. At times, we tend to workout the visible muscles or our favorite muscles more vigorously. Varying the workout prevents muscle imbalances from this favoritism. As you see, you can achieve the level of fitness you desire. It just takes a bit of time and the right knowledge. Use the tips in this article to help you gain an edge in fitness through strength training. You will look and feel great!! For more information about strength training and fitness, visit Train Eat Sleep Repeat.
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