Beginners: Top Tips For Weight Lifting
Weight lifting is not only great for building muscle and toning your physique, it has many other benefits too. Weight lifting can improve your mood, increase your balance and stability and even help lower your blood pressure. If you are looking to start out in weight lifting, there are some crucial things to consider before you hit the racks. We’ve put together our beginner top tips to get you get clued up and ready to lift:
Start with strength training
Before you pick up your first barbell, it’s important to make sure your body is ready for weight lifting. Start with conditioning your body using basic strength training, involving lots of bodyweight exercises and low weights with higher reps. Keep it simple and build up over time. You can find our blog post on starting out in strength training here.
Invest in a personal trainer
We understand that personal trainers can be expensive, but if you are going to invest at all, the best time to do it is at the start of your weight lifting journey. A personal trainer will be able to assess your fitness levels and abilities and will put together a programme you can follow. They will also be able to provide nutritional advice which will be imperative for achieving maximum results.
Take the time to warm up
Never start a weight lifting session without warming up. Completing a warm up will release your muscles, get your blood flowing and prepare your body for heavy lifting. Either jump on the treadmill or cross-trainer for 10 minutes at the beginning of your workout or start with lifting weights at a much lower intensity than your main activity.
Learn proper technique
Take the time to learn about weight lifting, and ensure your posture and technique is on form. Lifting heavy weights is no walk in the park, and poor technique can lead to frequent injuries. Learn to do each exercise properly, whether that is working with an experienced friend or a training specialist. If at any point during your workout you feel your form slipping, you will need to go down a weight or reduce the amount of reps. You should always move up to the next level gradually.
Ensure you rest
Weight lifting can become addictive very quickly, especially when you start to see physical changes in your body. However, it is really important to listen to your body and take rest days regularly. Rest days ensure that your body is given the time to repair and strengthen, and in the long run will help achieve better results. Take at least one rest day per week and plan out your nutrition so you can indulge in some much-needed carbohydrates during this time!
Weight lifting is a great way to meet new people, improve your health and challenge yourself. To help get you started, we have a range of products and equipment to make sure you are kitted out with everything you need. Visit our full product page here.