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Your job is to get the job done well. That means reading the exercise
descriptions, practicing the exercise with all your heart, allowing
awkwardness to pass and error to slide. One of your aims is to discover
how much weight is appropriate for each exercise. The standard approach
is to warm up with a light weight for a set of 15 repetitions. In the
subsequent sets, add weight till a set of 12 repetitions is an
agreeable force; that is, one more rep might be too many, one less rep
too few. Record your choice and stay with that weight as you continue
to practice and mature in the workouts to follow.
It won't be long before you are ready to increase the intensity with
which you train. Once you are comfortable and confident with the early
exercise resistance, once you've safely pushed and pulled with all your
strength and the sets and reps are performed with precise form, it's
time to add some weight to your bar. In the early stages of training
you are free to feel your way around your new activity and become
familiar with its dimensions. Your repetitions might go up to 15 per
set to achieve the fatigue that 12 reps at first afforded. This is good
and you are gaining understanding. Now you are ready and able to add
weight to your bar and drop the repetitions back to 12… or 10. Try this
alteration, see how it feels and go from there.
Soreness and stiffness are common and a natural response to the novel
load of exercise on the ligaments and muscle insertions. These signals
keep you aware of your limits, but are not meant to frighten you into a
corner. Each workout calls for a warm-up period as we prepare our
sometimes-grouchy muscles for hard work.
Muscles are better prepared for heavy force than their bone-attaching
tendons, and it is often the unconditioned tendons that present initial
pain or injury. Your first three to four weeks are a conditioning
process for the entire system that has longed for your attention. The
heart, lungs and vascular system are enriched by the new muscle
overload. Much of the initial strength increase you enjoy will be from
improved neuro-muscular pathway articulation, not an increase in muscle
size. You're getting in shape to take on your environment, dominate it
and lose those unwanted surface pounds. The timing could not be better.
Doing the job well calls for you to be entirely present during your
workout. You can slide on through, thinking of a hundred other things,
but you'll miss it, you won't get it, you'll be in the dark and you'll
be sorry. Prepare for your workout by "psyching up" as the time nears,
recalling your purpose and visualizing your goals. You have an hour,
three days a week. Empty your mind and focus on the exercises, their
proper execution and the muscles involved throughout the range of
motion. Appreciate the work and the struggle and how to affect the
particular tracking of the weights. Most people don't have the courage
or foresight to lift weights, a tough and toughening challenge. You're
a hero.
Note the pump (blood filling the working muscles for support and
flooding them with oxygen and nourishment) and the burn (localized
"hot-sting" produced by lactic acid, a metabolic byproduct that
accompanies muscle overload). These two popular phenomena are signs of
successful exercise application and the more you achieve of each the
greater your training gratification. The more gratification, the harder
you train and the greater the results; the greater the results, the
deeper the commitment, the longer the investment and the more weight
you lose, permanently; and you're back to gratification and so on and
so on…There's more, and it keeps getting better. I promise. Wait till
the endorphins hit. You are being indoctrinated.
The structure develops. You are reacting, responding and adapting in
innumerable ways as your body and mind absorb the impact of training.
We talked earlier about the dramatic exercise-induced external and
internal co-functions, the visible and the invisible benefits, and the
synergy of their activities (hormonal activity, muscle density
providing oxygen absorption and fat burning, etc.). You are prospering
with compounding interest, and your investments are young.
The idea behind progressive resistance training is to increase the
workload on your muscular system slowly and regularly through the
manipulation of exercises, resistance, pace and various training
techniques. The basic methods are discussed in these pages and will
take you a long way to accomplishing your admirable goals.
You've already gone through phase one by adding weight to the bar.
Next, one month into your start-up routine, you continue by adding one
exercise a week for the next four weeks from the secondary list. Two or
three sets of each movement further develop a practical network of
muscle fibers, stimulate muscle tone and the metabolic processes, and
prepare you for more aggressive training techniques. The joys of
living, renewing and producing are sweeter than Tupelo honey.
I'm proud. You proud? We're proud. Not arrogant or conceited, just proud. |