MAKING UP YOUR OWN WEIGHTS SESSION PART 2

Evening all,

Been up on the range today, all afternoon, it was an excellent afternoon's shooting, using a variety of different weapons, only draw back is the heat and we are having real high winds at the moment every afternoon which is making the air full of dust, which gets in your eyes and mouth, not nice. Anyway, enough of that, I am going to carry on with the theme of making up your own weights sessions and continue with providing you information so that you can make your resistance training more targeted toward what you are trying to achieve. Whether it is Hypertrophy or Strength.  As I have said in the last blog, I will cover Power and Endurance at a later date.

To get the best gains from your weight training, there are certain parameters that you need to adhere to.

1. You need to know what you are currently capable of lifting. This means testing
2. You need to know how to manipulate your training loads, to allow you to get the best gains.
3. You should stick to a programme for at least 6 weeks before changing it (unless you are an experienced lifter or athlete, who will need to change things on a more regular basis for stimulation)
4. You will need to test yourself again at 4-6 weeks, to see if what you are doing is working. It would be a pretty pointless exercise to keep doing the same thing if no gains were made.

TESTING

There are many different ways to carry out your testing. I will give you a couple here.

• For a complete novice
• For an intermediate lifter
• For an experienced lifter

The Novice Lifter

When you first start out on your resistance training you should test all the exercises that you are planning to do in your training programme.

The test should consist of what is known as a 15 Repetition maximum test. 

To do a 15 repetition maximum, take a fairly light weight, be very conservative at this stage, and carry out the chosen exercise for a total of 15 repetitions. If you get all your 15 Reps, which you should have if you picked a light weight. Rest for around 2 minutes and now have another go using a weight that you think will allow you to only get 15 reps. It is a bit of a pain working out your starting weights because there is quite a lot of guess work on your behalf.

Your 15 repetition maximum should be a load that you find difficult to do on the 14th and 15th repetitions. This does not mean that you are struggling to move the weight and losing your form, it just means that it is difficult to do. 

If you find the second attempt fairly easy, then you should rest and try again with a heavier weight, if you find it is too heavy, then rest and have another go with a lighter weight. You should really only have3 attempts to find your 15 rep max for an exercise in any single session. It is possible to do as long as you are honest with yourself.

After your first 6 weeks, you can test again. This time though you should find a 10 repetition maximum for each of your lifts. Now you will have a much better idea of how much you can lift, so you will have no problem finding your Max's in 3 attempts.

Use exactly the same method as when you did your 15 rep max, but this time you are looking at finding reps no 9  and 10 difficult without losing your form.

The Intermediate & Experienced Lifter

Testing for these two groups of lifters can be heavier, at this stage you can start doing anything from a 5 to a 1 rep maximum lift, depending on what type of programme you are going to embark on.

It is essential that you warm up very well to do this type of heavy testing, 

1. To avoid injury
2. To give you the best chance of getting your optimum load

To find your 1 rep max, you should have a guess at what you think your max will be.  This may sound a bit odd as that is what you are trying to find, but you will have a rough idea in your mind.

Use this guessed weight and do  8 reps at 50% so if you think you can do 100kg on the bench press, do 8 reps with 50kg.

Then rest for 2 minutes and do 5 reps with 60% (60kg using our 100kg max)

Rest 2 minutes do 3 reps with 70% (70kg)

Rest 3 minutes do 1 rep with 80%

Rest 3 minutes do 1 rep with 90%

Rest 5 minutes and have a go at your max (100kg)

if you get the Max, rest for a further 5 minutes and add about 2.5% to the last load and go again. You can keep on at this until you max out.

If you fail your first attempt but were close to getting the desired weight, then rest 5 minutes and try the same weight again. (you can have 3 shots total)

If you fail your desired weight, and are not close to getting it, then reduce the load by 2.5% and have another go after 5 minutes rest. You should be somewhere near on this attempt.

When you have done your testing, you will now have a starting point to kick off your weight training programme.

On Sunday I will explain how a novice should structure their weights loading for the first 6 weeks and how to put it together after the second bout of testing.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Steve