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Weight Training Technique and an alternative

© Soumy Ana

When you pump your muscles, use maximum repetitions, until they are fatigued for maximum benefit. And always begin by recruiting several muscle groups before targeting individual muscles. This way, the isolated muscle is enough fatigued and does not support overloads.

Perform exercises at seventy to seventy five percent of their utmost strength. That means you cannot complete more than a few repetitions.

And repeat the exercises into sets, which should be interrupted by moments of rest and static, local stretches.

Muscle training should develop endurance and strength, not give you bulking muscles if you are not a body builder so it is not important for you to go over this limit.

A bodybuilder would train for brief, very intense exercises going over the fatigue of the muscle (until your scream I would say) followed by long periods of rest so that the muscle could be allowed to bulge.

You do not want to do that! Anyway, if you are a woman, it is hardly possible that this will happen to you since women do not develop big muscles. This is always true even if some minorities are genetically more inclined to build bigger muscles like black Africans.

Therefore, keep your physical activity to a moderate intensity to get fit and well toned.

Aerobics is well suited for women since it focuses on the lower body so spend maybe more time firming your upper body during muscle conditioning sessions.

And remember: If you feel dizzy, overly fatigued or any pain, immediately stop the activity.

Give your body at least 24 hours for recuperation between workouts.

And do not try to lift more weights that you can handle. You will feel more benefits going slowly with lighter weights.

Drink plenty of water. Avoid over-training.

Make sure you cross-train (run one day, swim the other, bike, dance, alternate, and chose one day low intensity exercise, another day high intensity).

If you are already bored with muscle toning classes or you like variety or are an aerobics super-enthusiast, there are several very interesting ways to train muscles using choreography. Try exercises like the Tamilee Webb RUBBERBAND method. The main idea is to train two big muscle groups together. At the same time you do aerobic moves such as lunges, horse shoe, etc, using a tube in coordination. The workout seems immediately less boring, and you train more thoroughly.

However, do not forget stretching regularly and provide some interludes after each set.