How much should I lift?

[oklady]

Hi everyone I do have a question and need help before I did some damage to my body.. I start lifting about a month now and I try not grab heavy weights I just want lost fat have little muscles and tone my body right now I have about 35% bf and i would love to have about 15-20%bf so how much you think I need left? right now I work with 10-15lb weights and if I do squats with barbel about 50 lb thank you for any help

[WitYoChestBoa]

Hi everyone I do have a question and need help before I did some damage to my body.. I start lifting about a month now and I try not grab heavy weights I just want lost fat have little muscles and tone my body right now I have about 35% bf and i would love to have about 15-20%bf so how much you think I need left? right now I work with 10-15lb weights and if I do squats with barbel about 50 lb thank you for any help

"toning" your muscles is a myth. You should be doing weights that make you challenge yourself. The reps shouldnt be easy and shouldnt be higher than 12 reps. Im assuming this is your goal?




She didnt get that body from being constantly skinny and lifting weights that she could do in her sleep.

[oklady]

yes I just tone my body lost fat and build little muscles
I do 3 sets 12 reps 10-15 lb but should I left most heavy weights or not...

[Partyrocking]

You should be lifting enough weight, such that you are within 1-2 reps of failure most of the time.

E.g. do 3 sets of 8 reps with a weight that you can lift 10 times or so.

Over time, the weights you use should be getting heavier.

Forget about toning or building little muscles. That's nonsense.

Follow a legitimate program. I would consider Strong Curves, Fierce 5, etc.

[oklady]

thank you for advice
one more maybe silly question: "Over time, the weights you use should be getting heavier."
why heavier?

[Partyrocking]

Because you should be getting stronger. If you stay at the same weights indefinitely, then they'll eventually be too easy for you.

Some lifts will progress faster than others, but you should be trying to increase them all over time.

[dyvokoza]

Lifting is like everything else in life: if you keep doing the same thing over and over, you start not making any progress and get stuck in a rut. As your body adapts to the work out, the work out becomes less and less effective. That means that the same workout will eventually burn less calories, induce less muscle growth etc. Eventually you will "plateau": you're working out, but getting no visible results out of it (no fat loss, no muscle growth, no performance boosts). And this principle applies not only to weight lifting, but also to cardio and any other type of physical exercise.

In order to avoid this, we employ something called "progressive overload". Over the course of time, in order to keep getting results, we lift heavier weights, incorporate more difficult exercises, create more advanced and demanding workout plans and add intensity boosting techniques (supersetting, dropsetting etc). For cardio, we increase intensity (run faster) and/or adjust duration (run longer) or employ HIIT or similar cardio principles.

Now, incorporating progressive overload in your training is fairly simple. Take what Partyrocking said:

E.g. do 3 sets of 8 reps with a weight that you can lift 10 times or so.

To incorporate progressive overload into this rep scheme, you should take your last set to failure. This means, do 2 sets of 8, but on the last set, instead of stopping at 8 just rep out as many as you can. When you can rep out 12 reps, the weight is too easy, and for the next workout, you should be using the heavier weight. How much heavier? Well, load up, and test yourself: find the new weight you can move for maximum 10 reps, and repeat the process.

If you want to make this a bit more challenging, you can add more weight to the last set right off. So, do 2 sets of 8 with the weight you're using, then for the last set, choose a weight you can do for no more than 8 reps, but no less than 6. It's ok if you do only 6 or 7 reps. Try and rep out as many as you can each workout. Eventually, when you get to 10 reps, use this weight for sets 1 and 2, and again choose a bigger weight for the last set.

Now, you don't need to (and really, shouldn't) always work out to failure. This can lead to over training. What most of us do is do a de-load week; ie every 5-6 weeks or so we'll take 1 week when we lift lighter weights (ie: 3 sets of 10 with a weight you can lift 15 times), change our routine to something entirely different (calisthenics, trX...) or just stay off lifting all together and maybe just do cardio or sports if you play any. After that, you go on lifting as usual but you've given your body some well-earned active rest.

And don't worry about "building big muscles". You're a woman, you can't. Not without roids. Trust me, been trying for 10 years :-/ XD