HOW MUCH WEIGHT TO USE?

You'd think this would be a straightforward question. It isn't. I hear this question a lot, and from women and men in just about equal numbers . There are three variations on the question: ? How do I select a weight to use for an exercise I've never done before? If you were a guy, I'd say this: "Pick the weight you can think you can use for the number of repetitions the workout requires, and then deduct 25 percent." For women, I'm tempted to say that opposite-"Whatever you think you can use, the actual amount is probably higher. " But that would be glib, not to mention useless, especially if you've never lifted before and have no idea where to start. So let's make it simpler: Start light, and try to increase the weight you use every time you do that workout. If using nothing but your own body weight is an option-as it is with squats, lunges, Swiss-ball crunches, and many othersstart with that. If you're given a number of variations of increasing difficulty -we offer several push-up variations, for example-start with the easiest and work your way toward the hardest. Remember, this is a six-month program, more or less. There 's plenty of time for trial and error. If you choose a weight that's too easy for one workout, increase it in the next by the smallest possible increment, and then keep increasing it throughout the program. Having said that, I don't want you to start with the I -pound Barbie weights and, over the course of eight weeks, advance all the way up to the 8-pound Barbie weights. Lifting weights should always feel like lifting weights. If it doesn't feel like exercise, it's not doing what you want it to do. ? Do I use the same weight for every set of an exercise in a workout, or do I use slightly more weight each set? It's up to you. Let's say you're doing three sets of 10 repetitions of lat pulldowns, and you've chosen not to do any warm-up sets for this specific exercise. (It'll never come first in your workouts, so you'll always have this choice.) You do the first set with 30 pounds, and you know by the third repetition that this weight is far too light. Your best strategy: Finish the set, then increase the weight to 40 pounds for the second set. If that's still too easy, increase it for the third set, perhaps to 45 pounds. (Your gym probably has removable plates that allow you to go up by 2.5 or 5 pounds, rather than the standard lO-pound increases required by the machine's fixed plates.) If even that's too light, then make a note on your training log (if you don't know what that is, I'll explain in the next section), and use more weight the next time you do that workout. ? Should I choose a weight that allows me to go to failure, or should I stop short of that point? You're excused for not knowing that the "failure/short-of-failure" debate is the exercise-science equivalent of "form/content." If you had no idea that a debate even exists, trust me, you're better off. And if you don't even know what the heck I'm talking about ... well, let's start there. In the previous example, your workout called for three sets of 10 repetitions of lat pulldowns. That leaves open the question of how difficult those repetitions should be. Should the tenth repetition be so difficult that you can barely complete it, and at the end of three sets your arms shake uncontrollably and you'd rather scrub the showers in your gym's locker room than do another set? No. I don't think you ever need to push yourself that far in the weight room. Your goal should be to make your sets challenging -they should feel like work, and the deeper you get into the sixmonth program, the harder they should feel. But you never need to get to the point at which the last repetition of a set is the last rep your body could possibly perform. Not intentionally, that is. There will certainly be times in which you get to the ninth rep of a l O-rep set and realize you can't possibly do the tenth and final one. That's fine-in fact, it's more than fine; it's proof that you're challenging yourself. Good for you. But you never need to try to hit that point of total muscular exhaustion on any set, and you absolutely never need to extend a set past the designated numbers of repetitions just so your muscles get to that point of momentary failure. I should also note here, as an aside to those of you who 're new to lifting, that everything I 've just described is a moving target. You' re stronger on some days than you are on others, just as you sometimes feel as if you have more energy on some days and less on others. If you really push yourself on one exercise, you may feel slightly weaker on the next one. So if you don't go to the limit, how do you know what to shoot for? The first time you do a new workout, you want to choose a weight that allows you to stop a set feeling as if you could easily do two or three more repetitions. So if it calls for 10 reps, you want to select a weight that you think you could do as many as twelve or thirteen times. This will never be something you can guess precisely, as I said. But that's your goal. The next time you do that workout, you want to use more weight on each exercise, so you would choose one that you think you could do at least ten times , but certainly not twelve or more. The third time through the workout, you want to select a weight that you're pretty sure you can do ten times, but no more. And the fourth time, you'd pick a weight that you may or may not be able to do ten times. If you stop short of ten, that's okay-it's your last time with that particular exercise for that number of repetitions, so you want to push your limits. But that doesn't mean going to total muscular failure on any set of any exercise. You simply go to the last rep you can do with good form, and stop there. If you don't think you can finish the next repetition, don't start it.