Being confused is such a normal feeling that all the beginners get when they first come into the weight room. And, if you are the one who just starts to do weight lifting at the gym, you can not feel free to lift all kinds of dumbbells there. For good reasons, you will get hurts while stretching your muscles too much by lifting some overweight dumbbells. In another way, you should give good care for your body by grabbing the most suitable dumbbells for yourself especially when you are new to it.
There is a question that usually crosses your mind before doing weight lifting in the gym is: “How much weights that should I lift for the first time?” And, if this question is still getting around and messing your head, here is the answer: It is necessary for you to lift the maximum weight in order to support you finish your reps and sets of given exercises easier.
In case you do a very light or overload weightlift, you are on the way to stop yourself from challenging new things to make some good results without getting any bad injuries.
How To Start The Best Weightlifting?
1. Getting Started
Bodyweight lift has become one of the most efficient exercises for you during the first weeks of your training program. The reason why we highly recommend this kind of exercise is that it is only a good exercise for fitness in really short durations, but it also the easiest exercise for beginners.
As you know, beginning your training course with easy bodyweight or light dumbbells only will help your body get used to the changes in long-term courses. Bodyweight is not considered as a real part of working out, but it is the best way to increase your workout pattern like confidence and stability so that you can reach good results sooner.
Now, please have a look at some examples of the squat pattern that are no longer unfamiliar to you.
First, let’s start with some bodyweight squats. It is important to make sure that you know which pattern is comfortable for you. To find it out, you need to repeat the bodyweight squats from 10 to 20 times. It is possible to get your hips down to the knee level once you can properly complete the repetitions. (make sure that your thighs parallel to the floor), balance your feet by putting them on the floor, and avoiding to roll up on the toes or fall back towards the heels. Here, if you feel more confident with the squats, then…
Add more speed in your training program… Keep do the bodyweight squats through 10 to 20 times and start to be familiar with the pattern until you can totally feel comfortable with the depth and balance. After that, what you need to do is to add more speed to the motion. To do it, you should drop down for a little bit along with push your feet into the floor a little harder to come back up a little faster. The purpose of adding more speed in the motion is to increase your body power as well as bodyweight lifts.
Add a light load…Once your body is confident with the motion, adding light load is definitely a must-to-do thing. Basically, light loads are various and they depend on the age of the athletes, how much weight you can lift or how confident you are. The dumbbells that weigh at 5 or 10 pounds is ideal for the athletes who just start doing the squats.
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2. Increasing Weight with Dumbbells
After the first some weeks practicing bodyweight lift, you feel the training routine seems easy for you so you want to challenge yourself more by increasing the loads. It is a nice signal to tell you that you are already ready for the new session. Now, let’s start the harder bodyweight lifting program with heavier dumbbells.
Start off your bodyweight lift with 10-pound dumbbells. To start the progression, you do the bodyweight squats with 10-pound dumbbells in 12 reps. The performance should be totally focused on mobility in the first some reps. Then, you pause the progression for a second in a parallel position with the thigh for the next reps. (Always tighten your core and push your feet to the outsides of the shoes to engage the hips). Add some more speed during the motion as well as keep your core tight throughout.
In case you are able to perform 12 reps in this full range of motion, then…
Start to use 15-pound dumbbells and perform 10 reps… Begin the motion with a tight core, then gradually push your feet to the outsides of the shoes, perform 10 prescribed reps and sets. Or, you can start off using the 10-pound dumbbells with 12 reps as your training load if you are ready for the harder motion.
Make a new record in your training load with 20-pound dumbbells and 8 prescribed reps and sets. This motion will be for you once you got a perfect form. You will get through a full-motion, with a particular attitude and right knee position. If you find out something goes wrong, you should go back to the 15-pound dumbbells and 10 reps.
Increase more resistance in this training load. To do it, you will reach to perform 8-12 reps with 25-pound dumbbells. To get to this stage, you must be confident in your training load program. Somehow, if you can easily finish a motion from 8-12 reps, you should increase the weight of the dumbbells. And, decrease the weight if you can not complete the 8 repetitions. The 8 repetitions is a tool to determine how much weight of the dumbbells you should take in a load training program.
3. Progressing from Dumbbells to the Barbell
Confidence is an important factor in the full range of motion. In fact, the more confident you are, the heavier dumbbells you can lift up. Normally, you should use barbells while doing bodyweight lift if you want to extend your body resistance if you already finish lifting 25-pound dumbbells in 12 reps of the program. The perfect weight of barbells should be between 40 and 50 pounds.
Start with 25-pound dumbbells for 8-12 reps… If you are now confident to lift the 25-pound dumbbells from 8 to 12 repetitions with perfect form, it is time to consider the new progression.
Practicing Front Squats with a 45-pound bar for 6-10 reps is needed after moving to a really new progression, The reason to start with the front squat is that the bar position is similar to the dumbbell one. In fact, the athletes will always be encouraged to perform some types of barbell Olympic clean variation because it is suitable for the front squat position. Increase the weight of the bar if you can perform more than 10 reps, and decrease the weight if you cannot succeed 6 reps in a procession. This progression will reach the next point if you can finish front squats of 50% of your body weight. Here, you are ready to progress to Back Squats.
6-10 reps are considered as ideal rates to perform Back Squat with a barbel. Adding more weight to the bar if your perform reaches 10 reps, or decrease the weight if you can not reach the performance of 6 reps.
The progression is suggested to be used in the early stages of your program. Its purpose is for building up your confidence in every single exercise variation. Some programs are given 3 sets of 6 reps ( it is just normal). However, some athletes are confused about the amount of weight for their training load program, so they sometimes lose the benefits of the lift. It is really important to seek for the information of this exercise first, learn how to do it, use the progression to build your self-confidence up. Since you understand the progression well and feel confident in it, you will take this program with much more effectiveness.
Tips for Preventing Weight Lifting Injuries
- Use proper form while doing bodyweight lift. Most injuries caused by using poor form when you do lift up. The worse body form you use, the more terrible injuries you end up. Thus, using the proper form is a critical part to prevent bad injuries when you do training load exercise.
- Do some easy and smart exercises to warm up. According to the physical experts, some types of exercises such as stretching, pushing, light aerobic exercise will help your heart pump stronger as well as loosen tight muscles, ligaments, and tendons.
- Lift low weights and low reps are some main factors to avoid injury. They also minimum muscle soreness for the athletes. Do not be like a silly guy in the gym, who tries to lift as twice as he can, but it does not work well for him. Add more weight once you could finish 10 to 12 reps of the progression.
- Take care of your body well after doing bodyweight lift. Some of you may think it is not a so important thing to do, but it really works well for you. Some good habits like having enough rest, eating well, having proper posture, and staying healthy makes your body stronger so that you can have more chances to progress the training load program better.
- Always listen to what your body says. Pain or exhaustion is what you can easily get during doing the bodyweight lift. It is important to stop lifting sometimes in order to help the pain recover better.
- Use high-quality, safe, and well-maintained equipment is what you should do to protect yourself from the injuries. Bad training equipment should not be used because it is like your risk of injury.
- Take some days off to recover. Some athletes try so hard to work out and it is a real reason leads to some physical problems. You will be a smart athlete if you know skip training sometimes it is such a good therapy treatment for your tiring body. Forcing your body too much will make you be injured easier.
Final Words
To wrap up, bodyweight lift has become a favorite kind of exercise for all people. It is never easy to know how much weight of the dumbbells that are appropriate for you if you are not a trainer. Looking for the answer seems like a difficult guessing game. There are no certain answers that we can give so you should better find it out by yourself then. What you have to do is going to the gym, ask for the consult trainer for the proper form of the bodyweight lift and then practice it. You can lift every dumbbells that you feel comfortable with when you do a motion of 12 to 15 reps. Always make sure that you have a correct form while lifting dumbbells up and down. Your body will get used to the training load exercise day by day, so you have to wait for discovering the results. Besides, there are several other good websites about fitness and other related information that are helpful for you. Spend your time and check them out!