Fitness Weight Training

Strength Training: Dos and Don'ts

By Christine Haran

Talking about strength training once conjured images of muscle-bound men with barbells, but today men and women of all ages and fitness levels are involved in strength training programs. Comprehensive exercise programs usually involve both aerobic exercise and strength training, which is also called anaerobic exercise and resistance training. While it's long been known that aerobic exercise, such as running and biking, enhances cardiovascular health and endurance and helps people lose weight, the many benefits of strength training, especially among women, are now appreciated more than ever before.

Strength-training programs increase bone strength, helping to prevent bone loss conditions such as osteoporosis. They improve joint stability and help reduce risk of injury during sports and everyday activities such as doing laundry or walking up and down stairs. Strength training also transforms body composition by increasing lean body, or muscle mass, and decreasing body fat. This change in the muscle-to-fat ratio leads to a higher metabolism, meaning you burn fat faster.

Strength training programs of the last decade have typically involved weight machines. But studies now show that people should also include free weights and exercises such as lunges, which use the body's own resistance, in their strength training programs, so they practice moving their muscles and joints together as they do in real life.

If you want to stick with a strength-training program, it's important not to start out with bad habits or the wrong personal trainer. Below, William J. Kraemer, PhD, a professor in kinesiology and physiology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, offers his strength training dos and don'ts.

DOS

1. Do vary your workouts.

We recommend you alternate among light workouts, moderate workouts and heavy workouts. Sometimes women use very light weights because of the fear of getting too muscular. In reality, most women don't have the hormones to get the type of muscles that men can develop, but they will lose fat just under the skin and have more definition of their muscles.

You just can't go in and lift heavy weights everyday, either, because they body gets used to it and you won't progress. Lifting heavy weights can also increase the potential for muscle pulls and strains. Through the use of what we call periodized schedules, where you have variations, either from workout to workout, or over two- to four-week cycles, you can expose the body to different types of workouts that will stimulate optimal development of bone, muscle and other tissues.

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