Lifting Weights Burns Insane Amounts Of Fat!

Were you aware that a 20 year old girl who is not really weight lifting will on average reduce 6 pounds of lean muscle and gain 5 pounds of excess fat by the time she is fifty? Quite surprising, right?

In this article I will discuss a few misguided beliefs associated with strength training, and provide you with what I believe to be the top reason for why you need to get off the running track and into the gym and start lifting more iron!

I am going to have big and bulky muscles if I lift weights!

This is not the case at all! This is an old myth that has been verified to be wrong by many impartial studies in the last ten years. The very fact is that a female that lifts heavy weights is not going to tone her muscles, but burn up fat many times sooner than somebody who is just jogging on the treadmill.

Naturally, women of all ages have way less testosterone than men, so that it's not possible for them to develop big muscles while strength training without the need for illegal substances. As a girl, I have to do high repetition sets if I want to slim down!

Yet again, this is an old myth that needs to be squished for good! The real technique to fat loss is actually to burn more energy. And how do you burn more energy when you exercise? You guessed it - by lifting heavier, by doing more work!

The key is to lift heavy loads, rest quickly between your sets and do it again! If you just lift easy weights for many repetitions, then you will not likely force your body to perform that hard. The body will adjust to training for high repetitions with the same weight and your progress will stagnate.

Prevent this by always increasing your weight each workout and trying to lift for fewer reps than the 15 - 20 that plenty of fitness instructors talk about.

I guaranteed to give you a very good reason why you should be strength training, and here it is: You will achieve your fat loss and health goals faster!

It's true! When you lift weights three times a week and apply a good all-around program you will not just lose more fat but you will also improve your back, knees and other critical joints. And once you have been at it for a few weeks, you will feel that you have more vitality than ever before while also experiencing fewer mood swings and (hopefully) being more productive too!

But if you really want to learn how to lift weights, you HAVE to check these Bodybuilding Tips For Beginners!

Olympic Lifting Works Well For Women Looking To Burn Fat And Sculpt Their Body

Many women are afraid of lifting heavy weights. Most people believe that weight lifting (as it is traditionally known) is only for men but that is just not true. To get that lean, toned, sculpt look for your body Olympic lifting is a great way to achieve that and works really well for women.

To take part in this fat burning activity you don't have to be lifting huge weights and more recent research has shown that regular sessions of Olympic lifting can not only improve your general wellbeing but will also strengthen your whole body while increasing your stamina.

The best part is its fat burning capabilities. Olympic lifting stimulates your metabolism and gets that working at burning fat (and not muscle!) - as long as you combine it with a healthy eating program you will produce amazing results. Technique is very important for beginners because it is easy to injury yourself, which is why Olympic lifting isn't something you should do on your own. If you are concerned about hurting yourself or sustaining an injury get yourself an Olympic lifting personal trainer and make sure they are qualified because I have seen too many personal trainers providing the wrong advice to their clients!

Too many women still believe that moving light weights up and down 12 times is going to make a difference to toning their muscles but most women have handbags that are heavier than these light weights and don't manage to tone up! Your body really needs something more than that - especially if you have been working out for six months or more. Olympic lifting is far more effective and when you learn how to perform the exercises correctly will give you far better results.

When we workout with clients we teach them how to use Olympic lifting to change the whole shape of their body and they LOVE the results they get. If they are really unfit we may start them off with something smaller like kettle bells and the Bulgarian training bag, using these tools are also really effective for fat burning and toning and it always feel great to be able to start with those before progressing on to Olympic lifting.

There really is no need to worry about using Olympic lifting if you are a woman looking to tone her body. It will actually give you that lean, toned, sculpt look that most women love.

London personal trainer Carol Petersen works with women looking to burn fat, lose weight and sculpt their body to achieve the toned lean look that women love. She runs a personal training studio on Battersea Park Road in Clapham where she provides nutritional help and the Bodymetrix assessment. If you are looking for a personal trainer in London visit http://www.claphamgym.co.uk.

Simple Truth About Successful Weight Loss

Nowadays and all around the world, there is a growing trend and number of people getting overweight or obese. As a result, countless weight loss products and programs come into being and weight loss has become a multi-billion dollar industry. However, despite the claims of some of the fad diets or pills, there are no miracles in weight loss. Stay away from products and diet plans that promise fast results with minimum effort. These promises are too good to be true. The simple truth is: there is only one way to lose weight successfully and keep the weight off - through a balanced diet and regular exercise.

A balanced diet does not completely exclude any food type from your meals but promotes the consumption of carbohydrates, protein and fats in proportion appropriate to the dieter's circumstances. All these nutrients are essential for a healthy body. There are a number of diet plans on the market that focus on eating or eliminating one type of food. However, it is better to eat a well balanced diet that includes a wide variety of food types.

To build a balanced diet, aim to include a mix of the following foods daily: vegetables (3-5 portions), fruits (2-4 portions), grains and potatoes (4-6 portions), calcium-rich foods (2-4 portions), protein-rich foods (2-4 portions), healthy fats and oils (1 portion). Examples of healthy fats include: olive oil, nuts, seeds, avocado, oily fish. In addition, follow these principles:


Avoid saturated fats (e.g. fatty meat, full-fat dairy products, butter).
Avoid trans fats (e.g. margarine, fried foods, commercially manufactured baked goods and any food with partially hydrogenated oil on its list of ingredients).
Eat more plant based foods and fewer animal based foods.
Eat only as much food as your body needs, preferably stop when you feel 80% full..
Eat foods as close as possible to the way they come in nature.

Regular exercise is the other half of the formula for successful weight loss. Aim to include the following these two types of exercise in your weekly schedule:


Cardiovascular exercise (eg. cycling, running, swimming, walking and using cardio machines) for a minimum of 20 minutes each session, three times a week. This will burn fat and shift your metabolism into higher gear; and

Strength training (weight lifting and resistance training exercise) for three times a week. These should be total-body workouts and the exercises will help you build more muscle tissue, which will help you burn more fat.

In planning the exercises, please take note of the following:


Leave at least 48 hours between weight workouts of the same body parts. Your muscles need time to recover and repair after a workout.
Take a day each week with no formal exercise.
Warm up for 5 minutes before starting to exercise to avoid injury.

So, if you want to lose weight successfully and keep the weight off, I would highly recommend you follow the principle of a combination of a balanced diet, regular cardio plus weight lifting exercises. You would have a much better chance of success.

The author started the website http://HealthyWealthyClub.com/blog which is a website about building and leading a healthy and wealthy life. Check out the website for ideas, suggestions and products in your journey towards a healthy wealthy life.

Specific Exercise Regimens That You Should Be Aware of As a Way to Burn Fat and Lose Weight

There was a recent article in Time Magazine, (a very respected weekly publication) which stated that by the year 2030, roughly half of the total population in the United States will be obese. According to the Web MD site, a person is considered to be obese if his/her body weight is 20% above normal weight for his/her height. Folks that is a very alarming statistic. We all need to eat healthier and exercise our bodies to a much greater extent than we do currently. There are specific exercise regimens that will help you to burn fat from your body and allow you to lose weight.

In order to burn bad fat it is best for the individual to engage in the type of physical exercise regimens that, over the long haul, result in little damage to the structure and frame of one's body. The individual would also be encouraged to participate in a series of weekly cyclical exercise activities designed to work on different muscle groups at a time. An example of such a program involving a series of weekly workouts could be the following. I also include days in which the individual participates in no physical activity, instead enjoying a full 24 hour rest period designed to allow one's body to experience full recovery.

Day #1: The individual engages in activities designed to benefit both the heart and leg muscles. This could be the person participating in a long bike ride, (15 - 25 miles or more) and along a route that requires hill climbing. Please wear a helmet to protect your head if you choose this to participate in this activity. Other alternative activities could be swimming workouts, tennis, racquet ball or engaging in full court basketball games. All of these activities, (including biking up a fairly steep hill) work the heart and other muscles, (legs, shoulders and arms) to the point where you achieve short-span fatigue followed by a short period where you have a rest in the recovery process. In biking, after you climb a fairly challenging grade, you could then glide down a hill in order to allow your heart rate to slow back down again in the recovery process. In tennis it could be a fairly lengthy 20-30 hit rally between you and your opponent in which you both engage in quick sprints back and forth across your side of the court to track down the ball. After this rally, it is followed by a period of short rest, (allowing your heart rate to come back down) before the start of the next point. In any case you would want to participate in the activity for an hour to 90 minutes, minimum.

Day #2: Rest and recovery.

Day #3 Engage in calisthenic type exercises. This could include push-up drills, chin-ups, abdominal crunches, squat thrusts and other exercises that incorporate the use of different muscle groups. There is a lot of material on Internet websites designed by conditioning experts that will demonstrate and diagram for you the correct form while performing these drills. In all instances, when done correctly you will achieve short-span muscle fatigue. As example, you may only be able to do 10 push-ups when starting out on your program where you simply cannot do one more push-up as the muscle groups in your arms and shoulders become fatigued. The goal over time is to be able to increase your muscle stamina, adding more push-ups to each set, (before the same short-span muscle fatigue stage is reached) as you build lean muscle.

Day #4: Unless you are in super shape, you would be encouraged to use this day for rest and recovery.

Day #5: Participate in a light-weight lifting regimen. Just as with the calisthenic exercises performed on day #3, there are excellent websites designed by physical fitness experts designed to teach you different types of light-weight lifting exercises and how to do them correctly and safely. The fallacy that performing a lot of light-weight lifting weekly will result in the bulking up of your body to the point where you will soon resemble a world-class power-lifting athlete is just that: A fallacy. Light-weight lifting will result in the increase of lean muscle on your frame, the burning off of bad fat and weight loss; not gain!

Day #6: Repeat some of the activities performed in Day #1, but if possible change up the activity. Instead of going out on a bike ride, do some power walking or play a game of tennis if you know someone who enjoys playing that sport.

Day #7: And on the 7th day, you rest!

Two other quick thoughts as you participate in physical activity and eventually gain the benefits from it as you lose weight:

1: Always replenish the liquids that you lose through sweat both before and as you workout by drinking lots of fluids: water and/or sports drinks, (such as Gatorade). The latter are especially formulate to replace the electrolytes and other minerals lost through sweat while engaging in the physical activity. You want to keep your body as hydrated as possible before, during and after the exercise period.

2: Stretching your muscles is important, but you must understand when your body will best benefit through this activity. Muscles become more elastic after you have begun the activity to the point where they become warm. It is best to engage in light activity first, and then do some exercises designed to stretch your muscles. Muscle strains, pulls and tears are more likely to occur if you do a lot of stretching before you have started exercising; the muscles themselves still cold before becoming supple. When you finish an activity for the day, you are especially encouraged to stretch your muscles out to prevent the build up of lactic acid in them.

Fat burning exercises are essential in helping you reach your goal to lose weight. Naturally in conjunction with this you would also want to get involved in a diet plan to help you burn fat from your body by eating within the proper foods groups. There is much more information that will teach you to find the type of exercise programs which will be suited towards you as an individual. Please visit the following site: http://ucanlosefat.com.

Stretching Exercises

Stretching exercises are important before you begin your workout. Always remember to stretch before and after your workout. Stretching exercises also give you health and fitness by making you more flexible.

This helps you in all sorts of exercises, even running, you will find stretching the leg muscles daily will give you better performance at fitness exercises such as running.

Remember for optimal health and fitness always perform stretches, as we mature we become more and more less flexible, this is why it is good to stretch daily.

Stretching exercises for health and fitness are very easy to perform. The normal ones for legs such as touching the toes and hamstring stretches are your most common stretches. For arms you can do anything from arm twists. For your upper body a great stretching exercise is to perform twists side to side with a weightless barbell behind your neck.

If you are are pursuing martial arts or want excellent flexibility in the legs then you can perform the splits each day, take it very easy when doing this if you are new to exercise, pushing your self could result in severe pain, and in some cases, even damage.

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Weight Exercises to Build Good Muscles

Weight exercises to build muscle are done in many different ways but if you are a beginner and would like an easy-to understand step by step approach to the workout regimen; I'll take this privilege to teach you the best exercises ever known to man.

A great workout plan targets the major muscle groups which are the chests, lats or your back, legs, shoulders and the abdominals. But before we go rolling in to the gym, it is better to have a fixed program or schedule for you to follow. It is important to divide the workouts by the body part that you'd like to train. As an example of weight exercises to build muscle, you may do chest exercises on day 1, back and shoulders for day 2 and leg exercises for day 3.

For the chest exercises, the bench press is the most basic that you should master. It builds the chests as well as little on the shoulders and triceps. It helps in building wide chests which the ladies often notice when we take off our shirts. When you do this exercise, ensure proper form and lifting tempo and also the weight to avoid injury and accidents.

For your back and shoulders weight exercises to build muscle, the pull up works best to build a V shaped back. Hang on a pull up bar with your arms shoulder width apart and pull yourself up. This may be too difficult in the beginning but you'll get the hang of it. As a substitute, you can perform dumbbell presses and lateral raise to target the shoulders. This gives a wide look essential for building a V shaped back.

For the legs, perform squats by placing a weighted barbell across your shoulders and squat down until your legs are almost parallel to the floor. Beware though because most weight lifting injuries are caused by improper execution of squats so it is best to do the exercise with the supervision of a trainer. For your abdominals, crunches are among the best weight exercises to build muscle. Do as many crunches as many as you can and perform the crunches on a flat surface to avoid injury and strain to the back.

Before going gorilla on the weights, I recommend to let a gym instructor teach you personally the proper execution of the exercises to avoid strain and overloading to the joints. Weight exercises to build muscle to take effect should be performed on a consistent and regular basis to achieve the best results.

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Weight Gain After Weight Loss Diets - How To Stop Unwanted Weight Gain!

Have you experienced weight gain after dieting hard for several weeks or months? If you want to learn why you gain weight even when eating foods that are good for you, continue reading! Weight gain and weight loss is very simple. If you eat more calories than your body is burning, you will gain weight. If you eat fewer calories than your body burns, you'll lose weight. Simple, right?

Many people only worry about weight loss when going on a diet. They believe that diet alone is the best way to reach their goals. There are too many people out there who are led to believe that weight loss is what they want. I'm here to tell you that weight loss is not important! Fat loss is what you want. When people only worry about losing weight, they see success as the number on the scale decreasing. This is not a good way to measure success.

Success on any weight loss diet should be measured by the amount of fat you lose and the amount of muscle that you don't lose. A weight loss diet alone may help you lose weight fast, but guess what? You're losing muscle along the way. Muscle burns calories! When you lose muscle, you lose something that only helps you reach your goals. You do not want to lose muscle.

Now, we come back to the question concerning why people gain weight after coming off a weight loss diet. The weight loss turns out to be both muscle and fat. When the person loses muscle, the body will be burning fewer calories throughout the day. The person begins eating good foods, but eats more calories than their body is burning because they have less muscle than they had before the weight loss diet. As we learned earlier, weight gain occurs because the person is eating more calories than their body is burning. The loss in muscle causes the weight gain!

You now probably want to know how to lose weight without losing muscle. Focus on fat loss and not weight loss. In order to keep as much muscle as possible or even build new muscle while losing weight, you'll need to undertake a complete weight lifting program. Weight lifting will help you hold onto muscle and build muscle while losing weight. You keep the muscle and you keep the weight off after your diet! You look even better than ever with all your muscle and decreased fat levels. You are healthier.

A complete weight lifting program will consist of weight lifting, stretching, diet, and cardio. A complete program will get you to your goals at light speed compared to diet alone. You'll be amazed at the progress you make. Lift weights to build muscle, stretch to prevent injury and increase recovery from workouts, diet for fat loss, and perform cardiovascular exercise for fat loss and health reasons.

Learn how to design a complete weight lifting program at Weight Lifting Complete I will guide you through everything, answer your questions, and help you reach your goals all for free.

Weight Lifting - Are You Making Big Mistakes In Your Workouts?

Weight lifting, also called weight training, is a physical activity that helps build muscle strength and size. It utilizes weights in order to train muscles. Bodybuilders often lift weights to help them achieve their desired bodies.

This type of exercise may appear easy to do but it requires proper form and execution to achieve the best results and avoid injury. Most exercises require the back to be straight and the core engaged the entire time. This allows the routine to effectively work the muscles that it targets.

Proper breathing is also very important. You should not forget to breath and you should not hyperventilate. Regulate your breathing and breathe deeply because the deeper you breathe, the more oxygen is distributed to the muscles and the better you are able to work your entire body.

As with any exercise, always keep hydrated. Even if this type of exercise does not increase the heart level as much as a cardiovascular exercise, you should be wary of your water intake. After a sweaty workout, replenish the fluids you lost right away.

Weight lifting focuses on toning muscles and it is important that these muscles are warm before they do any work. Warming up your body before any workout avoids injury and promotes better form because you loosen up your joints and prepare your muscles to move. After the workout, stretching helps relieve muscle tension and increase flexibility, as well.

For initial strength building, start with lighter weights and do more reps. As you become stronger, increase the number of reps and the weight gradually. Lighter weights with more reps increase your muscle's endurance.

If you want to increase muscle size, lift heavy weights that you can only do for one to three reps maximum. This type of exercise increases the bulk of your muscle and trains your muscles to be stronger. This is often used by Olympic weightlifters in their training but bodybuilders benefit from this exercise as well.

Muscle toning and building is part working it and part allowing it to recover. During your workouts, especially during weight training, your muscles are actually being torn as you work them. It is when you rest that your body repairs them and makes them stronger and burn calories in the process so you have to make sure that you get enough rest and sleep after working out and not work the same muscle groups for consecutive days.

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Weight Lifting Advice For More Muscle Growth

Since you're serious about building muscle mass, then you need to pay attention the following weight lifting advice - learn how to warm-up before jumping into your workout sets. If you pay attention and learn how to implement your warm-up sets the right way, you'll be guaranteed to build more muscle mass naturally!

Do you know how to structure your warm up sets for maximum effectiveness? While almost everybody understands the importance of a well structured warm-up, hardly anyone knows how to piece together a warm up that actually warms up their muscles without prematurely fatiguing them before their workout even begins. if you don't get your warm-up routine down right, your workout will not be very effective at stimulating strength gains and muscle growth.

So many weight lifters and bodybuilders completely ignore the importance of a well thought out warm-up routine. If you decide to take this weightlifting advice lightly, your workouts will not be as effective as they could be. I'm sure you've all seen the guys in the gym performing worthless warm-up routines like 1 set of 35 reps simply using the weight of the Olympic bar, but the fact is that most guys don't even try to perform any type of warmup at all.

A well structured warm-up routine is important because...

1) A good warmup routine enables you to increase the weight that your body is capable of training with during your growth stimulating work sets. The heavier the weights you're able to train with over time, the more muscle growth and stimulation you're going to see on a consistent basis. If, you don't learn how to warm-up properly, then you just can't expect to stimulate maximum muscle growth...it's that simple.

2) The chance that you'll wind up hurting yourself decreases drastically once you learn how to warm up prior to your workouts.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but to me the possibility of actually increasing the effectiveness of my workouts while at the same time decreasing my chances of obtaining an injury seems like two really good reasons to invest 15 to 20 minutes prior to each workout performing a warm-up. Don't you think it's worth it? It's really a win-win situation. By putting this weightlifting advice to use, you get an opportunity to stimulate more muscle growth by preparing your body to train with heavier weights during your workout all the while limiting your exposure to any type of muscular injury.

This is what an effective warm-up looks like...

I like to begin each of my warm-ups with 5 to 15 minutes of light to moderate intensity jogging. I just think that it's a great way to start your warm-up. You get your heart pumping and the blood flowing before you even move any weights.

While you are completing your 5-minute cardio warm-up, you can use this time to mentally picture the workout you're going to do. If you can mentally prepare yourself for the workout ahead, you are in a great position to give a 100% on your workout.

Your mental attitude will help determine if your workout is a success or a failure, so it makes sense to prepare both your body and mind. 9 times out of 10 if I head into a workout excited and ready to get to work, I'm able to really have an effective workout. Once you've completed those 5 - 10 minutes of light cardio, move on to the final part of your warm-up. You will focus on doing 5 warm-up sets with the first major compound exercise in your workout routine. To give you a better idea of what I mean, if you were training legs using squats as your main exercise, you'd want to do 5 warm-up sets of squats before jumping into your work sets.

While doing this, use extremely light weights with high repetitions, and then gradually increase the resistance while lowering the number of repetitions.

One of the most important things to keep in mind during your warm-up sets is that...

You Do Not Want To Make Your Muscles Tired During your Warm-Up

Remember, this is only a warm-up; it's only purpose is to help you increase blood-flow to your muscles and connective tissue. A proper warm-up will also help you train with a heavier weight than you otherwise would be able to by preparing your body and mind beforehand. but even the best planned warm up routine will not help you if you make your muscles tired before your actual work sets begin - this is extremely counterproductive to what you're actually trying to accomplish with your workout in the first place.

Don't fatigue your muscles during your warm up, it completely destroys the purpose behind a warm-up in the first place. I speak from experience when I say that even the best structured workout can backfire if you don't get your warm-up right.

Here's a simple formula that I use to help me figure out what weight to use and how many reps to perform for warming up. The percentage has to do with the total weight that you will use for your muscle-building sets. For example, if you were going to bench press 200 pounds, the first set should be performed with 100 pounds for 10 reps.

Set 1: 50% x 10 reps

Set 2: 60% x 6 reps

Set 3: 70% x 4 reps

Set 4: 80% x 3 reps

Set 5: 90% x 1 rep

Move right into your actual workout sets once you've completed these 5 basic sets. This is some essential weightlifting advice, never underestimate the importance of the warm- up process! If you learn how to apply this weightlifting advice to all of your workouts, I guarantee you'll start to build muscle mass quicker than you ever thought possible. Keep in mind that there is no way to have an effective workout first earning how to properly warm up your muscles without fatiguing them.

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Weight Lifting Basics

When you first decide to build muscle it's important to have a firm grasp on the weight lifting basics. Effective weight lifting to build muscle requires a basic understanding of how lifting weights, proper nutrition and sufficient rest work together to create the metabolic state needed to add lean muscle mass and get stronger.

Weight Lifting Basics: Physiology

To understand how your muscles work and what it takes to build muscle you need to know, in general terms, what the muscle is made of. Think of a tube or sheath filled with liquid that has cables running through it. In each muscle, that fluid is sarcoplasm - a mix of water and other elements including the glycogen your muscles need for energy and the amino acids to repair damages to the muscle itself. The 'cables' running through it are your myofibrils - collections of thousands of protein chains that contract as the muscle moves.

While the two work synergistically, doing higher repetitions with a medium weight does more to build the amount of sarcoplasm, resulting in bigger muscles with less strength gain. Lifting heavier weights for fewer repetitions causes growth in the myofibril sections, giving you better strength gains with (usually) smaller muscle growth. If you main goal is to get stronger you'll focus more on how much weight you can lift with proper form for 6 or fewer repetitions per set, while you'd be using a more moderate weight so you can complete sets of 12 - 15 repetitions if your main focus is to build muscle size. If you want to do both, you'll either need to rotate back and forth between the two workout styles, or use reps schemes in the 8-10 reps per set range.

When you lift weights using either style, you're creating micro-tears in the muscle. Your body will repair these tears and make the muscle a little bigger and stronger in case it meets that same stress again. If you're not increasing the amount of weight you lift over time, there's no need for the body to keep making the muscle bigger and stronger, so your gains plateau - this is why weight lifting is also referred to as progressive resistance - you have to be continually working the muscles a bit harder than before to see continuing gains in muscle mass and to keep getting stronger.

For weight lifting purposes there are 7 major muscle areas - legs, back, chest, shoulders, triceps, biceps and abdominals (abs). Each area can be broken down further as you progress with your exercises, but when first starting out just make sure your routines include exercising all 7 areas.

Weight Lifting Basics: Proper Nutrition

In order to repair the damages from working out your body needs sufficient carbohydrates and proteins along with some essential fats. Carbohydrates contain the sugars that are converted to glycogen, and are most necessary pre-workout for the energy to exercise at your peak levels and post-workout to replace the glycogen levels you depleted while working out.

Protein is necessary for the repairs and improvements to your muscles and must be made available throughout the recuperation process. Since it can take from 48 hours to a week for this process, depending on your conditioning and the amount of work performed in the gym, boosting your daily protein intake every day is necessary compared to someone who isn't lifting weights.

There is an optimum-uptake window for your nutrients that lasts about 60-90 minutes after each weightlifting session, so be sure to get an abundance of both carbs and protein as soon as you can right after each workout. Unlike protein, however, you do not need to keep your carbohydrate intake higher on the days between gym visits - overindulging in carbs on your off days usually leads to a layer of fat hiding all your new shiny muscles!

Weight Lifting Basics: Sufficient Rest

It's very important to realize that without proper rest and recuperation you're pretty much wasting your time in the gym, especially as you get older. Your body needs time to fully heal and rebuild its energy levels between workouts. Understand right from the start that muscles are 'torn down' in the gym and rebuilt during rest periods on the days you're not in the gym. As such, getting 7 - 9 hours of sleep is a MUST if you want to get optimal results for your time and energy expenditures.

Further, when first starting out you need at least 1 - 3 days off between the days you hit the gym. Anything less and you're tearing down muscles that haven't fully recovered yet, thus limiting your own muscle and strength growth. Forget the routines you see in the magazines where the top bodybuilders do 5 or 6 workouts a week - they have very superior genetics and a huge existing mass of muscle and STILL need steroids and other synthetic anabolic hormones to recover from a schedule like that. For most people, especially those first lifting weights, those routines would quickly lead to overtraining - a situation noted for fatigue, muscle loss and injuries both acute and chronic.

Take your time, learn proper form for each exercise and follow these weight lifting basics and you can enjoy a lifetime of better health and fitness, adding lean muscle mass and building strength throughout your lifetime. And don't forget to share your exercise activities and these weight lifting basics with your spouse and kids - make fitness a family affair in your household starting today!

D. Champigny is well known in the fitness world - he's a published fitness photographer, certified personal trainer, fitness author and publisher of the popular Flirting With Fitness website. For more help from Champigny, become a regular reader of his Getting Back In Shape blog at http://flirtingwithfitness.com/blogs/champigny/

Weight Lifting, Muscle Building Program

 If you are finding it difficult to get the body you want by doing cardio alone, you should really think about beginning with a weigh lifting, muscle building program. Remember that cardio only burns calories and speeds up your metabolism for a few hours after exercising whereas the leaner muscle you have, the more calories you'll burn, even while resting.

A complete weight lifting routine will help you build muscle mass and actually increase your body's fat burning power. Read on to find out more on why it is so critical to add lean muscle to your body.

In addition to increasing your fat burning and power and ultimately your appearance, a weight lifting, muscle building program causes you to feel good about yourself. You will find yourself to be in a brighter mood, having a more positive outlook on live in addition to your increase in strength and energy. This effect will also increase over time. The more effort you put in, means you will be getting faster and more dramatic results only to cause more motivation in the future.

Can you imagine feeling more physically and mentally fit and fantastic every day? This is the eventual goal and it is within reach for anyone to achieve.

You will quickly be on your way to a new body physically as well as mentally by starting a weight lifting, muscle building program. I do urge you to try and give a weight lifting routine a shot if you are not happy with your current cardio and exercise plan. You will look better than you have ever before and feel tremendous.

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Weight Loss - Afraid Of Weights

Weight lifting is an excellent activity to engage in to speed up your weight loss process. By lifting, you increase your metabolism, build muscle and strength, and bring out definition in your body. Weight lifting is the total package when it comes to burning fat.

Yet, many of you guys and gals are afraid to lift weights because you fear that you'll end up looking like Vin Diesel or like some other muscle-bound model on the cover of Muscle & Fitness. I'm sorry to say that this is just a case of your imagination getting the best of you. The fact is that you have very little chance of looking that way with the amount of weight lifting you would be doing.

To get that muscular requires years of training and a religious devotion to watching what and how much you eat. Their exercising and eating regimen is so strict, to an outside observer they would appear obsessively compulsive. In essence, it's a job in and of itself.

That being said, you should not have any fear of one day being mistaken for the Incredible Hulk. To gain muscle mass of significant proportion as they have will not only take time, but you'll have to be the lucky few with the genetic gifts to boot.

Not More Excuses

Weights as I said before increases your metabolism. This fact alone should inspire you to want to lift. Anything that increases your metabolism means losing fat faster. By not making weight lifting a part of your weight loss program is like having a martini without the olive. It just doesn't work as well without it.

So if you're serious about losing weight, get over your fear of weight lifting and start pumping iron. And this is especially true for women. The sooner you start on a program, the faster the fat will start melting away from your body.

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