Weightlifting Tips For Beginners
In weightlifting, individuals lift heavy weights. Olympic weightlifting is a competitive sport that tests the athletes’ strength by lifting different weight sets and barbells. This activity has a long history with origins tracing back to ancient Greece. Early Egyptian societies also practiced the sport. However, it was not until the 1896 Athens Olympic Games that the sport became a competitive activity.
Weightlifting is done for recreational purposes as well. Weightlifting involves strength training that boosts overall health and helps achieve everyday tasks, such as carrying groceries up a staircase, with ease. Weightlifting for beginners should not be daunting. It can be a lot more fun. There are important tips that can help to start the right way.
Strength training is resistance training that creates work for the muscles. Over time, it can involve external weights. However, for beginners, their body weight is the perfect place to start. Besides being an effective workout, using your body weight helps you learn all strength training movement patterns. For instance, before lifting dumbbells during deadlift sets, you should understand the hip hinge. This is an activity where a person pushes their hips backward and keeps their spine neutral while slightly bending their knees.
As you progress, you can introduce some equipment. Once you have mastered lifting your body weight, you need to keep going. Introducing weights challenges you to do lift more than just your body weight. This is what leads to increased strength. For beginners, user-friendly options include dumbbells. Barbells and kettlebells may take more time to learn and can be avoided at this stage.
At the beginning of every workout, you should prepare your muscles by warming up. A warm-up is an essential strength workout element. It helps to loosen muscles and increases your motion range. Consequently, these muscles will perform the way they were designed to. Additionally, increased motion range allows you to take deeper squats and extend the biceps further. As a result, there is more muscle recruitment leading to better results. It also reduces injury risks allowing a person to push even harder during workouts.
You should also lift the right weight amounts. You can start with one to two sets per exercise during the first month and later increase to three sets. Different exercises will call for different weights, but there are important markers while practicing weightlifting. You should choose a challenging weight without exposing yourself to strain and injury. To add, resting between sets aids in recovery, which allows you to complete successive sets.
You should schedule your workouts without going overboard. You can aim for two days during the first two to three weeks and later include a third day. Ideal strength training may require three to five days, but this may negatively impact a beginner’s body. The goal is to start small and increase the number of days as they get familiar with the activities involved.
A post-workout stretch also helps improve flexibility. Dynamic stretches or those involving movement help to increase blood flow and aid in recovery. Again, taking some rest days also helps in recovery. During this period, the body repairs microscopic muscle damages, which helps grow muscles.
