My Diet Experiences

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in My Quest To Lose Weight

My Weight Training Plan

The benefits of weight training are incredible.

Build muscle - Muscle burns more fat than other tissue. You can actually change your metabolism over time to burn fat even when you're not doing cardio. The more muscle you have, the more fat you're burning ALL the time.

Flexibility and strength - I don't know about you, but as I get older I want to have great quality of life. If I'm eating well, keeping my weight in check, and generally living healthy...I want to be in good enough shape to enjoy my long life

Look better - Nice to want to take your shirt off or where that bikini at the beach.

When I first starting weight training, I thought that more was better. I was in the gym for about 1.5 hours each time...most of the time 4 days a week. I also started doing split workouts which meant that you worked only a portion of your body each day. This meant even MORE time in the gym. Quickly, between long runs for cardio and more intense weight training, I was living to work out instead of the other way around.

I started to look for a better way. The more research I did, the more I saw that most studies claimed that 1 set of an exercise was just as beneficial as 3 sets (if done properly). This was good news! I experimented a bit with this, and I have found it to be true. I've gone from 4 workouts at 1.5 hours each (every week) to 3 workouts at 25 minutes each (every week).

Here are the highlights of my weight training program:

  • Full body workout 3 times per week
  • One exercise for each major muscle group
  • One set of each exercise - performed to failure (this is the trickiest part...in order to get the benefit, you need to PUSH yourself on this one set)
  • When performing to failure gets me to 12 reps or more, I increase the weight.
  • Every 6 weeks, I change up the exercises.

Copyright 2007 DietExperiences.com  Privacy Policy  Disclosure Policy  Site Map