- If you are just beginning a weightlifting routine, you should only do it for a short amount of time.
- Pushing yourself to the breaking point will only cause your workout routine to be delayed because of injury.
- As you increase your endurance, you can increase the intensity and duration of your weightlifting workout.
Beginners need to be careful not to overdo it, but if you don’t finish up your weight training sessions feeling sweaty, tired and invigorated, you probably aren’t working up to your full potential.
Your current fitness level and goals will have an impact on how often and how long you should weight train.
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What Does My Current Fitness Level Have to Do With My Weight Training Time?
If you are an active person, beginning a weight training regimen will be less of a challenge than if you are out of shape.
People that walk regularly, participate in sports, or have a physically demanding profession will find that they can strength train for at least 35 minutes a session when they first start.
On the other hand, if you are not in very good shape, your weight training session may only last around 20 minutes, and you will probably not be able to work out at the same level of intensity that you started with.
While you might feel like you are not exercising long enough, changing from a sedentary lifestyle is an accomplishment in itself.
While the amount of time that you strength train is important, the level of intensity that you perform at is imperative. For example, you may be able to walk to a nearby store and get there in 20 minutes because it is only a mile away.
If you opted to run at full speed, you wouldn’t be able to keep up at that pace for very long and it might take you 30 minutes to get there.
Think of weight training as a means of getting to your optimum fitness level instead of viewing it as a race.
Pace Your Weight Training Sessions To Prevent Injury
Using heavier weights will help you to intensify your weight training workouts, but adding too much at one time could cause an accident.
Even if your goal is to use 20-pound hand weights, you should never increase the amount of weight you use by more than five-pound increments.
Give your muscles time to warm-up (try something like dynamic stretching as shown in the video below) and never jump into a weight training session too quickly.
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When performing reps with hand weights, dumbbells, or barbells, you should always stick to the number of sets and repetitions that have been recommended.
You will wear out your muscles and potentially injure your joints if you do not perform your sets of reps as advised.
Only use exercise equipment that you have been trained to use properly, and never increase the intensity settings to a level that you are not sure that you are comfortable with.
While you are expected to push yourself so that you work your muscles to a point of near exhaustion, the first time that you feel lightheaded or dizzy is an indicator that you should stop immediately.
If you injure yourself, become severely dehydrated, or physically pass out, you may be injured seriously. Having to stop weight training for an extended period of time will set you back on your goals and may even cause your physique to suffer.
Slowly Build Up The Amount Of Time You Spend Weight Training
After a few weeks of weight training on a consistent basis, you will find that your sessions will naturally grow longer and become more intense. A person that has been weight training for a few months could progress to 60 to 90-minute sessions.
Professional level athletes can weight train for two to three hours a day, given that they break up their sessions over the course of the day. Using the same strategy, you can weight train in the morning for half of the time that you normally would, then finish the workout at the end of the time.
Conditioning your time to grow accustomed to multiple weight training sessions a day may be difficult at first, but it will help you to increase your weight training duration.
Giving your body the proper amount of time to rest is just as important as increasing the amount of weight training you get in a day.
If you plan on weight training for an hour or more a day, you need to take at least one day off between sessions.
When your body is stronger and you feel more balanced, you can intensify your workouts and get better results.
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