5 Tips For Lifting Weights

Exercise of any sort, be it swimming, athletics, lifting weights, playing soccer or tennis requires you to do a few things in a planned manner. In the case of lifting weights there are quite a few possibilities, like lifting weights for building muscles, lifting weight for building body mass or lifting weight for developing power.

Lifting weight as a weight lifter is a full-fledged sport in its own right. It’s a sport in which you either compete professionally or just have fun lifting weights. Although there are many aspects of weight lifting that you must be aware and careful about, but you’ll find here a few which will help you in performing better.

Prepare your Body –Warm Up

Before you commence any physical exercise, or play any physically challenging sport, and specially in case you lift weight or do weight training, preparing the body is a necessary first step. The body must be warmed up, the blood flow must be increased and the heart beat brought up a notch. Any cardiovascular activity with medium to low intensity is suitable for this. The next thing to do now is to stretch your muscles a bit. This aids the proper flow of blood into the muscles and at the same time helps filtering out lactic acid like waste.

Focus & Maintain Proper Form

Lifting weights effectively requires you to have complete concentration on the job at hand. So the place you workout in, by no means is somewhere you joke and play and take things lightly. To achieve desired results single minded focus is essential throughout the time you are engaged in the activity. Also focus on fluid, controlled movements while lifting heavy weights. If you make sharp movements or jerk the weight up the end result will not be achieved.

Push your limits Step by Step

To lift heavier weights you must constantly push your limits, but not all at once.

It should be a step by step process. While training with weights or lifting weights, it’s important not to try lifting incrementally higher weights right away. Instead the increase in weight should be gradual but regular. Initially do more reps with lighter weight and as you go ahead slowly keep increasing the weight and decreasing the repetitions. In this way the muscles will develop a lot of tenacity and provide you with the power you need when you need it.

Set your Short Term and Long Term Targets

While lifting weights, you must set both short term as well as long term targets and work towards achieving them in a purposeful way. The best thing to do would be to follow a strict time bound process of increasing the weight you lift. As you achieve your short term targets the long term goals will start coming closer. This also allows for strength and flexibility of the required muscles to develop and provide you with optimum power.

Avoid Extremes and Have Patience

It’s time to quit for the day if you feel tired, less energetic, and less enthusiastic or bored with your routine. It’s also a good idea to take a break from training and examine your routine if the amount of weight you lift is not growing or you feel your progress is not as planned. An excellent way to get energy and enthusiasm back is to take a week long break from your training schedule every 3-4 months. In this time you could take up a totally different way of challenging your body and keeping it in shape. But it’s equally important to have patience too. You must be persistent as every physique is different and thus there may be a different degree of results for people doing the same routine in trying to lift higher amounts of weight. So the best idea is to follow your plan and be patient. The results you want to attain with weights will come your way.

Lifting weight not only provides you with the opportunity to build muscles and power but also allows your body to be fine tuned and in fine shape to participate in any other sport. Taking care to follow best practices and a good, well planned regime while applying simple but effective techniques, you will find no goal is too far.

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