I just bought a set of weights, now what?

ChRoMe

Hi,

I've lost a decent amount of weight over the past few months by doing some simple stuff like swapping ceral for porridge and eating a bit of a healthier lunch when in work. I work in IT so I'm sitting down all day and dont play any sports or go to a gym.

Anyway after getting obvious benefits of even just improving my diet a little bit, I'd like start doing some free weights at home to compliment it. So spent the 50 quid in argos and now they are sitting here looking at me

All I'm looking to do is tone my upper body and lose a bit more of the fat, not looking for a well defined six pack or any of that stuff.

From the googling I've been doing I see that a bench is a defo requirement so will get one next weekend (carrying that and the weights would have been a bit much!)

So where do I start, I put 7kg on each dumbell and that seemed like it gave decent resistance (dont laugh!). Is there a way to calculate what weight you should start at?

I've heard that a high amount of reps is for toning/fat loss and lower reps with heavier weights are for building bigger muscles? How do I know how many to do?

Any suggestions for a beginner program for the upper body that gets all the different muscles, I havnt come across any exercises with free weights that directly does hips and abs?

Anyway as you can see I'm pretty green to all this so help me not hurt myself

Cheers

EileenG

Forget the rubbish about heavy weights giving you big muscles. Big muscles take years of work, they don't happen by accident, and you need to lift heavy to look as if you even know what a dumbbell is.

It doesn't matter what your starting weight it. Pick a weight where you have to struggle to finish a set of 10, and work with that weight until you can finish easily, then increases. You'll probably find you increase quite regularly for a while.

You need to work upper and lower body. In fact, lower body work will burn more calories and give you great functional fitness. There are lots and lots of occasions where you have to lift something heavy off the floor, not so many when you need to lie on your back and push a weight in the air.

Basic exercises you can do at home: Deadlift, stiffleg deadlift, squats, lunges, calf raise, step-up, bentover rows, weighted crunch, bench press, chest fly, incline or decline bench press, pullovers, pull backs if you can't do pull-ups, military press, front press, side raise, reverse fly, woodchopper.

rubadub

Check out www.exrx.net

A bench is not essential, I have one and do not use it. It is a cheapo one my brother got and they are rickety so I do not like using it. I work my chest doing pushups and various dips instead, I much prefer dips over benchpressing.

You can do dips on 2 chairs, or on railings that meet at a right angle.

EileenG

A very useful thing at home is a swiss ball (you can get them in Argus for under a tenner), great for core work and can be used for lighter dumbbell presses etc.

Also, a workman's tool box. You can use it as a small bench, and as a step for cardio or step-ups, and you can keep your smaller weights and collars in it when you are finished.

Mr. Incognito

There are loads of excercises you can do with free weights. A good measure is to increase the weight by 2% month. It may not sound like a lot but it adds up.

Pugmister

Just reading you first post you say you only want to train your upper body. When I started to train I was exactly the same as yourself and completely ignored my legs for close to a year and a half. Id say this is possibly to No1 mistake the majority of people new to training make. Personally I think there is nothing worst than seeing somebody with a toned upperbody and tiny little chicken legs. Also training your legs especially with the things like squats is a heavy compound movement and will improve both your upper and lower body conditioning.

For training at home you could incorporate some lunges and step ups into your routine aswell as maybe calf raises and light squats. All these exercises can be done using dumbells. (Just go to youtube and look for a clip of the exercise in question)

I know you said you dont want the six pack and huge muscles but the one thing with training is it can become enjoyable, addictive and with a bit of dedication progression comes extremely quickly especially if you are new to it, so you ever know you might just start to like the gains you see and want to continually improve and this is point where training legs from day one will show its importance.

Pugsley

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

A good measure is to increase the weight by 2% month. It may not sound like a lot but it adds up.

I'd disagree with that, for the first few months you lift weights the weight you can shift will sky rocket, starting light in very important (to get good form, and to work all the stabilising muscles), especially on large compound lifts like deadlifts and squats. After a few months you have to slow down loading the bar quite considerably, especially when you get into beyond body weight lifts.

For me I was deadlifting for a good while at home on free weights at 87kg (that was all I had), within a month of joining the gym I was up to 115kg, 2 months on and I'm still only at 120kg (hoping to get up to 125kg within the next 2 weeks, and 150kg before summer). When a set doesn't leave you destroyed after finishing it, it's time to up the weight a bit, don't put it right up to your limit, but constantly add weight (every workout) until it really pushes you.

As for rep ranges, I go for strength training (low reps, typically 5 sets of 5 reps), to bulk typically people would go about 10 reps for 3 sets or so, and 15+ reps per set for stamina training, which also acts as a form of cardio.

For bedroom free weights Deadlifts are your friend, they work out so many muscles and you have all the equipment your ever likely to need for them, ie: a barbell, weight, and the floor. Bent over row's are also excellent, but make sure your form is good on this one. If you get yourself a pull up bar their excellent too, some great work outs can be done with one. The shoulder press with dumb bells works wonders on the shoulders. If you want some good leg work without a squat rack I had reasonable success with Goblet Squats, the strength I got from them transferred well onto full squats when I got into a gym.

As for ab work with free weights, their typically worked indirectly, such as on the squat and shoulder press. Could try some gymnastic work? it does wonders for strengthening your core (ab's and oblique's), a good list of core work here (and a great gymnastic site in general):
http://www.drillsandskills.com/skills/cond/core