Weight Lifting

At first glance, nothing could seem more simple than lifting weights. Up. Down. Up. Down. It''s rudimentary nearly to the point of boneheadedness in its apparent lack of complexity. But if the world were so readily reducible to crude appearances, sexuality would be pretty simple too. In. Out. But we know there''s more to it than that.

The variables include position, speed of movement, how often you do it, how intense it is, how long you draw things out . . . excuse us, we''re talking about weights here. Weight lifting—more properly defined as resistance training, in which muscles are called on to work against a resisting force—isn''t difficult, but there are some subtleties to be aware of if you''re going to be successful with it.

The benefits of being successful are plain to see and quick to make themselves known. "When you''ve been lifting, you can actually feel that your muscles are more pumped up by the time you walk out of the gym," says Bruce Craig, Ph.D., director of graduate studies in exercise science at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. It''s a temporary effect caused when working muscles become engorged with blood (the sensation lasts about a half-hour), but in a matter of weeks, this pumped-up feeling becomes more permanent and more visible.

"People who continue going into the weight room just keep looking better," says Tom Baechle, Ed.D., chair of the exercise science department at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. "In the first three weeks you''ll see some toning. In eight weeks you''ll see size gains." There''s just one caveat: "Muscle cells are pretty stupid," Dr. Baechle says. "They have a short memory and need to be shocked on a regular basis," not only to keep them improving, but to remind them of what they''ve become.

The Muscle Menu

To shock muscles, they need to be subjected to stresses they''re not accustomed to. What kind of stress you put on them depends on what you''re trying to achieve. There are three basic goals to strive for with resistance training, and each has a unique program, says Dr. Baechle.

Strength. Physiologists define strength as a measure of how much weight you can lift one time. If you aim for strength, you generally won''t be able to sustain muscular movements for extended lengths of time, and your muscles won''t be as big as they could be had you followed a program designed to maximize size.

Program principle: lifting very heavy weights a low number of times.

Size. Muscles get bigger when you lift, thanks to hypertrophy, a process in which existing muscle fibers increase in size. (The process is fueled in part by testosterone, which is generally accepted as the primary reason men''s muscles are bigger than women''s.) If you build mass, you''ll also build strength, but the two don''t correlate exactly. In fact, bodybuilders—despite their size—may not be as strong as power lifters who train sheerly for strength.

Program principle: lifting moderately heavy weights a moderate number of times.

Tone. When people talk of "toning," three concepts often get interchanged: muscle tone, muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance. Here''s how to make sense of it all.

Toned muscles are muscles that are firm, lean and well-trained. The usual path to muscle tone is training for muscular endurance, defined as a muscle''s ability to sustain movement for a relatively long period of time. See the well-defined, lean leg muscles of a long-distance runner? All that running has made his muscles toned.

To achieve cardiovascular endurance, you need muscular endurance, but the two aren''t necessarily the same. Cardiovascular endurance refers to the heart and lungs'' ability to efficiently move oxygen-rich blood to the muscles, and oxygen-deficient blood from exercised muscles back to the heart and lungs. (Running three miles requires a good level of cardiovascular endurance.) In contrast, muscular endurance is about keeping any muscle working for extended periods of time without undue fatigue, whether the work challenges the heart or not (doing 20 push-ups).

Toned muscle is not bulky. It''s what a wrestler needs to stay fast and quick—but not what a football lineman strives for when building brick-wall beefiness or strength for "combat" in the line.

Program principle: lifting light weights a high number of times.

Getting the Most from Your Workout

Whatever you''re trying to achieve, there are a number of essential elements to any weight-lifting program, and manipulating these elements helps train muscles to do what you want them to. Here are the imperatives.

Load up. To challenge your muscles adequately, you have to lift enough weight. One benchmark for establishing the right resistance is based on the one-rep max, the heaviest weight you can lift in a single repetition. The ideal resistance for a beginning strength development program (in terms of safety and effectiveness) is 75 percent of your one-rep max, says Stephen Alway, Ph.D., director of the neuromuscular lab in the anatomy department at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa. For example, if you could bench-press 100 pounds once, the best weight for this exercise would be 75 pounds. Few exercise scientists actually recommend putting everything you have into one lift, especially if you''re just starting a new program with untrained muscles. "It''s a good way to injure yourself," says Dr. Alway.

An alternative to the one-rep max is to aim for a weight that makes targeted muscles fatigue within 40 to 70 seconds, says Dr. Baechle. Assuming each repetition takes approximately four to six seconds, that gives you about 8 to 12 lifts. This isn''t just guesswork: Studies find that most people working at 75 percent of their maximum resistance will fatigue within this range of repetitions, with the average being about 10 lifts.

Count off. How much weight you use is directly related to how many times you plan to lift it. The idea is simple: You can''t lift heavy weights as many times as light ones. If a safe and effective resistance is something you can lift in 8 to 12 repetitions, it''s fair to wonder: Which is best, 8 or 12? The answer depends on your goals and your progress—and it may not be limited to this range.

According to Dr. Baechle, who had a 16-year career as a competitive power lifter before receiving his doctorate, the 8- to 12-rep range is actually most ideal for building size. Studies confirm that if you''re building strength, you''ll need heavier loads and fewer lifts—in the range of 3 to 8 repetitions. For muscular endurance, you''ll need to lighten weights enough to do 12 to 20 repetitions, says Dr. Baechle.

As for where in these ranges you should be, the rule of thumb is to start with lighter loads and try to perform more repetitions in each workout, says Dr. Baechle. Let''s say you''re lifting enough weight to make 8 repetitions difficult. As you get stronger, you''ll be able to do more. When doing 12 reps at that weight becomes easy, add more resistance. To avoid injury and soreness, many physiologists advise adding no more than 5 percent of the weight you''re already lifting. If that''s not possible (for example, moving from 15-pound dumbbells to 20-pounders represents a 33 percent increase), limit repetitions to as many as you can do with perfect form, gradually adding reps as strength improves.

Finish fatigued. To tap your muscles'' full potential for development, doing one set of lifts isn''t enough. At least that''s what most trainers will tell you. "You won''t find any successful competitive lifter who does just one set," Dr. Baechle says. However, there''s some debate among physiologists about how much extra work—and time—is really necessary. Some studies, for example, suggest that exercising your muscles to fatigue in just one set of 8 to 12 repetitions builds strength and size just as much as three sets do.

The bottom line is this: How many sets you perform depends on just how serious you are and how much time you have. "Most of us can achieve our potential for muscular fitness with only a single set per exercise," says Wayne Westcott, Ph.D., strength-training consultant to the national YMCA, senior fitness director for the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts, and one of the researchers who has done studies to prove this. But limiting yourself to one set may cheat muscles of maximal gains possible beyond what''s required for basic fitness.

Research shows that to make maximal gains, you need multiple sets, theoretically because additional effort challenges extra muscle fibers that would otherwise get off easy. The most common recommendation of serious weight trainers is to do three to five sets of the most important exercises and one to three sets of the others, says Dr. Baechle. If you''re bodybuilding (striving for mass and muscle definition), extra exercises are needed to stimulate additional size. For example, two sets of biceps curls might first be done on a machine and the other sets with dumbbells to stress as many different muscle fibers as possible.

If you''re short on time but still want to give your muscles an added kick, one compromise is to exhaust muscles in one set, then reduce the weight by ten pounds and immediately do a few more repetitions. In a two-month study of exercisers who limited lifts to one set, Dr. Westcott found that men and women who added this small measure of extra work during their second month of training developed 40 percent more strength than subjects who continued training with just one set.

Whatever you do, aim to make your last set the hardest: Your final lift is the benchmark for your progress. Let''s say you''re doing three sets of 10 repetitions. If you feel you can do 12 on the first set, stop at 10; otherwise, you might use up energy you''ll need to complete the next sets. "You should never fall short by more than two repetitions," says Alan Mikesky, Ph.D., director of the Human Performance Lab and associate professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. On the last set, however, push to do as many as you can.

Rest up. As covered in Getting Rest on page 13, it''s important to allow muscles to recover not only between workouts (allow at least one day), but between sets. Again, what you do depends on what you''re trying to achieve. The longer you rest between sets, the more your muscles recover and the harder you''ll be able to push them on the next set. That''s why long rests of two to five minutes are ideal for building strength, says Dr. Baechle. To build size, which involves the use of moderate weight and repetitions, you also want moderate rest between sets—30 to 90 seconds. If you''re after endurance, the idea is to keep muscles working with little rest, and you should aim to break only 20 to 30 seconds between sets.

Think big. Major areas of the body—chest, back, legs, arms—aren''t individual muscles, but muscle groups. An effective workout will exercise big groups of muscles first, leaving smaller muscles like the biceps and triceps for last. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, it''s efficient, since a single exercise such as a leg press works many different muscles at once, including the quadriceps, hamstrings, buttocks and calves. Other big-muscle exercises are the bench press and overhead press. Be sure not to perform a smaller muscle exercise, such as one for the triceps, before a larger muscle exercise like the bench press or overhead press. "If you start with the biceps and triceps, those muscles will be fatigued when you need to use them during the bench press," says Dr. Craig. "That means you won''t get as much out of the more important exercise."

Concentric, or Positive, Phase Eccentric, or Negative, Phase Research suggests that the eccentric phase of a lift may provide greater muscle gain. Experts suggest taking twice as long in this part of the lift as in the concentric part.

Go slow. Hefting heavy objects is never something you should rush, since rapid movements put tremendous pressure on both muscles and tendons, making you vulnerable to injury. But slow and steady movements are important for other reasons as well: Slow, controlled lifting stresses muscles more thoroughly and ensures that momentum isn''t taking work away from you. "You want a controlled up-and-down movement," says Dr. Mikesky.

It''s especially important to be smooth and slow when you''re lowering the weight. You might assume that muscle development comes mostly from lifting up, since that''s the part that seems hardest. Research shows, however, that the lowering—also known as the negative or eccentric phase—may actually be more crucial. You''ll find lifters, in fact, who do nothing but negative movements, lowering a heavier-than-usual barbell to the chest during a bench press, for example, then having a spotter lift it back up.

Some physiologists say eccentric exercises build muscle as much as 20 percent faster than concentric, or positive-only lifts. "Coming down is not as normal a movement as pushing up: It stresses the tissues differently and more damage is occurring," says Dr. Craig. His research has shown that greater amounts of muscle-building growth hormone are released during eccentric exercise than concentric.

Emphasizing the down phase makes the most of the eccentric movement built into every lift you do. Some exercise physiologists recommend a six-second lift consisting of two seconds up and four seconds down, says Dr. Baechle. (The only exception might be if you''re, say, a football player training for power, an explosive form of strength that''s keyed not only to how much force you can produce but how fast you can exert it.)

Make changes. By the time you get bored with a routine, your muscles are way ahead of you. What used to shock them now makes them yawn. Or maybe they''re just tuckered out. Giving muscles an occasional wake-up call or change of pace is known as periodization. You do it by tinkering with any of the elements we''ve just outlined, says Dr. Baechle. Do more sets. Use different exercises. Add or subtract repetitions. Rest less or more. Lift faster or slower. Change the order of the exercises in your workout. Exercise your upper body one workout and your lower body the next.

Just keep in mind that there''s a proportional relationship between many of the key components. If you do fewer reps, you should add weight. If you add sets, you might need to lighten the load or rest more between sets. Overall, "the number one principle," Dr. Mikesky reminds us, "is to overload the muscle beyond what it normally encounters."

The Effects of Time Off

To continue making gains in strength, size or endurance, it''s important to be persistent with your workouts. Whipping your muscles into better and better shape requires at least three workouts a week. But as with aerobic exercise, doing less won''t blow your whole program. In fact, you can put yourself into a holding pattern indefinitely with minimal effort and not lose any of your gains. "For maintenance, you can get by with as little as one workout per week, doing one set per exercise," states Dr. Mikesky. "With any less than that, strength will deteriorate over time."

Granted, this happens slowly: If you completely slack off for a few weeks, you might still be able to handle your usual workout, but you''ll pay a penalty in soreness. The important thing, Dr. Mikesky says, is to continue to be able to lift the same load from one workout to the next. "You cannot sacrifice that intensity," he says. If you do, you''ve allowed a loss—and more than usual soreness is one sign of it.

If you''ve gone two weeks without a workout, don''t despair: You can get back into top form in just one or two weeks, if you go back to a three-times-a-week schedule. To avoid soreness or injury from your first few workouts back, initially reduce your weightload by 10 to 20 percent, suggests Dr. Baechle. Do one set fewer than usual and cut your repetitions by two or three.

Above all, don''t get frustrated when the dramatic gains you made at the beginning of a program begin to taper off. "It''s like with golf," says Dr. Baechle. "A neophyte might cut 20 points off his game in a year, but if a pro shaves just one point in a year, he''s had a great year."