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A Simple Weight Training Program To Makeover Your Body

Building a weight training program can be a very complicated process. But it doesn't have to be...

The most important thing is just to get started! So... That's exactly what we're going to help you do...

Below is a simple 3 step guide to build your own basic weight training program. This program will give you a structure to help you progress and achieve your goals. Once you have got a bit more experience in resistance training you can adjust and improve your program as you see fit.

We're going to take you through the program principles and then an example so you can see how to apply this to your life.

Firstly, you need to decide what your goals are. Here are the 4 basic goals that a weight training program can cater to...

Goal Types

1. Maintaining strength - This is just if you want to keep your fitness at a certain level. You won't get huge gains with this but if you're short for time then its perfect for staying on top of your fitness.

2. Muscular endurance - Do this if you want your muscles to be able to keep going for long periods of time. Tom uses this for his martial arts training.

3. Strength - This is if you want to develop strong muscles. Basically this means you can exert more force. Push, pull or punch harder.

4. Building muscle mass - If huge muscles are your thing then this is the way to go.

Notice that losing weight isn't on this list. If you want to lose weight you'll have to combine one of these goals with aerobic exercise and a healthy, balanced diet.

Next, decide on what area of your body you would like to improve. Legs, arms, core or entire body?? It's all up to you...

You then use the table below to design your weight training program. If anything doesn't make sense to you, there's instructions here to help you decipher it.

Weight Training Program Designer

Goal	Times per week	Weights to use	Sets	Reps	Rest time (seconds)
Maintaining Strength	3	Medium	2-3	10-15	15-30
Muscular Endurance	3-4	Light/Medium	3-4	15-20	10-15
Building Strength	3-4	Heavy	2-3	8-12	30-45
Building Muscle Mass	4	Very Heavy	3-5	4-8	60

Definitions

If there's anything you're unsure of in the table above then have a read through these to help you understand it.

Times per week - This is how many times per week you should train a muscle group if you want to reach your goals.

Weights to use - It's pretty hard to define this. Your best bet is to use your own judgement...

Light would be a weight that doesn't stress your muscles too much.
Medium would be quite a difficult weight.
Heavy would be a weight that you find really hard.
Very heavy would be a weight that makes you feel like you're going to pop!

Note that a lot of home exercises don't use weights... Instead, find an exercise which you think corresponds to light, medium, heavy etc.

Reps - This stands for repetitions. So if you do ten pressups in a row then this is ten reps.

Sets - A set is a group of repetitions. So ten pressups in a row is counted as 1 set.

Rest time - This is the time you rest between sets. Make sure you're not resting between reps... ;) So if you had to do 3 sets of 10 reps of pressups with a rest time of 15 seconds you would: Do ten pushups rest 15 seconds, do ten pushups rest 15 seconds, do ten pushups rest 15 seconds...

Lets Design A Weight Training Program For Sally

Sally is a 30 year old woman. She is married, with 2 young children. So as you can imagine, she doesn't have a lot of spare time on her hands. She was a fantastic looking woman in her teens and twenties, but over the last few years she has become increasingly unhappy with her body. It's not as tight and toned as it used to be. And although her husband loves her dearly, he's not looking at her the same way as he did when they first met...

Don't worry Sally, we're here to help...

Sally needs to decide what her goals are. Because she's training to look good she probably doesn't need to train for strength or muscular endurance... And she's not really looking to bulk up her muscles. We would suggest that she is in the maintaining strength category.

Sally would just love to get her young body back again. She used to have great legs, but they're just a little bit wobbly and they have a layer of fat over the top of them. So we're going to suggest that Sally does thigh exercises, hamstring exercises and glute exercises. It also wouldn't hurt to do some aerobic training and healthy eating to help her lose some of that fat.

All that's left for Sally to do is consult the weight training program designer. She knows that she's in the maintaining strength category so...

She should be training 2-3 times per week with medium weights.
For each exercise, she should be doing 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps with 15-30 seconds rest between each set.
Her training sessions would be a mixture of exercises for her thighs, hamstrings and glutes, using the above training guidelines

Fast forward to Sally in 6 months time. Sally has stuck with her program. Her body has slowly but surely been improving. Her legs are looking much better than they were. They're nice and firm and the aerobic training has helped her shed some of that unwanted fat...

In fact, Sally is looking pretty darn good! She feels confident and very happy with her progress. And although she isn't where she wants to be yet, she's more determined than ever before because she's beginning to see that familiar look in her husbands eye again. ;)

Sally is reaping the rewards from her efforts. And you can do the same. You see, this weight training program is very simple to use. If you put in the effort and consistently use it, then over time, you will get the results that you desire.

~~Give it a shot~~. Give it your BEST shot and let us know how you get on...You'll be so pleased you did it. And we'd love to see the before and after shots :)

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