The world is getting more and more health conscious with every passing second. New diets, lifestyles, foods and routines are being worked up daily and more and more people than ever before are experimenting with healthier food options and a healthy lifestyle. This is great news!
There are plenty of reasons to get healthy – sometimes it is for medical reasons, but mostly we get healthy to look good and feel good. Either one of those can take a preference and when it comes to sculpting a body to look good, it has never been more in vogue. One of the best ways to sculpt a body? It is by lifting weights.
Lifting is super for building mass and toning up, but it is also pretty competitive. Lifting bigger and better weights than your workout buddies can get pretty serious – which means we can rush into stupid decisions that derail and disrupt our workout patterns. When it comes to lifting weights, we need to do it the right way. Of course, there are plenty of things to help you lift the right way. Lifting accessories like gloves and chalk can help your grip and save your hands from hurting long before your muscles do. Good clothing also absorbs sweat so you can stay comfortable during your workout.
As for the exercise? You don’t just lift until exhaustion – no matter if you are a newbie or you’ve been doing it for a while. You do your reps and sets of those reps until you meet your target. You start small and monitor the weights you are using until those weights aren’t pushing you. Then you move up and the process continues. You don’t ever bomb through a set of different weights until you’re exhausted. Once or twice is fine if you want to push yourself, but doing this constantly can cause you some serious damage.
With any type of exercise, restraint and control is key. If you’re rushing through, you are not in control. If you are hurting instead of ‘burning’ from your exercise, you are hurting your body and could be injuring yourself (with heavy weights, this can be serious and crippling in some circumstances). If you are hurting, you need to stop and reconsider your lifting programme. The reason that we perform sets and reps is so that we can monitor our lifting and do it in a routine. That’s how we workout sensibly. While you might feel like you are holding back, you are doing the right thing and are not running the risk of injury. If you can learn to workout the right way instead of getting wrapped up in the competitive elements of lifting, you’ll sculpt your body in no time at all. Also, you need to fuel yourself the right way – plenty of hydration and protein to rebuild and repair is key.
There is a right way to lifting, in fact – there are many. As for the wrong way? You’ll certainly feel it the morning after if you’re not lifting correctly.
