Power training for beginners

You've decided to improve your fitness. Perhaps you want to lose weight, or your condition isn't  what is was? A gym, with fitness devices, appeals to you.  Maybe you've bought a new sports outfit! And there you are, in a room full of sweating people who all seem to know what they're doing. Power training...that's the idea. But where do you start? Which exercises should you do? And for how long?

Why power training?

The name says it all: this sport is about power. But that doesn't have to be the only reason to start power training. Also, you don't already have to have a lot of strength. Power training has many goals:

• It helps when you want to lose weight: you burn more calories and speed up your metabolism.
• Toning up: through training your muscles become tighter and your body more well-proportioned.
• More muscular:  by training with heavier weights your muscles become bigger.
• Stronger: as your muscles increase so does your strength.
• Improved condition: regular training also benefits your heart muscle, and therefore your general condition.
• It simply makes you feel good.
• It has a positive effect on your general health.
• Training in the long term keeps you fit and improves your chances of a healthy old age.

The result you want to achieve depends on the way you train. Most women tend to believe that if they train they will have huge muscles. This is very rare. It takes years before a female develops significantly larger muscles. It's all about the way you train. Training in a different way, with heavy weights, will increase your muscle mass.

Getting started

Warming-up

Starting on the weights immediately with cold muscles can cause injuries. So always begin with a warming-up. For example:  ten minutes of cycling or jogging, stretching and general exercise. You don't need to get out of breath during a warming-up, just feel yourself getting warmer.

The exercises

If you've just started power training, don't over-tax your muscles. Do exercises for the whole body; there's at least one for every group of muscles. These exercises are easy to find via Google. For example:

• Chest: machine press, incline press, machine fly of peck deck.
• Back: lat pulldown, row machine of bent-over-row.
• Shoulders: dumbell press, side raise machine, front raises.
• Biceps: preacher machine, dumbell curl.
• Triceps: pushdown, dipmachine.
• Upper legs front: leg extensions, hacksquats (machine), leg press (these are also good for the buttocks!).
• Upper legs back: sitting or lying leg curl.
• Calves: sitting or standing calf-machine.
• Abdomen: crunch machine, crunches on the mat.

Exercise each muscle group. Try to group each exercise in three sets, repeating the exercise in each set twelve to fifteen times. Take one or two minutesof rest between each set. It's important to do the exercise properly. Technique is more important than brute strength. It may look impressive, starting with heavy weights right away, but you'll probably just strain all your muscles except the one for which the exercise is actually meant! 

There are, of course, many more exercises for each muscle group, but these are great to begin with.

The execution:

• Use a weight with which you can repeat an exercise at least twelve times.
• Position your body properly; for example, for a sitting exercise, place both feet squarely on the ground, sit straight, chest out, shoulders relaxed, tense your stomach and look straight ahead, preferably in a mirror.
• Concentrate on the muscles which the exercise is meant for.
• Perform the exercise in a calm and controlled manner, for example: do the first movement in a count of two, hold fast and tense the muscle for a count of one, and release the weight slowly during a count of three.
• Keep breathing smoothly, let your breath out slowly as you use force. Don't keep your lips together and hold your breath when you use force, this can give you a headache.
• Take short pauses in between, walk about a little and continue. This will keep your muscles warm.
• Drink plenty of fluids during training, about a litre per hour.
• Don't  train longer than one-and-a-half hours. One hour is already plenty. After that you can do some cardio (heart and condition) training.
• When you train all the muscle groups in one day, rest the next day or just do cardio exercise. That way the muscles have time to recover.

Power training build-up

Whether you are training to lose weight or to gain muscle, you start in the same way. This is simply because your muscles need to adapt to being used in this way. After a few weeks you can start doing the exercises for the larger muscle groups (chest, back, legs, abdomen, maybe shoulders) twice. After a couple of months or so you can choose to divide the muscle groups into two days: one day for legs and stomach, and the day after for the upper body. About this time you should start to notice that your body is getting used to training, and you may decide to train more specifically. For muscle mass you would normally train in sets of six to eight repetions with heavy weights. To lose weight or for condition you would continue to train with lighter weights in sets with more frequent repetition, at least fifteen or so. The period of rest between sets is also different. 

Train sensibly

Don't let yourself be impressed, either by big, muscular guys who train much more heavily than you, or fanatics who think they have something to prove, and always go a step further than you do. This sport is about technique, controlled execution and constructive build-up of your training. It will take a while before you become competent at doing the exercises, and before the muscles really start to react properly to the training. You'll avoid injuries and achieve your goals quicker if you work calmly and methodically.

Cooling down

After training it's essential to finish with some cooling down exercises. Ten minutes cycling or jogging, and then stretching will complete your training session properly. And of course you could always cycle or run home afterwards!

Good luck!

Sources: www.todio.nl