Original grey plastic weights I initially had a small, cheapish set of weights, where the biggest weight was 5kg. I brought them all down into my conservatory (my gym room lol) and spent another good few days just looking at them. One afternoon I got bored of just looking and finally decided I would just try out some deadlifts. I loaded up the 6 x 5kg weights (3 on each end of the barbell) so my starting point was 30kg. Not very heavy but I wanted to work on my form first. I managed 3 sets of 10 so I was well chuffed for my first attempt. Not long after that the weights that I was borrowing from my (almost) brother-in-law turned up so I decided I needed to make a plan. Without a plan I would just be randomly trying out exercises which would: a. Take a chunk of my time each session, working out what to do and how best to do it, b. Not work consistently towards any particular goal & c. be really difficult to track progress.
Wonderfully artistic notes & diagrams!! Firstly, I thought about particular areas that I wanted to work on. I decided on arms (biceps, triceps & lateral deltoids), glutes, quads & hamstrings to start with. I then looked at exercises that would work for those areas, which took a bit of time because I only wanted exercises that could be done at home. I actually spent a lot of time finding exercises, watching videos and then jotting down the key points of the exercise. I draw little stick men (or women 😜) alongside my notes so that when I’m about to do the exercise & I’ve forgotten what it’s all about I can just refer to my diagram & notes quickly without watching the video! Here’s a little sample for you to enjoy 🤣
I have them grouped into different areas, so for each session I just open my notebook at the area I’ll be working on, i.e. glutes. Each time I make a note of the date, the weight & the number of reps I’ve done. Next time I’m working on the same area I’ll try to use a heavier weight & if that fails then I do more reps with the same weight I used previously.
My strategy for a starting weight for a particular exercise is to go extremely light until I have good form. For example, when I started lateral raises I could barely lift any weight. If you go too heavy you’ll end up trying to use momentum to swing the weight up rather than the correct muscles. At best it’ll end up hit and miss with regard to what muscles you’re working and at worst you could end up doing some damage. Once I have good form & know (roughly) what I’m doing then I go heavier. The first session is kind of like a test for where my starting point will be on the following session. I’ll keep trying out weights until I get to a point where it’s heavy but just about doable. Then I just keep trying to progress. For my lateral raises I started at 2.5 kg per arm as that was all I could lift using the correct arm muscles. I can now manage 4 kg and the last session I tried 5 kg but just couldn’t lift it without some momentum (which is not what we want) so I dropped back to 4 kg & did 4 sets of 10 instead of 3.
The other incredibly important thing to think about is the mind muscle connection. Are you feeling the exercise in the muscle that you’re trying to work? It doesn’t matter if you’re lifting the heaviest weight you’ve ever lifted if you can’t feel it working in the right place 🤣 For example changing a squat exercise from bending a lot at the knee to just bending a little or raising your heels can change the focus from glutes to quads. You really want to think about what exercise you’re doing and where you’re feeling it.
Hopefully that's given you some things to think about in order to get started. Please remember that these are only my ideas/thoughts that I've researched & I'm in no way qualified to tell anyone what they should be doing or how they should be doing it 😉
Have fun getting stronger 🔥
Love,
Karen x
Have fun getting stronger 🔥
Love,
Karen x
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